Wilhelm Haller (architect)

Wilhelm Zeev Haller (* 11. June 1884 in Gliwice , † 10. May 1956 in Tel Aviv ) was a German-Jewish architect of modernity . The reform architect was a representative of organic building in the 1920s.

Life

youth

Wilhelm Haller was born in Gleiwitz in Silesia , today's Polish Gliwice, in 1884 . He was the son of the Jewish master saddler Jacob Haller and his wife Bertha Haller geb. Galewski and lived with the family at Bahnhofsstrasse 1. He spent his early childhood in this city with eight siblings. The family moved to Upper Lusatia in 1895 . As early as 1898 he attended the Dresden trade school with three mason internships. Wilhelm Haller was only fourteen to sixteen years old at the time. He lost a kneecap while doing construction work in 1902. He was always handicapped and thus exempt from military service.

education

Wilhelm Haller attended the Zittau Building School from 1902 . It is possible that he only became an architect through the loss of his knee and his disability, because as a disabled person he could not or did not want to work on a construction site. This was followed by employment at various architectural offices in Wroclaw and Frankfurt am Main, as well as a visit to the Technical University of Darmstadt , which Haller left after passing the master builder examination.

Education

It was only at the age of 25 that he began studying architecture in Darmstadt in 1909/1910 with Julius Hülsen and in the following year, 1910, he worked as a site manager in Breslau and Frankfurt am Main, where he worked at various architectural offices. During this time, for example, the technical buildings by Hans Poelzig (e.g. for the East German Exhibition in Poznan in 1911 ) and Max Berg's Wroclaw Centennial Hall in the same year.

First activities

Together with the Frankfurt architect Hermann Senf , he said he prepared a joint design for a church competition in Oberrad , which was awarded first prize. Haller also received first prize in the competition for the development of the Holzhausen Park , whose parceling plans are still accessible but not very informative. From 1911 to 1914 Wilhelm Haller worked in Leipzig in the architectural offices of Georg Weidenbach and Richard Tschammer as well as Emil Franz Hänsel and had been self-employed since 1914.

Study trips to Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and northern France were initially made during the First World War. Haller did not report on months and years or whereabouts, although his travel records could provide information.

Private

Haller did not speak or write about his family circumstances or who he was married to. His living conditions are known for Leipzig, which in the former Kaiserin-Augusta-Strasse and later in Weinligstrasse were at least middle-class. According to Myra Warhaftig, part of his family, his siblings and children, appeared to have found a home in Palestine. There is currently speculation about having children. Haller gave no information on this. The information on Haller's work is also often imprecise and difficult to verify. Since he himself was not willing to give the author Max Reimann precise plans and biographical information for the monograph published in 1930, and these things probably remained in the family's possession, the point here is to investigate possible findings about him with the heirs in Israel and the USA .

plant

Active in Germany until 1933

Wilhelm Haller worked in Germany as a freelance architect from 1914 to 1933. In these nineteen years he was able to leave behind a varied, but also stylistically inconsistent oeuvre.

He was inconspicuous until 1927, the year his Leipzig celebration hall was built. From this order (already granted in 1922), he not only designed ritual buildings for the Leipzig Jewish community. His work ranged between residential and commercial buildings as well as soldiers' memorials and settlement houses. Stylistically variable, he adapted to local and private fashion tastes. Some of what he designed was not implemented, so that his intention can only be seen in the drafts.

What is noticeable about Wilhelm Haller is the lack of clarity and incompleteness of many personal details about his plans for various warrior home settlements (Weißenfels and Leipzig), graves (location and dating) and residential buildings, such as the so-called development plan for Straße des 18. Oktober in Leipzig, which many people support Architects advertised and of which very little from the period around 1915 was preserved, because on the one hand the public funds for this project wore down the implementation and on the other hand the world wars prevented this. Clear statements on various factual issues during this time, such as tomb art, temple building and settlement building, adapted to the theoretical discussions in the twenties within and outside the Jewish community.

Wilhelm Haller's work as a member of the board of the Leipziger Kriegerheimstätten GmbH and his related but unrealized project of a Leipziger Kriegerheimsiedlung is accessible in the Leipzig city archive. Furthermore, Wilhelm Haller contributed to the design of the ritual bath of the Leipzig Ez Chaim Synagogue in 1929.

Warrior Home Settlements

At the end of the First World War, the architect was able to benefit from the ideologically influenced settlement plans for disabled war returnees and their relatives. In Coburg am Kürengrund he planned such a settlement around 1917, which was documented photographically in Max Reimann's monograph from 1930. On the other hand, Wilhelm Haller made detailed written and photo-documentary information about this settlement and about the Kriegerheimsiedlung in the Altmark Stendal - Röxe in the architecture journal Der Profanbau (born in 1921). Wilhelm Haller also mentioned a Weißenfels settlement that he is said to have worked on, but which cannot be proven.

It is known for 1919 that Wilhelm Haller, as an architect and board member of the Leipziger Kriegerheimstätten GmbH , drafted development plans for an area south of the southern cemetery and west of the Dosen sanatorium in the Probstheida district . Due to the enlargement of the area by the Leipzig-Dölitz coal works , the city of Leipzig later rejected the development plans, which were already viewed by the city council as too uneconomical. However, as early as 1917, a competition limited to Leipzig was announced, from which Wilhelm Haller emerged first.

