Walter Bachmann (monument conservator)

Walter Bachmann (born May 8, 1883 in Leipzig , † March 15, 1958 in Radebeul ) was a German architectural historian and monument conservator .

Live and act

Bachmann attended school in Leipzig, Grimma and Plauen , where he passed the school leaving examination in 1902. He then studied architecture and art history at the Technical University of Dresden , where he was a student of Cornelius Gurlitt . He graduated in the summer of 1907 as a graduate engineer. From October 1, 1907 to the end of September 1908, he did his military service with the Pioneer Battalion 12 in Dresden. From November 1908 to spring 1914 he took part in the excavations of Assur under Walter Andrae . From there he was also involved in the excavations in Hatra and directed the excavation in Tulul 'Aqir ( Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta ) from October 1913 to March 1914 .

In 1911 he traveled back to Germany on what was then an unusual route through eastern Anatolia via Erzurum and Trabzon . On the way, he made detailed true-to-scale drawings and photographs of Armenian churches and mosques in Eastern Turkey, which he published in churches and mosques in Armenia and Kurdistan in 1913 . His building survey of the Church of the Holy Cross on Lake Van formed the basis of its scientific description until the end of the century.

Bachmann was awarded a Dr.-Ing. In 1911 at the Technical University of Dresden . PhD. During the First World War he was deployed as an officer in the Middle East from August 4, 1914, initially on the Klein expedition , and then was one of the staffs of Generals Colmar von der Goltz and Otto Liman von Sanders . During this time he also worked for the German-Turkish Monument Protection Command led by Theodor Wiegand and worked in Petra .

After his return from the Orient, Bachmann completed his habilitation in autumn 1919 at the Technical University of Dresden for Culture of the Ancient Orient and held lectures there until 1920. He only returned to the Orient once as a participant in the excavation in Ctesiphon in the winter of 1928/29.

On September 1, 1920, he became the first Saxon state curator and head of the Office for the Preservation of Monuments of the State of Saxony . In 1919 Bachmann moved to Radebeul , where he was also responsible for monument conservation issues. There he participated in the construction of the local history museum in the Hoflößnitz . In his role as a Saxon preservationist, Bachmann published numerous works on places and monuments in Saxony (e.g. Burg Stolpen , Kreyern , Moritzburg , Pirna , Plauen, Sankt Annaberg ) , partly in collaboration with the Saxon Heritage Protection Association . In 1925 Walter Hentschel became his employee in the monument office, with whom he began the re-inventory of architectural and art monuments in Saxony. After the destruction of the war in 1945, Bachmann rebuilt the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and did a great job of preserving monuments in the destroyed Saxon cities. At the end of January 1949 he retired as head of the Saxon Monument Office, and was succeeded by Hans Nadler .

Publications

• Churches and mosques in Armenia and Kurdistan . Hinrichs, Leipzig 1913 (reprinted by Zeller, Osnabrück 1978) (= dissertation)
• with Carl Watzinger , Theodor Wiegand: Petra . Scientific publications of the German-Turkish Monument Protection Command, issue 3, de Gruyter, Berlin / Leipzig 1921
• Rock reliefs in Assyria . JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung Verlag, Leipzig 1927 (reprinted by Zeller, Osnabrück 1969)
• The city of Pirna , The Art Monuments of the Free State of Saxony Volume 1. W. Limpert, Dresden 1929
• Stolpen Castle . Regional Association of Saxon Homeland Security, Dresden 1931
• The free mountain town of S [ank] t Annaberg . Regional Association of Saxon Homeland Security, Dresden 1933
• Grillenburg . Regional Association of Saxon Homeland Security, Dresden 1936
• Create . Saxon Heritage Protection Association, Dresden 1940
• Moritzburg . German Art Publishing House, Berlin 1947
• The old Plauen . Sachsenverlag , Dresden 1954, 2nd edition Vogtländischer Heimatverlag, Neupert 1994

literature

• Ernst Weidner : Walter Bachmann , in: Archive for Orient Research 18, 1957–58, pp. 484–485.
• Heinrich Magirius : History of the preservation of monuments. Saxony. From the beginning to the new beginning in 1945 . Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1989, pp. 155–161.
• Hans Nadler: Walter Bachmann , in: Preservation of monuments in Saxony 1894-1994 . Boehlau, Weimar 1997, Vol. 1, pp. 25-28.
• Frank Andert (Red.): Radebeul City Lexicon . Historical manual for the Loessnitz . Published by the Radebeul City Archives. 2nd, slightly changed edition. City archive, Radebeul 2006, ISBN 3-938460-05-9 , p. 11 .

Web links

• Portrait of Walter Bachmann by Otto Dix in the Deutsche Fotothek .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ulrich Bock: Armenian architecture. History and problems of their research . (25th publication of the architecture department of the Art History Institute of the University of Cologne) Cologne 1983, p. 34f