Walter Wickop

Walther Wickop (born July 19, 1890 in Cologne , † November 13, 1957 in Hanover ) was a German architect and university professor .

Life

Walther Wickop was the eldest son of Georg Wickop and Anna Wickop, b. Schumann, and grandson of the Aachen trade school teacher and architect Wilhelm Wickop . After the relocation of the family in 1895 to Darmstadt, Walter went to school there and received in 1908 the matriculation examination . He then studied architecture, which he completed on May 13, 1914 with the main diploma examination with distinction. He then began training as a government building supervisor a. a. in Darmstadt and at the building authorities in Lübeck, which was interrupted by participation in the First World War. The second state examination, taking into account military service, took place in 1920.

The volume "Darmstadt und Umgebung in Two Hundred Pen-and-Ink Drawings", published in 1920 by city planning officer August Buxbaum , contains four drawings by him that testify to his talent for drawing.

Walther Wickop got a job as a government architect in Cologne in 1920. He was given leave of absence in 1925 as a result of downsizing. In 1925 he was appointed professor for building construction at the Technical University of Hanover . Wickop was a member of the German Werkbund .

Walther Wickop joined the NSDAP on April 1, 1933 after the handover of power to the National Socialists . On November 11, 1933, he was one of the signatories of the German professors' commitment to Adolf Hitler . Since 1935 he was a member of the Nazi lecturers' association .

After the German occupation of Poland, Walter Wickop was Heinrich Himmler's “trusted architect of the Reich Commissioner for the first new planning areas in the Warthegau ” . The village trial plans under the name " Generalplan Ost ", which were to be implemented after the expulsion of Poland, were under the direction of Konrad Meyer , the head of the "Planning Department of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity ". In 1942, Wickop published an article entitled “The village in the east and its living space” in the journal “Neues Bauerntum” published by Konrad Meyer. In this the National Socialist planning premises come into play very clearly. Wickop designed “typically German” village houses to be built in the occupied territories after the Polish population had been driven out. As part of this activity, Wickop has generated considerable additional income.

After the end of the Second World War , Wickop threatened to be dismissed from the service of the TH Hannover. He made various downplaying statements about his work in the Nazi state. Even before the denazification process , he was protected by Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf from the rector of the TH. As is now known, Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf worked in the Nazi state as an asset manager in Poland from 1939 to 1943 and therefore probably knew Walter Wickop. In Walter Wickop's denazification process, his work as Himmler's "trusted architect" played no role, although Konrad Meyer's role was already publicly known at the time. In February 1947, Wickop was rated as a "low-risk follower". In January 1947, the subcommittee of the TH Hannover spoke out in favor of the continued employment of Wickop as a professor of building construction. Another trial brought against Walter Wickop in 1948 was discontinued in 1949.

1954 Wickop designed the new gym of the TH Hannover. The "Wickop-Weg" at the center for university sports bears his name. In 1954 he received an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Dresden. Wickop died in 1957, a few weeks after his retirement .

buildings

• 1924–28: Conversion of the Stichweh company building in Hanover-Limmer in the Bauhaus style
• 1928: Administration building of the Stichweih company (Bauhaus style)

Works

• The trade fair buildings of the city of Cologne a.Rh. , Berlin, Dt. Construction newspaper.
• Guided tour of architecture. For the centenary of the Technical University of Hanover 1831–1931 , Hanover 1931.
• Windows, doors, gates made of wood and iron , Hanover 1933.
• Proposals for the construction and integration of small garages in the countryside and in small towns , Hanover 1939.
• The master builder . Supplement to the magazine "Neues Bauerntum", issue 6, 1942, pp. 2–8.
• Landbaufibel für Niedersachsen , Hannover 1945.
• The small house in the garden , Bielefeld 1949.

literature

• Werner Durth , Niels Gutschow : Dreams in Trümmern , Munich 1993, p. 84.
• Frauke Steffens: "Inwardly healthy on the threshold of a new era" . The Technical University of Hanover 1945–1956, Stuttgart 2011, pp. 111–116.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Honorary doctoral students of the TH / TU Dresden. Technical University of Dresden, accessed on January 28, 2015 .