The city’s built landscape served a distinct defensive function at the close of the 19th century. Developments in military technology had brought about an increased target range of weapons, and Cologne’s medieval city wall with its buffer zone leading up to fortification structures was insufficient to protect Cologne from enemy fire. In 1881 the Prussian government moved the inner medieval fortress ring outward, and the approximately one-square-mile, crescent-shaped area created by the relocation of the wall, Neustadt, was then quickly constructed. No longer cramped behind the 600-year-old city wall, Cologne’s turn-of-the-century population of over 400,000 had room to continue its process of growth and urbanization. In 1907–14 the defensive structures underwent further alterations. The fortification numbered 182 units on the eve of World War I, and almost all these were subsequently torn down per the Treaty of Versailles, putting an end to Cologne’s military and architectural status as a”fortress city.” Konrad Adenauer, Cologne’s lord mayor from 1917 to 1933, successfully convinced the Allies to allow a handful of the fortresses to remain as historical documents.

As modern military technology changed the location and layout of the city, suburbs dominated by factories began to crop up around the outskirts of the city. The population continued to grow, helped along by a pattern of incorporating communities, extending the geographic contours of the city eastward across the river. The industrialization and commercialization of Cologne brought about construction projects that facilitated the transportation of goods and people throughout the city. The construction of the Deutzer Bridge (1911–13) united both sides of the Rhine, and the widening and merger of existing alleys into the Gürzenichstrasse created a modern access road to the bridge on the east side of the river.

The construction of major department stores such as Kaufhaus Tietz (designed by Wilhelm Kreis, 1912–14) supported the trend toward urbanization. The Kaufhaus Tietz building, situated between Hohe Strasse and Gürzenichstrasse, represented a new architectural form with its symmetrical, imposing form and three glass-covered courtyards. In 1933 the Tietz firm was one of the first victims of the National Socialists’ policy of “Aryanization.” The Jewish family Tietz lost their position as head of the company, and the firm was renamed Westdeutsche Kaufhof AG.Allied bombing damaged the interior and the foundation of the building. In 1953 the firm was renamed once again, acquiring the simpler title Kaufhof Aktiengesellschaft, which it retains today.

Such monumental architecture reflected Rhineland architects’ belief that they could affect the world with their constructions, and this conviction led to buildings that were assigned a pedagogical and therapeutic role by their designers. In 1914 Bruno Taut constructed one of the first Expressionist buildings with his polygonal Glaspalast (the glass palace) for the Werk-bund Exhibition in Cologne, which took place on what are now the trade-show grounds. Under the pavilion’s cupola, made up of diamond-shaped glass bricks, a band of six short rhymes by Paul Scheerbart celebrated the potential for architecture to improve society. Focusing primarily on glass and light, these included “Das bunte Glas /zers tört den Hass ” (Colored glass/destroys hate) and “Das Glas bringt uns die neue Zeit/Backsteinkultur tut uns nu r leid” (Glass brings the new era to us/Brick culture only pains us). The building, which has not survived, and the exhibition firmly established Cologne as a major figure on the international and national architecture stages. Under Konrad Adenauer the city saw a number of new designs in the interwar period, from Rhine Romantic to international modern, but all with a decidedly German reference. Although the war had suffocated an explicitly Expressionist architectural movement, the prewar Utopian vision of beauty, light, and glass continued to influence construction plans, particularly with reference to the emerging social interest in hygiene and sports and the growing population. Before the war Cologne’s population numbered almost 600,000 inhabitants. By the mid-1920s this number rose to over 700,000. With the elimination of the fortress structures, city planners were free to push Cologne’s borders out further again, onto land that had once been reserved for defense purposes. The need for increased work and recreation spaces, combined with Expressionist influences and interwar local patriotism, brought about an explosion of new constructions in all sectors.