His designs were space-saving in terms of planning and the simplest implementations, stylistically based on the Lower Saxony farmhouse . The floor plans and views published for this purpose follow the seven requirement criteria of the committee that decided on these drafts and those of the other participants. Haller impressed the competition committee with a planned settlement in Großsteinberg near Leipzig with advantageous utilization of the building areas with standard forms 1 and 2, which he called "types". The combination of living and utility rooms under one roof was considered to be the most clever solution, as the division also provided for a sharp separation between the two parts of the building. Top floor apartments made full use of the living space and, depending on the size of the family, could also be rented out separately as an additional source of income. Wilhelm Haller designed basement rooms for all houses with access via the threshing floor , to which feed kitchens and stables were arranged. The designs impressed with their low, almost cheap cost estimates, simple floor plans and materials. For this purpose, the architect allowed the use of Paetz's clay wire ramming method for the outer walls and grass leaf walls for the inside. The entire system should cost 10,000 marks.

Due to Wilhelm Haller's participation as a member of the board of the aforementioned Kriegerheimstätten-GmbH, it is possible that his information is correct for Weißenfels, even if only vague information can be given up to the present state of knowledge. It is possible that other, no longer verifiable information about his work can also be traced back to his construction-related inconspicuousness, which can possibly be inferred from information from third parties or fourth parties. This is how it was when he was involved in the design planning for the mikveh of the Ez-Chaim Synagogue in Otto-Schill-Straße 6 in Leipzig in 1929. At best, there are floor plans that Wilhelm Haller, the building manager, indicated.

It is known about Stendal that Wilhelm Haller designed warrior homes there from 1917 to 1919, the files of which are all well documented in the Stendal city archive. Eighteen buildings with gardens have been handed down for this warrior home settlement in the Röxe district of Stendal, which was an independent place until 1905. In June 1919 the completed settlement was released. Wilhelm Haller commented on this in an article on the question of settlement construction. In it he names the difficulties of procuring materials in the early post-war years and the increasing wage increases for the builders, which in turn were reflected in the total costs. The building site turned out to be unfavorable because of the annual flooding. But the proximity to a train station and a street that already ran through it kept costs low. In addition, there was the pressure of having to save on material everywhere, so that all the enclosing walls were built twice with a spacing and a respective thickness of seven centimeters. In between there was a layer of air that had an insulating effect. The small beam thicknesses were also the result of the lack of material, as were the half-fired bricks and the use of demolition bricks. Of course, this economy also served to save costs.

In Coburg , he also designed settlement houses for war veterans and their families on Kürengrund . The terrace system also followed the principle of inexpensive construction at that time, taking into account the existing roads that bounded the former site of the ducal tree nursery. Wilhelm Haller adapted the location of the semi-detached and single houses to the streets, expanded them and laid the footpaths on terraced walls. Roads and footpaths were connected with stairs. There were already numerous fruit trees on the land, so that the useful use for gardens was already there - unlike in Stendal, where nut trees first had to be planted in the homesteads.

The Coburg plant was located in a depression (Kürengrund) and was oriented to the southeast. Forest and ridges protected the settlement. It was also intended to expand it to include the Herzog Ernst Farm located higher up. As in Stendal, building was subject to cost-effective standardization. The exterior and interior of the houses were purpose-built and simple with maximum utilization of space. Some buildings indicate a half-timbered construction. In this settlement, Wilhelm Haller tried out floor plans and the orientation towards the residential use of the residents. According to Haller, the future residents financed the building themselves, supported by a state housing subsidy program. The settlements adapted to the terrain and were not subject to any construction on the drawing board. These homesteads had a similar character to naturally grown localities as is known from medieval city structures.

Wilhelm Haller spoke of the so-called “soul” of the settlement in the context of a balanced development plan. For cost reasons, he left the local options. The question of the choice of material was also subject to more practical than theoretical reasons.

Churches

First and foremost is the church design for the Leipzig congregation, which Max Reimann classified immediately after the house of JJ Frank. The sketched and undated idea shows a system with a three-wing floor plan, with the main focus on the imposing central building. The draft envisaged a building for a large parish.

The very meaningful floor plan of the first floor, designed for the church building, shows the vestibule mentioned at the beginning with a cross-ribbed vault. It was intended to use it to get into the side buildings intended for several pastors' apartments. In addition to the huge church hall with the side, triangular floor plan and opposite bridal and mourning chapels, this reveals the spacious building as a community center. The architect planned administration rooms as well as the library and community hall in the rear part of the complex and thus also behind the choir room.

Synagogue in Hamburg

Wilhelm Haller designed a three-level basilica structure for one of his designs for the competition for the new Israelite Hamburg temple in Oberstraße . He also retained the idea of ​​the three-wing system, only that he varied it for the competition held in 1929 by shifting the middle structure slightly to the left and designing both wings differently, with an oversized Star of David cut into the facade of the right wing structure .

