PROLIFIC POELZIG
PROLIFIC POELZIG Marvel at the energy and output of Hans Poelzig, Prussian architect extraordinaire, in a major retrospective at the Deutsches
Layla Dawson / The Architectural Review
May 01, 2008
PROLIFIC POELZIG
Marvel at the energy and output of Hans Poelzig, Prussian architect extraordinaire, in a major retrospective at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum.
In one of the most definitive exhibitions to date, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum has assembled the many strands of Hans Poelzig`s career, from architecture, painting and sculpture, to the design of household items, theatre and film sets. Curators Wolfgang Pehnt and Matthias Schirren first presented some of this material at Berlin`s Arts Academy in September 2007. In Frankfurt they have also been able to go much further, showing the 1920s silent films, Der Golem wie er in die Welt kam and %ur Chronik van Grieshuus - for which Poelzig created fantastical buildings and landscapes - and offering a tour, led by architect Christoph Mackler, through the I.G. Farben Administrative headquarters. After 1945 the American occupation forces appropriated this building and, in the late `80s, Frankfurt renovated it as an extension of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University.
Lectures on Poelzig`s influence have been held at the Museum and the University, with a performance of readings from correspondence between Poelzig and his second wife, the sculptor Marlene Moeschke, who not only collaborated with her husband on porcelain designs, theatre and film sets, but also on architectural projects. She took part in the design of 14 projects and was often left to oversee building construction.
The exhibition starts with a long row of photographic and painted portraits. In each one Poelzig`s hair sits like a toup褖 cap above his characteristic owl-like glasses and earnest expression. He was born in Berlin to the Countess Clara Henriette Maria Poelzig while she was married to an Englishman, George Acland Ames, but Ames refused to acknowledge the boy as his son. Consequently, Hans was farmed out to a choirmaster and his wife.
Despite this unfortunate start, Poelzig was able to embark on a successsful academic career, a position in the office of architect Hugo Hartung, and later employment as a Prussian government building overseer in the Berlin ministry. In 1898 he came second in the Schinkel competition and, with the prize money, was able to travel to Vienna, sketchbook in hand. In the following year he completed his architectural studies and also married his first wife, Maria Voss, with whom he had four children. His rising career, as Director of the Royal Prussian Academy of Art and Applied Arts, as member of the newly grounded Deutscher Werkbund and later as Town Planning Counsellor and teacher at the Technical University in Dresden, did not flag. Returning to Berlin he was honoured with a Master Studio for Architecture at the Prussian Academy of Art and became a member of the Academy in 1922. Until 1933, his career as Professor, practising architect, intellectual and artist based in Berlin, took him all over Germany, and to Stuttgart where he received an honorary title. He was active in the German Architect`s Union (BDA) and instigated forward looking programmes for the development of the profession. In 1924 he married Marlene Moeschke. Their partnership was both a private and a business one, in which they also found the time to bring up three children.
`Industrial buildings`, said Poelzig, were `the true monumental task of contemporary architecture`. This was during the era of Germany`s development as a major industrialised nation. What would Poelzig see as today`s task? He took part in many competitions, and often won the commissions, for water towers, town halls, churches, and factory mills, which many contemporary investors would now love to market as `lofts with history`. His reach extended not only to Berlin but also to Breslau and Posen, then part of the German Empire, and now in Poland. Sepia photographs of the time give the impression of suitably sinister neo-Gothic settings for the mythical mud Golem; steeply sloping roofs, low eaves, with bulky stone towers and thick columns flank entrances to massive public buildings and dark, satanic, production centres.
Poelzig`s buildings range from heavy Gothic (ideal for his film sets), to the lighter and more whimsical Art Deco Expressionism of his Berlin theatre, the Grosses Schauspielhaus (1919). Original, large format charcoal drawings show the fairytale quality of the auditorium and lobbies, the fluted and rilled columns, like layered lily petals, tapering to the floor, the cascading ceiling and seating like pleated curtains hanging in space. The Festspielhaus in Hellbrunn (1920) carries this sensuous architectural fantasy to even greater heights. The porcelain ware designed by Hans and Marlene also caught the mood, with swirling, curling bone china creations blooming like lava eruptions. In marked contrast are earlier designs for a Bismarck memorial (1909) with a Classical facade of symmetry and rigidity, at a time when the German Empire was experiencing a rash of collective nationalist celebration in architectural monuments. Two hundred towers were erected for Bismarck alone.
