Wilhelm Pook

The former Prussian government building in Erfurt (1936–1939), now the parliamentary building of the Thuringian state parliament

Extension for the Erfurt Regional Court (1937–1939), the current building of the Thuringia State Police Department

Wilhelm Pook (* 1905 in Sieber im Harz; † December 15, 1993 in Hanover ) was a German architect and regional planner .

Life

Wilhelm Pook grew up as the son of a teacher in the village of Sieber, Osterode am Harz . He studied architecture at what was then the Technical University of Hanover . After completing his studies, he was unemployed for several months and then occupied with minor construction tasks.

In 1930 Pook became government building supervisor for the government building in Opole , Upper Silesia . He then passed the major state examination in Berlin and was accepted into the Prussian civil service in 1933/34. In 1935 he was transferred to Erfurt in order to plan and build an office building on today's Arnstädter Strasse to “accommodate the Erfurt state police station, which had been ousted by the Wehrmacht, and various government and administrative offices scattered around the city in a closed building”. Pook designed a monumental complex in the Prussian - classical style, which has been the official guideline for the capital since Albert Speer's appointment as general building inspector, and he also took care of the implementation down to the last detail. From 1937 to 1939 he built the extension for the district court in Erfurt. The neo-baroque building on Andreasstraße served as the district administration of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR from the end of the 1950s to 1990 and is now the building of the Thuringian State Police Department . 1937 joined Poock - in his own words on pressure from his superiors - the NSDAP in. In 1942 he received the offer to build the “Colonial Ministry” on the north-south axis as part of the transformation of Berlin into the “ World Capital Germania ”, which he refused. He moved to Hanover and became head of the regional planning department in the district government .

In 1945 Pook returned to Hanover from an American prisoner-of-war camp and until about 1970 was the department head for state planning and housing in the social welfare department of the newly formed state of Lower Saxony .

Buildings (selection)

• Residential house at Spiegelslustweg 20 in Marburg (1926)
• District Court in Pyritz , Western Pomerania (1929)
• Government building in Opole (1930)
• Government building in Erfurt, today parliamentary group of the Thuringian Parliament , together with Arthur Reck u. a. (1936–1939)
• Extension for the district and regional court of Erfurt, today building of the Thuringia state police department , Andreasstraße 38 (1938–1939)

Awards

• Large Federal Cross of Merit

literature

• Leißling, Wolfgang: Demand and Reality: Portraits of the architects W. Pook and E. Hartmann and the civil engineer L. Lamprecht , Erfurt 1990
• Arthur Reck: New construction of the government service building in Erfurt . Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung, Volume 61, Issue 43/44, Berlin, October 1941

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Pook  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files