At the end of the 1920s, Haller based his temple and sacred buildings on the building principles of the Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart in 1927, the protagonist of which was Fritz Landauer in questions of synagogue construction . The third competition design for Hamburg, on the other hand, represents a step backwards, where, in addition to modern forms, it again reverted to Gothicized and even Romanized forms, which presented the design in an inconsistent manner.

Funeral hall in Halle an der Saale

With his implemented design of the celebration hall for the Israelite community in Halle, Haller found his way back to the successful implementation of his fashionable style in Leipzig. The street facade of the hall, which is traversed with a ribbon network, refers to the earlier Hamburg synagogue design II. In addition, the facade ends in an expressively designed crenellated wreath that extends around the tower-like building. The hall is flanked - similar to the first Leipzig celebration hall design from 1922 - by single-storey administrative buildings with a hipped roof.

The interior design was kept much simpler than on the Leipzig building, but no less solemn.

The funeral hall in Leipzig

plans

On September 21, 1925, Wilhelm Haller's first verifiable request was made to the City of Leipzig on behalf of the Israelite religious community for a building permit for the celebration hall at the planned New Israelite Cemetery. The attached papers comprised six construction drawings with ground and elevation drawings, a site plan, an enclosure drawing and a statistical calculation in duplicate. The exact construction drawings and calculations for the dome of the main hall and the adjacent components were still missing. Solid concrete ceilings were planned for the wing structures, which were to be hung between the steel girders.

Wilhelm Haller planned a classic three-wing system with a recessed central section so that the floor plan had a U-shaped appearance. The central building of the complex was visible with the hall as the central building, both in terms of area and height. The facade facing the street was tapered in stages due to the vestibule in front of the celebration hall. It was also shorter than the dome. The celebration hall, adjoining intermediate building and wing structures were planned by the architect in a symmetrically balanced manner. The Otto Moosdorf cemetery behind it also followed a symmetrical pattern with paths around and crossing each other. This cemetery park still exists today in its original form.

The files also show that the room layout for doctors' rooms, garage, cellar rooms, heating and hot water rooms and storage rooms was already planned. This shows how carefully the architect planned the building in advance and the expertise with which the rooms were divided. A small, simple hall was provided here for further funeral rites. In this way, parallel ceremonies could be held, which could certainly also be ritually different from each other, since this celebration hall was used by different faiths in Judaism . Furthermore, the plan shows a corridor spanned by a four-bay groin vault. Haller also planned a vaulted passage between the small hall and the lounge, the edge of which rested on rectangular wall templates and on pillars with a square floor plan.

The hall itself was laid out on a square floor plan with a clear dimension of 18 meters in width and depth. Four entrances to the two wing structures as well as the main entrance with the vestibule and the side cemetery exits were planned, which were directly opposite the entrance. The laying out room was located directly below the singing gallery with a partition wall and viewing slit.

The corner pillar floor plans of the celebration hall were designed expressively, in which the internal structure pointing into the interior of the hall was shaped like a jagged point with a point protruding into the room. It is only in the later photographs that an overall picture emerges, which in every detail points to Expressionism .

As dome Wilhelm Haller designed a double-shell structure, the inner space dome followed a round, the outer an octagonal plan and steeper than dome shell proceeded as the inner dome. Wilhelm Haller designed a dome eye for the dome, the colors of which are not indicated by the sources. But it is conceivable that this dome eye was transparent because Rabbi Cohn pointed out the simplicity of the room with the note on the natural color of the plaster. From the beginning, the design of the dome with the niches was not planned. The round-arched motif, which runs around the inside of the dome like a ribbon, rests on top of one another and is alternately rhythmized by cone-like wall templates, only appears in the final draft drawings from 1925, which Wilhelm Haller et al. a. submitted to the building police . The architect previously favored a stalactite dome with freely hanging plaster or concrete cones.

The tracery grille emphasizes the exposed location of the room. A choir room was already included in the drafts. The differences between the tracery design and the planning sketches from 1925 quickly become apparent in the later drawings and the completed building. The original design from that year was not used by Haller. Here the architect presented a seven-pointed gable motif, which was filled in with a simple latticework. This gave way to the second motif from 1927 when he planned an abstract arabesque pattern as a tracery lattice. The crossing, larger tracery bands were drawn in a slightly curved position, which in turn takes up the pointed arch motif of the blind arcades. Two interlocking and horizontally running tracery bands encircle the interfaces of the large bands. The generous framing continues the jagged motif. If the earlier, unrealized design allows the association of a modified Star of David , the implemented design from 1927 remains largely hidden in its iconographic meaning. So instead of a modification of the Star of David motif in the tracery design, the architect left it with a pure representation of a multi-pointed star in the portal top of the outer frame.

Wilhelm Haller was able to illustrate his idea of ​​the celebration hall and its interior design with an architectural model that he showed during his lecture during the community meeting on March 28, 1927.

But the architect also showed astonishing flexibility in the tracery design. The first draft drawing from 1922 indicates yet another design pattern. The simple lattice stepped back noticeably in view of the overall impression of the space, so that Wilhelm Haller later revised the forms.

June 1927, the city of Leipzig had the revised plan for inspection, which the city building police approved. There were only changes in the tracery design and the precise definition of the Torkret method .

