Wilhelm Ulrich (architect)

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Wilhelm Ulrich (born May 16, 1890 in Pfungstadt ; † November 14, 1971 in Willebadessen ) was a German architect .

Life

Wilhelm Ulrich was born as the son of a brewery owner in Pfungstadt. In his hometown he completed his school days and in 1908 received his university entrance qualification in Darmstadt . After military service (1908/1909) in Bavaria, he studied architecture from 1909 to 1914 at the Technical University of Darmstadt , the Technical University of Munich and the Technical University of Dresden . During his studies he converted to Catholicism.

A serious leg injury suffered in World War I was followed by a long hospital stay. After the end of the war, Ulrich worked in the building department of the city of Mühldorf am Inn , later for the Dutch architect Kees Bremer, who apparently gave him his first encounter with hexagonal designs.

After his marriage to Henriette Engel (1921), he moved to Halle (Saale) in order to join the architecture office of his uncle Gustav Wolff that year . Wolff, who died in 1930, withdrew from the partnership in 1929 for health reasons, so that Ulrich took over the office from then on until it was closed in 1939. The office was at Universitätsring 8, the former Alte Promenade.

During his time in the architecture office, Ulrich became a member of the BDA ( Association of German Architects ), the Democratic Club and the Rotary Club Halle.

The architectural office had to be closed during the Second World War . Before and during the war years, Ulrich was commissioned with the design of bridges for the Reichsautobahn and with a housing estate for officers and NCOs. In addition, Ulrich was committed to the Academy for Housing at the Gauheimstättenamt in Berlin until 1945. After the war he was involved in smaller construction projects and the repair of war damage in Halle until 1951.

In addition to his work as an architect, Ulrich was extremely interested in many things. He devoted himself to studying nature, especially crystals , and ran a small chemistry laboratory with his son. At the university he took courses in Arabic and studied Sanskrit and Persian . Because of his literary interests, he organized reading evenings in his house from 1929 to 1949.

In 1951, after 30 years of construction work in Halle, he returned to his home town of Pfungstadt, where a number of competition designs were created.

In 1966 he relocated again and spent the last years of his life with two of his daughters in Willebadessen, Westphalia, until his death .

The idea of ​​the hexagonal building

In many of his designs and some of his buildings, Ulrich dealt with the idea and practice of the hexagonal construction method, i.e. with the floor plan based on the angle of 120 °, due to his mathematical-rational way of thinking. Throughout his life he promoted the hexagonal design system with impressive consistency, which he regarded as an organic archetype that also had practical building advantages. Ulrich was one of the first to recognize the importance of the hexagon for the floor plan and to think through its consequences right through to the shape of the roof.

Many competition designs show the hexagonal floor plan, for example for the League of Nations Palace in Geneva, the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Belgrade and for some smaller churches in Central Germany. However, only a few of his ideas were implemented, and he often had to bow to the client.

Realized objects in Halle were his own house , his “architectural manifesto”, three-storey residential buildings with a honeycomb floor plan in today's Albert-Ebert-Straße and, as his most convincing building in hexagonal shape, the Catholic Trinity Church .

Buildings and designs (selection)

Ulrichs Haus To the seven honeycombs in Halle
  • 1924: Determann House in Hanover (with Gustav Wolff)
  • 1924: Own house in Halle, Ratswerder 7 ( house "To the seven combs" )
  • 1925–1926: Administration building in Halle, Willy-Lohmann-Straße 6a (with Gustav Wolff)
  • 1926: Villa Huth in Halle, Hoher Weg 13, together with Gustav Wolff
  • 1926–1927: Row houses in Halle, Auenstrasse (today Albert-Ebert-Strasse)
  • 1928: Competition design for the War Memorial Church in Leipzig (awarded with a commendation from the jury, not executed)
  • 1928: Extension of the A. Huth & Co. AG department store in Halle, Markt (demolished in 1991)
  • 1929–1930: Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Halle, Lauchstädter Strasse 14
  • 1929: Joske office building in Weißenfels
  • 1934–1935: Catholic St. Benedict Church in Ilsenburg
  • 1938: Christ the King's Church in Bad Kösen
  • 1939–1942: Apartments for officers and NCOs of the Army and Air Force Intelligence School in Halle-Heiderand
  • 1939–1942: Small apartments in Halle, Robert-Koch-Straße

literature

  • Wilhelm Ulrich: Buildings by architect BDA Dipl.-Ing. Wilhelm Ulrich in Halle ADS In: Deutsche Bauzeitung, Issue 63–64, Berlin 1930. Digitized
  • Deutsche Bauzeitung , 106th year 1972, issue 2, p. 188. (short obituary)
  • Karin Franz: Villa Ulrich. In: Dieter Dolgner (Ed.): Historic villas in the city of Halle / Saale. Friends of the architectural and art monuments Saxony-Anhalt eV, Halle (Saale) 1998, ISBN 3-931919-04-8 , pp. 119–126.
  • Hans Georg Finken: See God's tent. Festschrift for 75 years of the Franciscan Church of the Most Holy Trinity 1930–2005. Halle (Saale) 2005.
  • Sabine Klug: The end of the right angle. Wilhelm Ulrich and the hexagonal building concepts in 20th century architecture (= studies on art history , volume 175), Olms Verlag, Hildesheim 2008, ISBN 978-3-487-13696-7 .
  • Ruth Heftrig: Review: The end of the right angle. Wilhelm Ulrich and the hexagonal building concepts in 20th century architecture by Sabine Klug . In: Arbeitskreis Innenstadt eV (Ed.): Hallesche Blätter. September 2009, No. 37, pp. 15-18.

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Ulrich (Architect)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f g h Deutsche Bauzeitung , issue 63-64 / 1930
  2. Karin Franz, p. 123 (see literature)
  3. Hubertus Adam: As clear as crystal and rhythmic as music. Wilhelm Ulrich as a propagandist of hexagonal design. In: Bauwelt, Volume 89, 1998, Issue 25, pp. 1444–1447.
  4. ^ City of Leipzig. The sacred buildings. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 1995, Volume 2, p. 949. (= The architectural and art monuments of Saxony. )
  5. Christ the King's Church in Bad Kösen