Hans Poelzig was an important exponent of German Expressionism. Together with Walter Gropius, Adolf Meyer, and Peter Behrens, he was one of the most important German architects before 1914.

From 1889 to 1894, Poelzig studied architecture with the renowned Gothic Revivalist Karl Schäfer at the Technical University (Technische Hochschule) in BerlinCharlottenburg. From 1899 to 1916, he taught at the Academy of Fine and Applied Arts (Akademie für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe) in Breslau (now Wroclaw), first as professor of style (Fach Stilkunde) and after 1903 as director of the academy. From 1916 to 1920 he also served as city architect (Stadtbaurat) in Dresden and visiting lecturer at the Dresden Technical University. In 1920, he moved to Berlin, where he had a master workshop at the Prussian Academy of Arts. In 1923 he was appointed professor at the Berlin Technical University. In 1933 he succeeded Bruno Paul as director of the U.S. School for Free and Applied Arts in Berlin, only to be stripped of all his academic offices shortly thereafter by the National Socialists. In 1936 he accepted a professorship in Ankara, Turkey; however, he died before being able to begin work in this émigré position. Poelzig was a member of the “Novembergruppe” and the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council for Art, the presiding officer of the German Werkbund (1919–21), and a member of the governing council of the League of German Architects (Bund Deutscher Architekten, 1926–33).

Poelzig was passionate about the arts generally, and he also created large-format paintings. His contemporaries considered him to be an unpredictable, temperamental creative force. In addition to being an innovative architect, Poelzig was an influential teacher whose concepts and ideas reached a large audience. Especially during his tenure in Breslau, he promoted a program of cooperative effort between handicrafts and art, and thus—years before the Bauhaus program was formulated—he represented a similar, pathbreaking position.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Poelzig was less rooted in Jugendstil and more inspired by new concepts of living and house design, such as those formulated by Alfred Lichtwark and Hermann Muthesius. He was also significantly influenced by rationalist ideas about style based on an honest use of building materials. Fundamental traits such as these are apparent even in early works, such as his own house near Breslau/Wroclaw (1906), the Zwirners house in Löwenberg/Lwówek Slaski (1909–10), and the house for the Breslau Art and Crafts Exhibition (1904). Ever more pronounced, Poelzig had a strong interest in deriving plastic architectonic forms from the chosen building materials, a practice that he had given theoretical form in his 1899 study Materialstillehre (Lessons in Materialist Style). Alongside his designs for country houses, his industrial designs bear this trademark. The first such work of importance was the water tower (Oberschlesienturm) in Posen/Poznan (1911, partially destroyed) with its crystalline features, which was built as an exhibition pavilion in conjunction with a mining exhibit. The exterior featured an exposed iron skeleton open to the elements into which he placed brick niches that were clearly meant only to fill in the gaps in the exposed frame.

Poelzig also used building materials symbolically. Rather than rely on ornament borrowed from historicist or Jugendstil models, he allowed the special character of the building materials to determine the decorative shape of a building’s interior and exterior. In this way, he composed visual confrontations based on the innate qualities of the materials. In his design for the Werdermühle in Breslau (1906–08), facade portions in glass contrast with massive brick walls. Similarly, in an office building (1912) on Breslau’s Junkernstrasse, he juxtaposed steel-framed concrete construction reminiscent of half timbering with horizontal bands of windows running unbroken around the rounded corners of the building. In this way, even before World War I, he created a design motif that was frequently used by the rationalistic architecture of the 1920s and 1930s and that for him was suggested by the plastic potential of glass, steel, and brick.

Poelzig successfully combined diverse elements into harmonious architectural designs. In many projects, he wanted to decrease the monotony of large industrial complexes and administrative buildings. Into such designs, he incorporated a variety of architectural forms to artistically balance large-scale architectural masses and expressive construction. A good example of his use of these principles is found in the avant-garde, pseudoobjectivist buildings for a chemical factory (1911–12) in Luban. There, Cubist forms blended into each other. Round-arched windows set flush with the masonry contrast sharply with rectangular windows. To show off the design’s engineering, rectangular windows were specifically chosen for the parts where load-bearing steel beams visible in the facade made such windows possible. Occasionally, he punctuated such rationalist, material-derived effects with purely decorative elements; for example, Gothicinspired stepped gables.

Poelzig’s work after World War I was rooted in the Expressionist movement, particularly his practice of overplastering plastic architectonic elements to heighten their effect. He began a series of crystalline structures, including his design for the House of Friendship (1916) in Istanbul, the plans for a Town Hall (1917) in Dresden, and the Festival Hall (1920) in Salzburg. These projects show how he moved toward an ever more individualistic treatment of design elements and materials. He combined new architectural concepts with an extremely personal interpretation of formal traditions.