In the previous two years, the plans were repeatedly expanded to include sanitary and hygienic systems in negotiations and during the correspondence between the architect and the city of Leipzig, such as locks, ventilation, filter systems, waterproof floors in the hall and the section rooms as well as the building site itself. According to the reports, this property would have been outside of an approved development plan, so that the project almost failed. In addition, the regulations for cemeteries at that time required heated floors and separate rooms for highly infectious deceased. In October 1925 the city expansion office and building advice center raised no objections to the enclosure and development plan or to Wilhelm Haller's building design.

The architect also planned reinforced concrete ceilings for the wing structures. Haller also added numerous static calculations as well as the plans for supply, doctor and administration rooms. In the south wing, Wilhelm Haller also planned supply and utility rooms as well as separate men's and women's washrooms. Cloister-like corridors or halls open to the cemetery garden mediate between the interior and the exterior.

But the development strand for the hall goes back further than initially assumed. It turned out that there are still the earliest ideas about the shape of the cemetery structure, which present stalactites instead of muqarnas- like niches. They took up architectural orientalism and its reception by Hans Poelzig's Großes Schauspielhaus in Berlin in 1919. Because of this, and also because of the completely different facade design compared to the overall plan implemented in 1927, Wilhelm Haller created an idea that is still deeply close to the arabesque richness of the Orient and had nothing in common with the Gothicized building from 1928.

At first he thought of the central domed building with small annex buildings . It was only later that Wilhelm Haller developed the concept of the three-wing system . The dome was stepped through by him, although the knowledge of the planned material is still hidden. Presumably he imagined the beehive-like dome in stone block construction.

Less controversial is the original design from 1922, which shows capitals of the four pilaster-like columns crowned with palm leaves. Ancient oriental and Egyptian references would be implied in this case. To what extent this first draft sketch was accepted by the Jewish community and how great the influence of the community was on the development of the design planning cannot be answered.

The extremely playful subtleties in the design from 1922 were suddenly dropped when the first interior plan was available in 1925. It can no longer be determined whether there were further intermediate stages from 1922 to 1925. With the plans from 1925 and 1927, he seemed to have realized the best idea for the new celebration hall. Because these differ only slightly from the actual building. The complex planning process can be understood on the basis of the building plans and the correspondence between the municipality and Wilhelm Haller and the authorities of the city of Leipzig.

Since he interwoven oriental and above all Gothic forms in the construction of the celebration hall, he approached the expression of Expressionism, where u. a. Architects like Dominikus Böhm , Ignaz Reiser , Wilhelm Kreis , Clemens Holzmeister and Peter Behrens increasingly exaggerated, objectified and monumentalized these stylistic devices.

execution

Celebration hall around 1930

The Leipzig celebration hall on the New Israelite Cemetery is the focus of Wilhelm Haller's work for Leipzig. Already at the time of completion it had the status of a “landmark”, as it cast a spell over people with its extraordinary architecture. The cemetery was built in 1927 and completed in 1928. As early as September 1927, the end of the construction work on the building complex of the Jewish cemetery on Delitzscher Landstrasse became apparent.

But lack of money delayed the completion of the hall, which was completed as a shell in December of the same year in order to be able to use this space if necessary. The main hall, which was designed for five hundred seats, was consecrated on Sunday, May 6, 1928. The Leipzig celebration hall offered a sensational picture, which was reflected in detail in the Leipziger Gemeindezeitung. Haller's enthusiasm for the simplicity of the building and for old structures met the religious community's conception of art. It was emphasized that this building followed the horizontal principle of antiquity and Hasidism as well as the vertical principle of Gothic .

Wilhelm Haller realized his sophisticated designs for the axially emphasized three-wing system with a recessed middle section. A small green forecourt was created between the wing buildings of the administration and the guards' apartment. Stylistically, the exposed celebration hall stood out from the wing structures, which were kept in the familiar bourgeois style. The outside facade of the hall and the wing structures were smooth and plastered blue on the outside. Red interlocking tiles covered the roofs of the entire complex. The wings of the building with their head structures had hipped roofs. In addition, the reinforced concrete dome was given an octagonal, slightly pointed domed folded tile roof with a glass skylight, which was connected to the reinforced concrete dome in a prism-like manner and thus ensured a constant incidence of light. Above the ogival triple portal of the vestibule was the Hebrew and German lettering with the words “Love is as strong as death” .

So death was reflected in the memory of the resurrection. The vestibule juts out slightly from the rest of the building and is two-fold upwards so that this part of the building tapers slightly upwards towards the dome. This two-bay porch also appears lower than the rest of the building complex. This was probably due to the two "corner projections" of the celebration hall, which protruded like a cube over the height of the administration wing. Pointed arched windows and portals shaped the street and garden facade of the celebration hall. The cemetery or garden side was designed much simpler, but no less exorbitant.

The mourners were able to enter the celebration hall through three double doors via the pillar vestibule of the main entrance. There was also a wall fountain made of polished shell limestone with a pagoda-like attachment, equipped with running water . The central building, standing on a rectangular floor plan, appeared in a restrained color scheme of natural tones, such as various ocher colors and brown tones. Of artificial light sources in Soffittenkranz of the coupling ring, artificial light sources in the Muqarnas and the dome eye coloration was possibly broken.

