Wolfgang Hänsch

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Portrait relief from 2018
Blochmannstrasse 1-19
House of the press
Kulturpalast Dresden

Wolfgang Hänsch (born January 11, 1929 in Königsbrück , Saxony , † September 16, 2013 in Dresden ) was a German architect .

Live and act

Wolfgang Hänsch's biological father was a musician. He grew up with his stepfather, a bank clerk. His mother was a trained clerk and ran a sales point after the Second World War. After an apprenticeship as a bricklayer, Hänsch studied from 1948 to 1951 at the engineering school for construction in Dresden , specializing in building construction and architecture. From 1951 to 1973 he worked as an architect in the Dresden office of VEB Bauplanung Sachsen. His first collaboration there concerned the VEM Sachsenwerk cultural center . The first own projects were in 1956 the building complex Blochmannstrasse 1-19 and from 1957 the residential and commercial buildings Borsbergstrasse 23–33 / 16–32 . While the buildings in Blochmannstrasse were still close to the center of Dresden and Hänsch had to pay attention to baroque forms, the challenges and opportunities of industrial construction in Borsbergstrasse were much more important to him. After that, Hänsch was no longer assigned any further residential construction projects, probably by chance.

After the construction of the after -work home Seevorstadt-Ost , his next project brought something unprecedented to Dresden. A few years after the opening of the first pedestrian zone Lijnbaan in Rotterdam , the collective around Hänsch received the order in the summer of 1958 to build a small passage in the Webergasse / Wallstrasse area. Self-service catering and household services brought more modernity to Dresden and were supposed to take the strain off everyday life. Clear cubes, stairs, pergolas and glass showcases were designed in the Scandinavian international style . The aim was the "cultural spending of free time in public space". A lack of sales goods and poor maintenance made the passage lose its charm over the years, after the fall of the Wall it was demolished and the Altmarkt-Galerie was built in its place . Hänsch's next major construction project was the Dresden House of the Press , a 13-storey high-rise in a steel frame construction with ribbon-width windows as part of a printing and publishing complex with designed green and open spaces.

In 1962, the architect Leopold Wiel asked the building planning office for planning capacity for the Kulturpalast he had designed , as he was too tied up in his teaching activities as a professor at the TU Dresden and passed his plans on to Wolfgang Hänsch, who was based on the Wielschen drafts developed a new draft of their own, which was put into practice from 1966 onwards. The project was handed over to the Hänsch / Löschau architects' collective. Seven years later, in 1969, the building was inaugurated.

Hänsch was entrusted with the reconstruction or renovation of four architectural monuments: the Semperoper (1967–1985), the old building Große Meißner Straße 15 in the new hotel Bellevue (1982), the auditorium of the theater (early 1990s) and the Pirna town hall ( 1993). On February 13, 1945, the stage area and auditorium in the Semperoper were completely burned out. In 1967, Hänsch successfully took part in the competition to rebuild the Semperoper - but it did not bring any real result. Trial restorations of two architectural axes in 1969/70 by the Institute for the Preservation of Monuments proved so convincing that the de facto decision was made to restore the visible parts of the opera based on Semper's example. At that time, Hänsch was already one of the architects involved and had been the head of the Semperoper design collective since 1967. In 1969, Hänsch and Herbert Löschau received the order to renovate and expand the opera. Although he was clearly more interested in modern than in baroque architecture, the task of accommodating contemporary functions in a historical shell appealed to him. Hänsch left the original form by Gottfried Semper untouched as far as possible and outsourced additional functions in three modern external structures. These are connected to the main house by bridges. On June 24, 1977 the foundation stone for the new buildings was laid. Hänsch was employed in the project planning department of the newly founded VEB Gesellschaftbau Dresden and was only responsible for the chairman of the Dresden District Council. On February 13, 1985, 40 years after the opera was destroyed, it was reopened.

From 1986 to 1991 he was chief architect for construction planning in Saxony. Since 1991 he has worked as a freelance architect. He was a member of the Saxon Academy of the Arts . On June 18, 2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Dresden .

Hänsch died on September 16, 2013 at the age of 84. His ashes were blown away on the high seas.

buildings

Pirna town hall

According to a catalog raisonné by Gisela Rapp in Wolfgang Kil's book Wolfgang Hänsch - Architect of Dresden Modernism , a total of 40 buildings were designed by Wolfgang Hänsch between 1951 and 2007. Between 1959 and 2006 he took part in twelve competitions.

Publications

  • 1978: Gottfried Semper and the third Semperoper.
  • 1986/1990: The Semperoper. History and reconstruction of the Dresden State Opera , Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin ISBN 3-345-00017-2 .
  • 1991: Dresden, Semperoper (~ architectural monuments , volume 80), Seemann, Leipzig Dresden 1991, ISBN 3-363-00519-9 .
  • 1995: The theater in Dresden. The design of the auditorium .
  • 2009: Architect of Dresden Modernism , edited by Wolfgang Kil , Form + Zweck, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-935053-22-8 .

Movie

Exhibitions

Awards

Portrait relief from 2018

literature

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang Hänsch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kulturpalast architect Wolfgang Hänsch died at dnn-online.de, accessed on September 17, 2013
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Kil : Wolfgang Hänsch - Architect of Dresden Modernism . In: Stiftung Sächsischer Architekten (Ed.): Wolfgang Hänsch (1929–2013) in Memoriam . 1st edition. Sandstein Verlag , Dresden 2016, ISBN 978-3-95498-212-7 , pp. 17-33 .
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Hänsch - Architect of Dresden Modernism - Edited by Wolfgang Kil, Verlag form + Zweck, Berlin 2009
  4. ^ Gerhard Glaser : The third Semperoper and Wolfgang Hänsch . In: Stiftung Sächsischer Architekten (Ed.): Wolfgang Hänsch (1929–2013) in Memoriam . 1st edition. Sandstein Verlag , Dresden 2016, ISBN 978-3-95498-212-7 , pp. 34-43 .
  5. ↑ Bettina Klemm: A man of quiet greatness . In: Saxon newspaper . September 18, 2013 ( online [accessed September 17, 2018]).
  6. ↑ Sandro Rahrisch: In honor of Wolfgang Hänsch . In: Saxon newspaper . September 17, 2018 ( online [accessed September 17, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Hänsch, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect
DATE OF BIRTH January 11, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsbrück , Germany
DATE OF DEATH 16th September 2013
Place of death Dresden , Germany