Later, a cleaned-up form of Classicism emerged. Charlottenburg Trade Fair grounds in Berlin (1927) display Classical symmetry and scale but with clear lines, industrial windows in ribbons of graph paper framing, and exposed steel structures. Japanese influences are palpable in the Berlin Broadcasting Corporation`s Haus des Rundfunks (1928) with its lamps like paper lanterns translated into milky glass and ironwork. Poelzig`s sense of architectural drama was given full rein in his theatre and film sets, through the construction of imaginary cities and rooms.
Poelzig is almost impossible to categorise or neatly pigeonhole into either the conservative or radical wings of the Modern Movement. For the National Socialists he was certainly too progressively modern. In later life he began establishing work contacts in Turkey, winning a competition for a conservatorium and theatre in Istanbul, and entering another competition in Ankara to design a lodge for visiting diplomats. In the light of Germany`s political developments, Poelzig was planning a permanent move to Turkey, where he was also in the running for a position as art director in an Istanbul academy. But it was not to be. He died in 1936, after his third stroke, and is buried in the Wannsee village graveyard, which is now part of greater Berlin.
This milestone exhibition, of original drawings, photographs of the time, paintings and models, is the most comprehensive display of Poelzig`s extraordinary range of talents and prolific output, to date. Truly it should not to be missed.
LAYLA DAWSON
Hans Poelzig - Architect, Teacher, Artist, DAM, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, until 18 May www.dam-online.de
ILLUSTRATIONS
The remarkable Grosses Schauspielhaus, Berlin, 1919.
Still from the The Golem - Poelrig designed the sets.
COPYRIGHT: Copyright EMAP Architecture May 2008. Provided by Proquest- CSA, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Only fair use as provided by the United States copyright law is permitted.
PROQUEST-CSA, LLC- MAKES NO WARRANTY REGARDING THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR TIMELINESS OF THE LICENSED MATERIALS OR ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED.
Marvel at the energy and output of Hans Poelzig, Prussian architect extraordinaire, in a major retrospective at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum.
In one of the most definitive exhibitions to date, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum has assembled the many strands of Hans Poelzig`s career, from architecture, painting and sculpture, to the design of household items, theatre and film sets. Curators Wolfgang Pehnt and Matthias Schirren first presented some of this material at Berlin`s Arts Academy in September 2007. In Frankfurt they have also been able to go much further, showing the 1920s silent films, Der Golem wie er in die Welt kam and %ur Chronik van Grieshuus - for which Poelzig created fantastical buildings and landscapes - and offering a tour, led by architect Christoph Mackler, through the I.G. Farben Administrative headquarters. After 1945 the American occupation forces appropriated this building and, in the late `80s, Frankfurt renovated it as an extension of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University.
Lectures on Poelzig`s influence have been held at the Museum and the University, with a performance of readings from correspondence between Poelzig and his second wife, the sculptor Marlene Moeschke, who not only collaborated with her husband on porcelain designs, theatre and film sets, but also on architectural projects. She took part in the design of 14 projects and was often left to oversee building construction.
The exhibition starts with a long row of photographic and painted portraits. In each one Poelzig`s hair sits like a toup褖 cap above his characteristic owl-like glasses and earnest expression. He was born in Berlin to the Countess Clara Henriette Maria Poelzig while she was married to an Englishman, George Acland Ames, but Ames refused to acknowledge the boy as his son. Consequently, Hans was farmed out to a choirmaster and his wife.