Due to the constantly changing direction of the incidence of the sun, the interior got a changing play of light and shadow. The space for the singing gallery behind the tracery was designed in a subdued red color, creating an eye-catching contrast. A huge sixteen-pointed star adorned the multi-colored banded rubber floor and took up Haller's original idea of ​​inscribing the star in the glass skylight. Star motifs were often used in Moorish architecture. Particularly noteworthy is their use as a full-surface dome design, with ribbon ribs as a component, which did not cut in the middle of the dome, but were led past each other so that a multi-pointed star was created in the center of the dome and served as a skylight.

In addition to the "choir tracery", the colourfulness of the travertine on the portals and the mighty overhangs with the inscribed geometric star pattern dominated the interior. The walling up of the blind arcades at the front of the cemetery exits also provided a pleasant accent. The doors and radiators were painted brown, with the doors leading from the hall made of oak plywood . Chrome-plated door fittings and metal-clad lamp fittings created an accentuated contrast to the wood paneling. The small hall, located south of the large hall, was given complete wall paneling made of profiled Caucasian walnut and was intended for small celebrations.

In both funeral halls, the coffin rooms were separated by crank mechanisms, adjustable sliding walls with so-called ritual slots. As a result, the deceased were hidden from view of the mourners. The rubber floor of the small hall was set off in color and made rhythmic with a diamond pattern. One can only speculate about its color. Nothing is known about the color of the rubber floor in the large hall. If, for example, the interior design of the Leipzig Memorial Church of St. Boniface from 1930 is followed, which was also executed in an expressionist style, the image of a conceptual room design emerges in which, on the one hand, the individual colors are strongly contrasted without losing accents. The same could have been realized in the Leipzig celebration hall. In the monument conservation reconstruction process, the missing color would be deduced from the known colors of the interior. But this scientifically declared process is not clearly reliable. If the natural color was emphasized in the interior plaster, this can indicate a gray tint.

The room in the singing gallery, clad with wickerwork, served as a focal point. The tracery is to be understood as a privacy screen, since in the orthodox and conservative mourning ritual no music is provided and the purpose of the room should not be visible. Despite the knowledge of this choir room, it was not designed as an open singing gallery. Strangers and bystanders always had to stand at a great distance from the deceased and his relatives at Jewish funerals. In order to preserve this piety, the gallery was covered in this way and was separated from the coffin chamber above. Instead of covering the organ with a curtain that was difficult to attach, as is the case with community synagogues used by several Jewish movements, Haller used this tracery grille, in which he processed the pointed arches of the blind arcade and connected them with zigzag ribbons. The architect had the singing gallery behind it turn red, so that the natural color of the concrete and the plastered surfaces including the unprocessed surface, the natural incidence of light, the hidden light sources in the muqarnas and the colored rubber floor with its expressive shapes created a unique spatial impression.

Ritual bath in Leipzig

For the Israelite Religious Community in Leipzig he was able to participate in the design or the no longer verifiable construction of the ritual bath of the Ez-Chaim synagogue in Otto-Schill-Straße 22 in 1929. Here he acted as the building manager. Why he gave no information in this regard remains unclear. Wilhelm Haller was the only person to appear in the plans by name. Next to him there was no planning architect. The builder was the Israelite religious community. The funds for this were approved in January 1929.

More designs and buildings

In addition to the large orders, Wilhelm Haller u. a. for members of the Leipzig congregation, gravestones and memorials for fallen soldiers. In Leipzig, the war honor he had planned at the Old Israelite Cemetery is still intact. The names of the fallen were engraved on the gable wall. A crown with a Star of David depicted as a bas-relief is flanked by two lions and torches and stands on a base.

In 1927 Wilhelm Haller was commissioned by Joske Firma M. Joske & Co. from 1927 to design the facade of the Joske department store in Leipzig-Plagwitz and a new building. In 1929, the renovation of the buildings in Karl-Heine-Strasse 43–45 and what was then Ziegelstrasse 1–3 was inaugurated. In this way, the design of the different buildings was matched, a curtain-type wooden facade and a surrounding black-and-white light box unified the external appearance of the department store. In 1931, Wilhelm Haller appeared as the architect for the House of Jewish Youth in Leipziger Elsterstrasse 7. He designed and managed the renovations in the three-storey, late-classicist building that no longer exists today. In July 2018, a memorial stele was erected at this address for the former place of activity of the Jewish football club Bar Kochba.

Working in Tel Aviv

As a result of Adolf Hitler's seizure of power on January 30, 1933, Haller emigrated to Palestine in July 1933 , which was a promising land for Jewish intellectuals and Zionist Jews. Tel Aviv turned out to be the main attraction, where many artists and academics settled, not least because of the good living and working conditions. In Germany in 1933, the first restrictions began to apply to Jews. First cuts, unnoticed by the general public, prompted many Jews to leave the country for the USA or Palestine. One of them was Wilhelm Haller, who was able to open his own architecture office in Tel Aviv in October of the same year. He was also employed by the Public Works Department. This was followed in the late 1930s and early 1940s as an inspector in heavy industry and a lectureship at Tel Aviv University.