These developments culminated and were most demonstratively realized in his bestknown building, the Grosses Schauspielhaus (1918–19), a transformation of the Schumann Circus in Berlin undertaken for Max Reinhardt as an experimental theater. In the theater’s vaulted auditorium, he created a famous cavelike effect by covering the domed ceiling with a sheath of stalactite forms. The room’s organic appearance was in part the result of his use of a post-and-lintel system. Poelzig’s use of light as an aesthetic element in giving form to the space was innovative, creating a total spatial effect based on an elaborate conception of color—his “light architecture,” or Lichtarchitektur. The theater’s exterior was flat, with little surface decoration, although decidedly monumental in appearance. Together with the simply delineated and sparsely decorated structure of the I.G.Farben administrative building (1930) in Frankfurt am Main, the exterior of the Grosses Schauspielhaus pointed the way to the International Style of the 1930s.

The Radio House in Berlin (Haus des Rundfunks, 1929–30) likewise stands in this path of development. It was the first German broadcasting building to be built. Based on a triangular floor plan, Poelzig articulated a brick-masonry facade with colored ceramic plates, creating a fenestration of high plasticity that, in pillar fashion, emphasizes the perpendiculars of the three wings of the building, each of which reaches over 150 meters.

Simple yet striking articulation of the volumes typifies Poelzig’s subsequent sketches, designs, and buildings. These include the Capitol Cinema (1925) in Berlin, the Mosaic Fountain (1926) in Dresden, the competition designs for the expansion of the Reichstag (1929) in Berlin, the new plan for the Luxemburg Platz (1929), proposed designs for numerous gas stations (1927), and Poelzig’s participation in the competition for the new Reichs Bank building (1932). Poelzig’s late work shows increasing neoclassical tendencies; for example, in his contest entries for a theater (1935) in Dessau. In addition to his activity as an architect, Poelzig designed scenery for the theater and films, notably for The Golem (1920) and other films by P.Wegener.

STEPHAN BRAKENSIEK

30 April 1869 Born in Berlin, Germany;

1889–94 Studied under Karl Schäfer at the Technische Hochschule, Berlin ;

1899–1903 Professor of style, Akademie für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, Breslau;

1903–16 director , Akademie für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, Breslau;

1916–20 City architect, Dresden ;

1916–20 visiting lecturer, Technische Hochschule, Dresden ;

1919–21 Member, Novembergruppe; member, Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council for Art; president, German Werkbund ;

from 1920 master workshop, Prussian Academy of Arts, Berlin ;

from 1923 professor, Technische Hochschule, Berlin ;

1926–33 member of governing council, Bund Deutscher Architekten ;

from 1933 director, U.S. School for Free and Applied Arts, Berlin ;

1934 stripped of academic offices by National Socialists ;

accepted position as professor in Ankara, Turkey, but died before starting;

14 June 1936 Died in Berlin, Germany.

Biraghi, Marco, Hans Poelzig: architettura ars magna, 1869–1936, Venice: Arsenale, 1991

Feireiss, Kristin (editor), Hans Poelzig: ein grosses Theater und ein kleines Haus, Berlin: Galerie für Architektur und Raum, 1986

Hans Poelzig: Haus des Rundfunks, Berlin: Ars Nicolai, 1994

Heuss, Theodor, Hans Poelzig: Bauten und Entwürfe: das Lebensbild eines deutschen Baumeisters, Berlin: Wasmuth, 1939

Killy, Herta Elisabeth, Poelzig, Endell, Moll und die Breslauer Kunstakademie, 1911– 1932 (exhib. cat.), Berlin: Akademie der Künste und Wissenschaften Berlin, 1965

Marquart, Christian, Hans Poelzig: Architekt, Maler, und Zeichner, Tübingen, Germany: Wasmuth, 1995

Mayer, Birgit, “Studien zu Hans Poelzig: Bauten und Projekte der 20er Jahre” (Ph.D. dissertation), Munich University, 1986

Meissner, Werner, Dieter Rebentisch, and Wilfried Wang (editors), Der Poelzig-Bau: vom I.G. Farben-Haus zur Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt: Fischer, 1999

Posener, Julius (editor), Hans Poelzig: gesammelte Schriften und Werke, Berlin: Mann, 1970

Posener, Julius, Hans Poelzig: Reflections on His Life and Work, edited by Kristin Feireiss, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, and New York: Architectural History Foundation, 1992

Reichmann, Hans-Peter (editor), Hans Poelzig: Bauten für den Film, Frankfurt: Deutsches Filmmuseum, 1997

Schirren, Matthias (editor), Hans Poelzig: die Pläne und Zeichnungen aus dem ehemaligen Verkehrs- und Baumuseum in Berlin (exhib. cat.), Berlin: Ernst, 1989

Selected Publications

“Werkbundaufgaben. Rede auf der Stuttgarter Werkbundtagung 7.9.1919” in Mitteilungen des Deutschen Werkbundes, 1919

“Bau des Grossen Schauspielhauses” in Das Grosse Schauspielhaus. Die Bücher des Deutschen Theaters, 1920

“Festspielhaus in Salzburg” in Das Kunstblatt, 1921

“Vom Bauen unserer Zeit” in Die Form, 1922

“Architekturfragen” in Das Kunstblatt, 1922

“Festbauten” in Das Kunstblatt, 1926