Inspired by the parks in the city of Düsseldorf, Adenauer created the greenbelts or rings encircling Cologne (1921–24). These areas consisted of a seven-kilometer-long inner ring and a 30-kilometer-long outer green ring that followed the fortification lines and incorporated the remaining forts in their landscape. Designed in part by the Hamburg architect and city planner Fritz Schumacher, the belts were part of the designs for Cologne that envisioned a unity of living, working, relaxation, and transportation. This connection between mind and body, accompanied an increased enthusiasm for sports as well, was symbolized by the stadium and swimming facility constructed by Adolf Abel in 1926, city planner from 1925 to 1930. Two monumental, matching buildings flanked the sport center’s entrance, flat-roofed, with straight, imposing lines and massive brick pillars.

A further remnant of Fortress Cologne found a use for the construction of the Bastei restaurant (1923–24) by Wilhelm Riphahn, reconstructed by him in 1958 after it had been badly burned during World War II. Built on an abandoned structure of the fortress wall, the defensive tower houses three administrative and storage levels, and the kitchen is in a corner of the top floor, overlooking the street. The dining area projects over the river, a glass-paneled half circle like a Ferris wheel turned on its side and framed with steel struts, topped with a star-shaped flat roof and encircled by a terrace. The Expressionist reference to glass and jagged forms is unmistakable, but the Bastei also showed elements of an emerging functionalism, such as using glass to increase the view of the river. This peculiar interwar combination of Expressionism, functionalism, and local patriotism can also be seen in Riphahn and Caspar Maria Grod’s Kölnsiche Zeitung, a newspaper building shaped like a ship’s bow that alludes to the Rhine.

Ideas about light and green spaces extended to the new residential areas, and many of these constructions are exemplary of Cologne’s Neues Bauen (New Building) movement. Riphahn and Grod’s Blauer Hof estate (1926–28) in the Buchforst district, unusual for its block structure, provided residents with light, air, trees, and green courtyards. The architects designed the apartments of the neighboring estate, Weisse Stadt, at a slant to provide optimum lighting; its row-by-row layout of units became quite popular for housing. Their residential area Zoll-stock Siedling (1927–29) comprised apartments designed to reflect the shared economic and social status of the middle-class civil servants and private-sector residents. Each unit included a separate kitchenette instead of the combined kitchen and living area typical for the region, thereby demonstrating the residents’ higher social status. The Melanchthon church (1929–30) there, designed by Theodor Merrill, intentionally provided Zollstock with a social center. The church sustained damage during the war and has been restored with some alterations.

Commercial buildings reemerged in the interwar period as important constructions. Jacob Koerfer’s L-shaped Hansa-Hochhaus (1924–25), comprising a long, seven-story unit and a 17-story tower, presented a trend toward horizontal forms. Nevertheless, at more than 213 feet, it was briefly the tallest building in Europe. With its alternating rows of glass and limestone, the Dischhaus (1928–30), designed by Bruno Paul, represented a clearer modern emphasis on smooth, vertical, flowing lines. Destroyed in World War II, it has been rebuilt according to the original plans. The completion of the autobahn between Cologne and Bonn in 1932 offered infrastructural transportation support to these commercial projects.

The National Socialists’ seizure of power in 1933 brought about a cleansing of the Martinsviertel quarter, a project actually developed under Adenauer to combat the poverty and crime rampant in that part of the city. The Nazis chased “undesirables” out of the area and expropriated great numbers of buildings from Jews. Architects fused old and new buildings together, creating a changed topography that evoked an idealistic image of a German medieval inner city. Nazi planners envisioned the inner city as a visual reference to the party’s claims of a German heritage, whereas the surrounding modern city, with its monumental parade alleys, contributed to a sense of historical evolution.

World War II bombing almost entirely destroyed Cologne. The historic inner city lost 90 percent of its buildings, and urban areas saw irreparable damage to 70 percent of residences. The cathedral, although still standing, was badly damaged, as were many Romanesque churches. Only 40,000 people of the prewar 800,000 population continued to live in Cologne. The “Adolf Hitler Mountain,” as locals referred to the overwhelming pile of rubble left by the destruction in the center of the city, disappeared only slowly over the years until 1955. Planners ripped down many 19th-century buildings in the postwar years, electing to reconstruct a number of the 1930s buildings in the massive neoclassical style of Nazism.