His buildings from 1933 to 1937 are well documented, in contrast to his plans and buildings in Germany. In general, it can be said that Haller adopted a much more uniform style here than is known from him in Germany. That was probably due to the different ideas of the client. Haller's modern designs for Jewish communities always met the prevailing taste, while many other designs for the city of Leipzig or private clients often have a more pleasing expression.

Haller was certainly familiar with the curved and interlocking shapes from the buildings of the Werkbund exhibition in 1927 , the Bauhaus and Erich Mendelsohn . Because his oeuvre in Tel Aviv represents a turning point in Wilhelm Haller's work. Not least because of new building tasks, he broke away from the playful forms of Expressionism and turned to an objectified, but nevertheless expressive form of architecture that was at the Bauhaus and after the Werkbund exhibition in 1927 came to fruition.

The house Ehrlich in Tel Aviv was planning Wilhelm Haller together with H. Weinstein in the year of his arrival in Tel Aviv, it could be built by September 1934 by February. Zadok Ehrlich had plans to add several floors to the 436 m² plot of land he had acquired before 1933, on which a single-storey house already stood with workshops. He also had the property expanded by almost 100 m² in order to be able to implement extensions or the like. As with the Delfinger-Picker house, the facade should be designed with a rounded solution and surrounding windows with parapet strips. In addition, a roof pergola was implemented that follows the curved corner solution. The vertical row of windows in the stairwell forms the vertical contrast. The original smooth plaster was replaced by a rough one.

At the same time, the Delfinger-Picker house on the corner of Mazeh-St. 51 / Yehuda-Halevi-St. in Tel Aviv. The plans for this were approved as early as December 1933. The corner house, which has a U-shaped floor plan, also has a curved corner solution with circumferential, ribbon-like balconies. Two different colored types of plaster with incorporated glass or basalt splinters should enhance the horizontal effect.

Mittelmann House, 2008

From July 1934 to October 1935 Wilhelm Haller planned the Jacov Mittelmann house as an apartment building in Ben-Yehuda-St. 120. The plan for the flat-roofed, three-story building was approved in July 1934, but the floor plan was not implemented. Semicircular balconies on the rear part of the building give rhythm to the structure, as do the concrete slabs framing the windows and loggias. Later on, the built-in row of shops and the flat-roofed shop, which made the originally open, angular solution completely disappear, were made.

House Boaz-Schwabe was planned by Wilhelm Haller as an elongated, staggered apartment building for teachers. For this purpose, the architect also provided curved corner solutions and horizontal ribbon windows. A mirror-inverted twin building could not be realized. The building is executed with sand-colored, smooth plaster and is additionally emphasized by the surrounding balconies on the protruding part of the building in the northeast corner.

Cut to the right is the Hornstein house with sun visors in the windows, 2016

Wilhelm Haller designed a three-storey corner building ( Haus Hornstein ) for Selda Hornstein in 1936 on the corner of Rechov Dizengoff and Rechov ha-Melech George , which was completed in July 1937. The plan was approved on January 4, 1934, but Haller rejected it and created a new design. The new plans were implemented as a terraced house with a vertically staggered facade and undulating, curved balconies. The balcony parapets have been pulled down strongly and give the street design a distinctive image. Later, the architect Eliyahu Kuczynski added a row of shops that has nothing in common with Haller's building and creates no reference. The balconies were also later redesigned by installing windows with sliding shutters.

Publications

• For his 25th professional anniversary. In: Gemeindeblatt der Israelitische Religionsgemeinde zu Leipzig Vol. 6: No. 16. Leipzig 1930. pp. 2–3.
• Settlements in Coburg and Stendal. In: Profanbau. Journal of Architecture and Construction, born 1921. ed. v. Higher government building officer Dr.-Ing. Mackowsky and building officer Dr.-Ing. Koch, BDA and DWB Leipzig 1921. pp. 89-99.
• The new cemetery. In: Gemeindeblatt der Israelitische Religionsgemeinde Leipzig (September 25, 1925), p. 4.
• The warrior ceremony in the Ehrenfriedhof. In: Gemeindeblatt der Israelitische Religionsgemeinde Leipzig (May 28, 1926), p. 2.
• On the question of cemetery art. In: Gemeindeblatt der Israelitische Religionsgemeinde zu Leipzig Vol. 8: No. 15. Leipzig 1930. pp. 1–2.
• The temple construction. In: Festschrift for the 75th anniversary of the Leipzig community synagogue 1855–1930 Leipzig, with a foreword by Fred Grubel. From: History and Life of the Jews in Leipzig, ed. from the Ephraim Carlebach Foundation Leipzig. Berlin 1994. pp. 56-58.
• The architect Wilhelm Haller. In: Jewish Yearbook for Saxony 1931/32, ed. from the Ephraim Carlebach Foundation: History and Life of the Jews in Leipzig. Berlin 1994. pp. 45-47.
• Wilhelm Haller to the building police office of September 21, 1925: 6 sheets of floor plans, views and sections, site plan, enclosure drawing, statistical calculation in duplicate. In: City of Leipzig: Office for the Preservation of Monuments, Building Files Archive: Object Delitzscher Straße 224, Vol. I, Sheet 1 ff.
• City expansion office / building advice center to the Israelite religious community of October 2, 1925. In: ibid. Vol. I, pp. 40 ff.
• Building police office to the Israelite religious community of October 10, 1925. In: ibid., Vol. I, pp. 40 ff.
• Expert opinion of the building inspectorate / technical department of October 27, 1925. In: ibid., Vol. I, sheet 46/47.
• City district doctor to Israelitische Religionsgemeinde from November 13, 1925. In: ibid., Vol. I, sheet 48.
• City expansion office of January 21, 1926. In: ibid. Vol. I, sheet 52.
• Israelite religious community to the building police office of March 15, 1925. In: ibid., Vol. I, sheet 65.
• Building and floor plan by Wilhelm Haller from April 19, 1927. In: ibid., Vol. I, sheet 66 ff.
• City of Leipzig: Office for Monument Preservation, Archive: Delitzscher Straße 224, Bd. II. U. III.
• Leipzig City Archives: Chap. 24, No. 2767, City Extension Office: Development plan Probstheida-Südwest - Kriegerheimstätten (No. 97 of the overall plan). 1919. p. 17 and 18, 27, 38, 39, 45.
• Leipzig City Archives: Chapter files 24, 2788 Supplement 1 of the community files Möckern, 12.3.2.
• Leipzig City Archives: Chapter files 24, StVuR (1) 5477.
• Leipzig City Archives: Chapter files 23a, bridges and footbridges, 172.
• Leipzig City Archives: Building files 8463. P. 72–76.

