Thomas change

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St. Josef in Memmingen
Our Lady in the Ostrachtal

Thomas Wechs (born March 6, 1893 in Bad Oberdorf ; † July 21, 1970 in Augsburg ) was a German architect .

Life

Thomas Wechs completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter with his father and then attended the construction school in Augsburg until 1913. He studied architecture with Georg Werner and Robert Vorhoelzer from 1913 to 1914 and from 1918 to 1921 at the Technical University of Munich under Theodor Fischer and Friedrich von Thiersch . He was badly wounded in the war; this experience sparked his lifelong interest in military memorials. After completing his studies, he worked in the Oberpostdirektion Augsburg, where he worked on numerous buildings for the Upper Bavarian Post School . From 1922 he worked as a freelance architect. From 1928 to 1930 he built the Schuberthof on Rosenaustraße in Augsburg, the first modern apartment block in Bavaria. The city's requirement was that as many inexpensive apartments as possible should be built, otherwise he had freedom of design.

Wechsel resisted the urge to join the NSDAP, so the chance to become a professor in Munich was gone. From 1939 he had to do military service again, he was released from the American POW in July 1945 and he had to rebuild his office because his house was bombed out. The appointment of Joseph Freundorfer as Bishop of Augsburg (1949) was a stroke of luck for Wechs. There was a relationship of trust between them. Wechsel has made a name for himself primarily as a church builder . However, his sphere of activity hardly extended beyond the Bavarian district of Swabia . For him, light and air were paramount.

“The highest task of urban planning is not to bring a well-functioning urban organism to life, but to give the streets and spaces beauty.” With this statement, his idea of urban planning becomes clear. He countered the growing car traffic in the cities with his utopia of a city in which pedestrians have priority. Wechsel saw himself more as an artist than a technician.

Works

Honors

On December 7, 1964, Thomas Wechs was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit , and in 1968 the Papal New Year's Order . The “Thomaswechselpreis”, the regional architecture prize for Swabia, is named after him and has been awarded since 2000 by the Bund Deutscher Architekten BDA, Kreisverband Augsburg-Schwaben.

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Change, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Oberdorf
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1970
Place of death augsburg