Szymon Syrkus

Szymon Syrkus (born June 24, 1893 in Hrodno , † June 8, 1964 in Warsaw ) was a Polish architect and university professor. His wife was the architect Helena Syrkusowa .

Life

Syrkus was born in Hrodno in what was then Russian-occupied Poland as the son of a rabbi . After the family moved to Warsaw, he graduated from school there in 1910. Syrkus then studied architecture in Vienna and Graz . At the beginning of the First World War he switched to the architecture faculty in Riga . When the University of Riga was evacuated to Moscow , Syrkus also continued his studies in the Russian capital. There the 25-year-old met representatives of the Russian avant-garde, such as Moissei Ginsburg and El Lissitzky . In 1918 he changed his place of study again and returned to Warsaw. Here, too, he was unable to complete his studies because of the advancement of the Red Army in 1920, and he moved again - this time to Krakow , where he enrolled at the Art Academy with Andrzej Pronaszko for painting and with Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz for architecture. It was not until 1922 that he passed his diploma as an architect in Warsaw. From 1922 to 1924 he then stayed in Berlin , Weimar and Paris . In Weimar he came into contact with Bauhaus architects, in Paris he worked with Gustave Umdenstock on train station projects for Indochina .

Interwar period

After his return to Warsaw in 1924, Syrkus became involved in the avant-garde artist group BLOK , whose founders Mieczysław Szczuka and Teresa Żarnowerówna fascinated him. After the dissolution of BLOK, some of its members founded the new architecture group Praesens in 1926 . Syrkus was able to win important architects of the time as members, including Bohdan Lachert , Józef Szanajca and Stanisław Brukalski . In 1925 he planned and built the building for the ZUS Social Insurance Association in Warsaw.

Shortly after the founding of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), Praesens was appointed CIAM's Polish representative in 1928 by Sigfried Giedion . During the period of cooperation with CIAM that followed, Syrkus established close personal contacts with Le Corbusier , Walter Gropius , Ernst May and Cornelius van Eesteren . In 1928 Syrkus also married his wife Helena, b. Niemirska.

The Syrkus couple - both politically left-wing - got involved in social housing. The Warsaw housing cooperative WSW commissioned them in 1928, under their patron Teodor Toeplitz , to plan a workers' settlement in Rakowiec . Further buildings were built. In 1934 Syrkus and Jan Olaf Chmielewski presented the “Warszawa funkcjonalna” ( Functional Warsaw ) project to the CIRPAC group in London.

Second World War

Despite the establishment of the Warsaw ghetto in 1940, the Syrkus stayed in their apartment and continued to develop new housing developments. They founded in Żoliborz the studio for architecture and urban PAU ( Pracownia Architektoniczono-Urbanistyczna ), the first planned still legal settlements. On October 30, 1942, Syrkus was arrested in the PAU office and taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau . Fortunately, he was registered there as a Pole and not as a Jew. First, he had to do heavy physical work and a. in the gravel pit, then he got a job in the construction office of the concentration camp. Thanks to this work, he survived until the evacuation of the camp on January 18, 1945. He was one of around 60,000 prisoners who were set off on foot towards Bavaria shortly before the arrival of the Red Army. Syrkus initially worked there as a concentration camp prisoner in Leonberg in the wing press shop of Messerschmitt AG and was then held prisoner in different camps (near Kaufering , Landsberg and Mettenheim ). On May 3, 1945, he was liberated by US units near Mettenheim.

post war period

At the end of 1945 Syrkus began his work as deputy head of the Office for the Reconstruction of the Capital (BOS) . In 1946 he and his wife visited Washington, DC , to open the exhibition "Warsaw Lives" with Gropius. But already in 1947 Syrkus fell out of favor with the Polish rulers, as he was a staunch socialist, but a supporter of modernist urban planning and therefore rejected building under the now given doctrine of socialist realism . After he had to leave the BOS, Syrkus worked again for the WSW. On their behalf, he developed the Koło settlement, which was built between 1947 and 1950. This settlement, where Syrkus and his wife were also able to implement ideas for modern forms of production, was placed under monument protection on November 9, 1992 under No. 1537.

In 1949 Syrkus was appointed professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the Technical University in Warsaw. On November 14, 1951, he lost this post again. It was not until 1960 that he - already seriously ill - received another professorship at the Technical University: the chair for housing construction. Shortly after his retirement in 1963, Syrkus died.

References and comments

1. ↑ According to other sources, he was born in Warsaw
2. ^ Andrzej Pronaszko (1888–1961) was a Polish painter and university teacher
3. ^ Gustave Umbdenstock (1866–1940) was a French architect
4. ^ Mieczysław Szczuka (1898–1927) was a Polish artist of constructivism
5. ↑ Teodor Toeplitz (1875-1937) was a councilor in Warsaw and chairman of the Warszawska Spółdzielnia Mieszkaniowa WSW
6. ↑ according to Ute Caumanns, Tenements and "Glass Houses" , in: Alena Janatková and Hanna Kozińska-Witt (Eds.), Living in the Big City 1900 - 1939. Housing Situation and Modernization in European Comparison , ISBN 3-515-08345-6 , Franz Steiner , Stuttgart 2006, p. 212.

literature

• Niels Gutschow, Barbara Klain, Destruction and Utopia. Urban planning Warsaw 1939-1945 , Junius-Verlag, ISBN 3-88506-223-2 , Hamburg 1994, p. 168 ff.