literature

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• Paul Benndorf: The emergence of the Israelite cemeteries, the new Johannis, north and south cemetery. A contribution to the city's history. In: Illustrirte Zeitung, scientific supplement. Leipzig 1907, pp. 205-207.
• Hans-Kurt Boehlke: cemetery buildings. Chapels, storage rooms, party halls, crematoriums. Munich 1974, pp. 18-19.
• Michael Brocke, Christiane E. Müller: House of Life. Jewish cemeteries in Germany. Leipzig 2001.
• Michael Brocke, Eckehardt Ruthenberg, Kai-Uwe Schulenburg: Stone and Name. The Jewish cemeteries in East Germany. New federal states / GDR and Berlin. In: Peter von der Osten-Sacken (Ed.): Publications from the Institute Church and Judaism (VIJK) , Volume 22, Berlin 1994.
• Gustav Cohn: cemeteries. In: Festschrift for the 75th anniversary of the Leipzig community synagogue 1855-1930 Leipzig. (with a foreword by Fred Grubel, New York) From: History and life of the Jews in Leipzig. ed. from the Ephraim Carlebach Foundation Leipzig, Berlin 1994, pp. 70–71.
• Gustav Cohn: The Jewish cemetery. In: Gemeindeblatt der Israelitische Religionsgemeinde , Volume 4, Special Edition, No. 19, Leipzig 1928, p. 6.
• Handbook of German Art Monuments , Saxony II: administrative districts of Leipzig and Chemnitz. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1998, p. 578.
• Adolf Diamant: Chronicle of the Jews in Leipzig. Ascension, annihilation and a new beginning. Chemnitz and Leipzig 1993.
• Pe'era Goldman et al .: Tel Aviv. New building 1930-1939. (Ed. by the Institute for Foreign Relations Stuttgart) Tübingen and Berlin 1993.
• Felix Goldmann: True love. In: Gemeindeblatt der Israelitische Religionsgemeinde , Volume 4, Special Edition, No. 19, Leipzig 1928, p. 7.
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• Cornelius Gurlitt: Synagogues. In: Handbuch der Architektur , Part 4: Designing, setting up and laying out buildings , 8th half volume, Issue 1, Stuttgart 1906, pp. 126–165.
• Harold Hammer-Schenk : Synagogues in Germany. History of a building type in the 19th and 20th centuries. In: Hamburg Contributions to the History of the German Jews , Volume VIII. (Edited by Peter Freimark) Hamburg 1981, p. 652, note 1144.
• Steffen Held: Between tradition and legacy. The Israelite Religious Community in Leipzig after 1945. Hamburg 1995.
• Carol Herselle-Krinsky: Europe's synagogues. Architecture, history and meaning. Wiesbaden 1997.
• Wolfgang Hocquel, Peter Leonhardt, Ulrich Knufinke, Loreen Schiede: Wilhelm Haller. A Leipzig architect in Tel Aviv. o. O. (Leipzig) 2009, republished. 2019.
• Arno Kapp: On the history of the Jews in Leipzig. In: Gemeindeblatt der Israelitische Religionsgemeinde Leipzig , 3rd year 1927, No. 26; 5th year 1929, No. 21 and No. 29; 6th year 1930, No. 5, 6, 7 and 8.
• Ulrich Knufinke, "Building a Modern Jewish City: Projects of the Architect Wilhelm Zeev Haller in Tel Aviv", in: PaRDeS: Journal of the Association for Jüdische Studien eV , issue 15 '100th anniversary of Tel Aviv' (2009 ), Pp. 54-70. ISBN 978-3-86956-012-0
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• Ulrich Knufinke: Buildings of Jewish cemeteries in Germany. Petersberg 2008.
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• Katrin Löffler, Iris Schöpa, Heidrun Sprinz: The Leipziger Südfriedhof. History, tombs, tombs. Leipzig 2000.
• Walter Mackowsky: Housing care and settlement at the home building exhibition in Leipzig in 1917. In: Der Profanbau , born in 1921, pp. 33–39.
• Bernd Mälzer: The ways of the architect Wilhelm Haller. In: Zittauer Geschichtsblätter, New Series , No. 41. Zittau, Görlitz 2009.
• Untitled: The new cemetery. In: Gemeindeblatt der Israelitische Religionsgemeinde , 3rd year 1927, No. 16, p. 5.
• Max Reimann: Wilhelm Haller. FE Huebsch Verlag, Berlin et al. 1930. (= New Work Art)
• Max Reimann: The new cemetery building of the Israelite religious community. In: Gemeindeblatt der Israelitische Religionsgemeinde , 4th year 1928, special edition, No. 19, pp. 2–5.
