Scharoun

Bernhard Hans Henry Scharoun. Vita.

Hans Scharoun was born on September 20, 1893 in Bremen in a brewery owner’s family. His father’s ancestors originated from Bohemia. His first architectural drafts date back to 1909, and it was as early as 1912, the year he entered the Charlottenburg Technical High School, that he started participating in competitions. In military service since 1915, he was in repairing East Prussian towns. After the Great War he left the military, opened an office in Insterburg (East Prussia, now Tschernjachowsk), and gained membership of the BDA (German Architects’ Union) — without ever having had a proper diploma.
His aims were with the Neues Bauen (New Way of Building), 1919 he signed Bruno Taut’s Call for Colour in Construction, thus founding a circle the famous Glass Chain arose from.

(Bruno und Max Taut, Hermann Finsterlin, Walter Gropius, Hans und Wassili Luckhardt, Hans Scharoun and others)

This Neues Bauen, with its theoretical basis by Hugo Haering, understood architecture as a matter of processes and needs, thus seeing itself as an alternative both to the decorative styles of the kaiser aera and to Le Corbusier’s rectangles. Scharoun’s housing blocks in Insterburg as well as his visions of Peoples Houses and City Crowns illustrate this group’s spirit.
Early 1920^s, he delivered some outstanding organic-shaped skyscraper designs: 1921, for the famous Berlin Friedrichstraße competition; 1922, for the Börsenhof in Königsberg; 1925 for a bridge head in Cologne. Both the Berlin and the Cologne designs recieved runners-up prizes.
From 1925 on, he was a professor at the Breslau Arts Academy, a post he retained until the Academy’s closure 1932. A Ring member since 1926,

(Otto Bartning, Walter Curt Behrendt, Peter Behrens, Walter Gropius, Hugo Haering, Ludwig Hilbesheimer, Hans und Wassili Luckhardt, Ernst May, Erich Mendelsohn, Adolf Meyer, Hans Poelzig, Adolf Rading, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Hans Scharoun, Bruno und Max Taut, Heinrich Tessenow, Martin Wagner and others)

he took part in group exhibitions, like the one in Stuttgart-Weißenhof 1927 (officially a Werkbund show), where Scharoun delivered a single-family house.
Late 1920^s his interests shifted to developing new accomodation types for a modern urban man, like apartments houses in Berlin, singles’ flats building at the Breslau Wohnen und Werkraum (Living and Workplace) exhibition, or settlement plan and house designs for Großsiedlung Siemensstadt in Berlin. Here, he and his fellow Ring members

(Otto Bartning, Alfred Forbat, Walter Gropius, Hugo Haering, Paul Rudolf Henning)

have built some 1400 flats next to kaiser aera workers’ settlements. Later, in 1960^s, Scharoun has finished the development with his North Charlottenburg settlement. Both share the angled houses’ slabs, garden yards and neighbourship communities themes.
He designed villas too, like the Schminke house in Löbau (1933), Mattern house in Potsdam (1934), Baensch house (1935), or Mohrmann house (1939). It were such small private engagements, with innovative interiours hidden by traditionally shaped walls and roofs, that saved him through the nazi years.
Scharoun started re-building Berlin as early as on Mai 17, 1945, when he was appointed Head of the Magistrate’s City Planning Department. By 1946, the Department Planning Group

(Wils Ebert, Peter Friedrich, Ludmilla Herzenstein, Reinhold Lingner, Luise Seitz, Selman Selmanagic, Hans Scharoun, Herbert Weinberger)

has put together the Collective Planwork, a vision of articulated and dispersed city of Berlin. Unrealistic the plan was, some ideas have since found way to thematic plans (like high-speed tangential roads), thus causing confusion on who would be responsible for them.
Dismissed from his office by 1947, he went into education and research. After accepting a professoral title at the Charlottenburg Technical University (West-Berlin), he has shortly been head of the Construction Institute at the Academy of Sciences, seated on the eastern side. The Institute was shut when the GDR switched to socialistic realism in building matters.
Early 1950^s, the list of Scharoun’s winning competition entries has grown out of proportion (Stuttgart Liederhalle concert hall 1949, 1^st prize; Berlin American Memorial Library 1951, 2^nd prize; Kassel State Theatre 1952, 1^st prize; Helgoland reconstruction 1952, runners-up prize; Mannheim National Theatre 1953), yet his architecture was still considered unbuildable. This is even more astonishing, as he has been erecting his Stuttgart apartment blocks Julia (from 1954) and Romeo (from 1956) at the very same time. Instead of building, he is in awards recieving mostly: two doctor titles 1954 by Stuttgart Technical High School and Berlin Technical University respectively, presidency of West-Berlin Fine Arts Academy 1955, Berlin Arts Prize the same year.
It was in the second half of the 1950^s that Scharoun has had his final breakthrough. 1955 the construction of the girls’ gymnasium in Lünen started, a built result of 1951 Darmstadt Consultations. His new Berlin Philharmonic Hall design gained the first prize 1956. He was second in 1958 Berlin Capital City competition; 1959 the work started at yet another apartment house in Stuttgart, Salute, finished 1963, Paul Bonatz prize winner 1967; his Saarbrücken concert hall proposal was worth the 3^rd prize.
The 1960^s started quite the way the previous decade finished: the Philharmony opening was celebrated 1963 (it was to be finally completed by 1981 only, seven years before the Chamber Music Hall was inaugurated); followed by the Great BDA Award 1964; same year the New State Library competition was won. Most of this last named buildings were still in construction by his death; it was for Scharoun’s university assistant and office partner Edgar Wisniewski to finish the Library 1978, the Chamber Music Hall (1968-81) and the Musical Instruments Museum (1969-84). The Guest House, a part of the Library planning, remains unbuilt.
Scharoun has built the new German Embassy complex in Brasilia (1964-1971) and a theatre in Wolfsburg, a prize-winning competition entry of 1965 (finished 1973).
Same year he was to get another doctor degree (Rome University) and the Auguste Perret Prize of the UIA. Finally, the city of Berlin decorated him with a Honorary Citizenship.

Scharoun died November 25, 1972 in Berlin. He lays at the Zehlendorf Waldfriedhof cemetery.
At the Philharmonic Hall, the Margarethenstraße has been renamed in his honour 1993.

Choose a project out of a mosaic when you return to the preface. The collection spreads over more then one mosaic!