Despite this unfortunate start, Poelzig was able to embark on a successsful academic career, a position in the office of architect Hugo Hartung, and later employment as a Prussian government building overseer in the Berlin ministry. In 1898 he came second in the Schinkel competition and, with the prize money, was able to travel to Vienna, sketchbook in hand. In the following year he completed his architectural studies and also married his first wife, Maria Voss, with whom he had four children. His rising career, as Director of the Royal Prussian Academy of Art and Applied Arts, as member of the newly grounded Deutscher Werkbund and later as Town Planning Counsellor and teacher at the Technical University in Dresden, did not flag. Returning to Berlin he was honoured with a Master Studio for Architecture at the Prussian Academy of Art and became a member of the Academy in 1922. Until 1933, his career as Professor, practising architect, intellectual and artist based in Berlin, took him all over Germany, and to Stuttgart where he received an honorary title. He was active in the German Architect`s Union (BDA) and instigated forward looking programmes for the development of the profession. In 1924 he married Marlene Moeschke. Their partnership was both a private and a business one, in which they also found the time to bring up three children.
`Industrial buildings`, said Poelzig, were `the true monumental task of contemporary architecture`. This was during the era of Germany`s development as a major industrialised nation. What would Poelzig see as today`s task? He took part in many competitions, and often won the commissions, for water towers, town halls, churches, and factory mills, which many contemporary investors would now love to market as `lofts with history`. His reach extended not only to Berlin but also to Breslau and Posen, then part of the German Empire, and now in Poland. Sepia photographs of the time give the impression of suitably sinister neo-Gothic settings for the mythical mud Golem; steeply sloping roofs, low eaves, with bulky stone towers and thick columns flank entrances to massive public buildings and dark, satanic, production centres.
Poelzig`s buildings range from heavy Gothic (ideal for his film sets), to the lighter and more whimsical Art Deco Expressionism of his Berlin theatre, the Grosses Schauspielhaus (1919). Original, large format charcoal drawings show the fairytale quality of the auditorium and lobbies, the fluted and rilled columns, like layered lily petals, tapering to the floor, the cascading ceiling and seating like pleated curtains hanging in space. The Festspielhaus in Hellbrunn (1920) carries this sensuous architectural fantasy to even greater heights. The porcelain ware designed by Hans and Marlene also caught the mood, with swirling, curling bone china creations blooming like lava eruptions. In marked contrast are earlier designs for a Bismarck memorial (1909) with a Classical facade of symmetry and rigidity, at a time when the German Empire was experiencing a rash of collective nationalist celebration in architectural monuments. Two hundred towers were erected for Bismarck alone.
Later, a cleaned-up form of Classicism emerged. Charlottenburg Trade Fair grounds in Berlin (1927) display Classical symmetry and scale but with clear lines, industrial windows in ribbons of graph paper framing, and exposed steel structures. Japanese influences are palpable in the Berlin Broadcasting Corporation`s Haus des Rundfunks (1928) with its lamps like paper lanterns translated into milky glass and ironwork. Poelzig`s sense of architectural drama was given full rein in his theatre and film sets, through the construction of imaginary cities and rooms.
Poelzig is almost impossible to categorise or neatly pigeonhole into either the conservative or radical wings of the Modern Movement. For the National Socialists he was certainly too progressively modern. In later life he began establishing work contacts in Turkey, winning a competition for a conservatorium and theatre in Istanbul, and entering another competition in Ankara to design a lodge for visiting diplomats. In the light of Germany`s political developments, Poelzig was planning a permanent move to Turkey, where he was also in the running for a position as art director in an Istanbul academy. But it was not to be. He died in 1936, after his third stroke, and is buried in the Wannsee village graveyard, which is now part of greater Berlin.
This milestone exhibition, of original drawings, photographs of the time, paintings and models, is the most comprehensive display of Poelzig`s extraordinary range of talents and prolific output, to date. Truly it should not to be missed.
LAYLA DAWSON
Hans Poelzig - Architect, Teacher, Artist, DAM, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, until 18 May www.dam-online.de
ILLUSTRATIONS
The remarkable Grosses Schauspielhaus, Berlin, 1919.
Still from the The Golem - Poelrig designed the sets.
COPYRIGHT: Copyright EMAP Architecture May 2008. Provided by Proquest- CSA, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Only fair use as provided by the United States copyright law is permitted.
PROQUEST-CSA, LLC- MAKES NO WARRANTY REGARDING THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR TIMELINESS OF THE LICENSED MATERIALS OR ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED.