• Margit Schad: Moses Mendelsohn and the question of the early burial of the dead. In: Eva J. Engel, Bernd Gerard Ulrich (ed.): Judentum, ways to spiritual liberation. Materials from the Dessau Autumn Seminars 2000 and 2001 on the history of the Jews in Germany. Dessau 2002, pp. 59-78.
• Henning Steinführer: The old Israelite cemetery in Johannistal. In: Ephraim Carlebach Foundation Leipzig (Ed.): Judaica Lipsiensia. On the history of the Jews in Leipzig. Leipzig 1994.
• Daniel Thalheim: The celebration hall on the New Israelite Cemetery - A building by Wilhelm Haller . Master's thesis - University thesis, published at the Institute for Art History Leipzig. Leipzig, 2006.
• Daniel Thalheim: Wilhelm Zeév Haller . In: General Artists Dictionary (AKL). Leipzig, 2011.
• Daniel Thalheim: Art Déco or Expressionism - Discussion about a destroyed Jewish party hall , published in: Leipziger Zeitung Edition 0, Leipzig 2015.
• Daniel Thalheim: Haller, Wilhelm Zeév . In: Saxon Biography, ed. from the Institute for Saxon History and Folklore eV, arr. by Martina Schattkowsky, online edition: http://www.isgv.de/saebi/ (August 27, 2017).
• Daniel Thalheim: Lost Buildings - The Good Place in Leipzig , published in: Artefakte - The Journal for Building Culture and Art in Leipzig, Leipzig 2018.
• Daniel Thalheim: The good place - New Israelitischer Friedhof is being expanded , published in: Artefakte - The Journal for Building Culture and Art in Leipzig, Leipzig 2018 (originally from: Leipziger Internet Zeitung, Leipzig 2012.).
• Daniel Thalheim: Houses of Graves - History of the Leipzig Israelite Religious Community and its Cemeteries in the 19th and 20th Centuries , published in: Artefakte - The Journal for Building Culture and Art in Leipzig, Leipzig 2018 (originally published in: Daniel Thalheim: The celebration hall on the New Israelite Cemetery - a building by Wilhelm Haller. Master's thesis - University thesis , published at the Institute for Art History Leipzig. Leipzig, 2006.)
• Daniel Thalheim: Erased and risen - The terrible turning point of the Israelite religious community of 1938 - section "The consecration hall on the New Israelite Cemetery", published in: Leipziger Zeitung Edition 62, Leipzig 2018.
• Daniel Thalheim: The good place in Leipzig - Why Wilhelm Haller's work has nothing to do with Art Déco and Bauhaus, published in: Artefakte - Das Journal für Baukultur und Kunst, Leipzig 2019.
• Manfred Unger , Hubert Lang: Jews in Leipzig. A documentation of the exhibition on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the fascist pogrom night in the exhibition center of the Karl Marx University Leipzig Kroch-Hochhaus, Goethestraße 2 from November 5 to December 17, 1988. (published by the Council of the District of Leipzig, Department of Culture) Leipzig 1989/1990.
• Manfred Unger, Reiner Frenzel: Judaica Lipsiensia. On the history of the Jews in Leipzig. (Ed. by the Ephraim Carlebach Foundation Leipzig) Leipzig 1994.
• Simon Vries (PH. De): Jewish rites and symbols. 9th edition, Hamburg 2003.
• Myra Warhaftig : You laid the foundation. Life and work of German-speaking architects in Palestine 1918-1948. Berlin 1996, pp. 202-210.
• Myra Warhaftig: German Jewish Architects before and after 1933. The Lexicon. Berlin 2005, pp. 214-217.

Web links

• Daniel Thalheim: Wilhelm Haller (1884-1956) . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
• Daniel Thalheim: Lost Buildings in Leipzig - Who Was Wilhelm Haller ? In: Leipziger Internet Zeitung, Leipzig 2019.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The new building was finally realized by the winners Felix Ascher and Robert Friedmann .
2. ↑ Ulrich Knufinke, "Building a Modern Jewish City: Projects of the Architect Wilhelm Zeev Haller in Tel Aviv", in: PaRDeS: Journal of the Association for Jüdische Studien eV , Issue 15 '100th anniversary of Tel Aviv' ( 2009), pp. 54–70, here p. 62. ISBN 978-3-86956-012-0 .