The postwar years focused on reclaiming Cologne’s architectural past. In 1948 residents celebrated the 700th anniversary of the cathedral. In 1956 repairs to the building had been completed, allowing visitors once again full access to the city’s icon. Dominikus Böhm and his son Gottfried continued the elder’s interwar program of constructing new churches, using new materials such as concrete and circular styles that reflected changes in the function of the church as a center of community life. Dominikus Böhm had built the tower of his St. Engelbert Church (1930) standing apart from the main building, keeping the form of the main building as reflective of its purpose to unify the congregation. St. Maria Königin (1952–54), also designed by Dominikus Böhm, uses a south-facing picture window as the primary source of light, and its baptistery is entirely glass. Gottfried Böhm constructed the tower in 1960. The combination of round forms and straight lines in brick and concrete used in Dominikus Böhm’s Christi Auferstehung Church (1968) provides an example of the plasticity typical of the Brutalism movement, evident as well in the architect Oswald Matthias Ungers’s own private home and office (1958–59). The library annex in 1989 used almost exclusively cubes and squares and acquired an explicit humanistic, pedagogical function.

The architectural competition for the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in 1978 demonstrated the importance that discussions surrounding architectural projects have had in Cologne. Although neither James Stirling’s Postmodern design for the museum nor Ungers’s plan, which called for the museum building itself to open up new spaces in the city, was realized, both contributed to a new era of architecture in Cologne and Germany. The winning plan, by Peter Busman and Godfrid Haberer (1980–86), a reinforced-concrete structure with overhanging red brick walls, housed the Wallraf-Richartz, the Ludwig Museum, and the Philharmonic. Ungers later won a competition for the new Wallraf- Richartz Museum, which once again reflected his preference for cube forms. The museum opened for exhibits in January 2001 to critical acclaim for the architectural design as well as the display of the museum’s holdings, successfully helping Cologne in its struggle to edge out Berlin as Germany’s leading cultural city.

The end of the 20th century demonstrated the “cathedral city’s” commitment to preserving its cultural heritage while looking forward architecturally. The ruins left by the war of the Church of St. Kolumba will be incorporated into a new building for the relocated diocesan museum of Cologne, a competition won by Peter Zumthor in 1997. The following year marked the 750th anniversary of the cathedral and a new series of reconstructions for that building. As restorers voice concern over the damage effected by pollution to the flying buttresses, the cathedral remains a looming reminder of the evolving role of the city’s artistic and commercial past in the construction of its built landscape.

BENITA CAROL BLESSING

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.1 (A-F).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2004.

UNGERS, OSWALD MATHIAS;

ZUMTHOR, PETER;

1958-1959, Haus Belvederestr. 60   (Ungers House I), Cologne, Germany

1975-2000, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany

1994-1996, Haus Kampchensweg (Ungers House III), Cologne, Germany

1997-2007, Art Museum Kolumba, Cologne, Germany

BERLIN; DÜSSELDORF; FRANKFURT; GERMANY; STUTTGART;

FUTHER READING

Architekten- und Ingenieurverein Köln e.V., editor, Köln—seine Bauten 1928–1988, Cologne: J. P. Bachem, 1991

Hall, Heribert, Köln, seine Bauten 2000, Cologne: J. P. Bachem, 1999

Heinen, Werner, and Anne M. Pfeffer, Köln. Siedlungen 1888–1938, Cologne: J. P. Bachem, 1988

Kier, Hiltrud, Kirchen in Köln, Cologne: J. P. Bachem, 1999

Kierdorf, Alexander, Köln. Ein Architekturführer/An Architectural Guide, Berlin: Reimer, 1999

Kierdorf, Alexander, Dieter Klein-Meynen, and Henriette Meynen, Kölner Wirtschaftsarchitektur, Cologne: Wienand, 1996

Koshar, Rudy, Germany’s Transient Pasts: Preservation and National Memory in Twentieth Century, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998

Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Köln, Cologne: DuMont, 2001