Alfred Messel
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Alfred Messel | |
|---|---|
 Messel, c. 1900 | |
| Born | 22 July 1853 Bruck an der Mur, Austria |
| Died | 24 March 1909 (aged 55) |
| Occupation | Architect |
Alfred Messel (22 July 1853 – 24 March 1909) was a German architect at the turning point to the 20th century, creating a new style for buildings which bridged the transition from historicism to modernism. Messel was able to combine the structure, decoration, and function of his buildings, which ranged from department stores, museums, office buildings, mansions, and social housing to soup kitchens, into a coherent, harmonious whole. As an urban architect striving for excellence he was in many respects ahead of his time. His best known works, the Wertheim department stores and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, reflect a new concept of self-confident metropolitan architecture.[1] His architectural drawings and construction plans are preserved at the Architecture Museum of Technische Universität Berlin.
Messel was the third son of the German Jewish banker Simon Messel (1817–1859) and his wife Emilie (née Lindheim, 1825–1889). The family owned in Darmstadt the bank ″Aron Messel & Co.″ (established 1816). Alfred's elder brother Ludwig emigrated to the United Kingdom and founded in 1873 in London the stockbroker ″L. Messel & Co.″ (sold to Lehman Brothers in 1986).[2] In his youth, Alfred began a lifelong friendship with Ludwig Hoffmann, who later became a Berlin city planning official. In 1872, Messel graduated from the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium in Darmstadt with an Abitur, after which he served in the military as a one-year volunteer in the First Grand Ducal Hessian Royal Guard Infantry Regiment.
In 1873, he attended the Kassel art academy together with his friend Ludwig Hoffmann, followed by architectural studies at the Berlin Bauakademie (which would later become the Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg) under Heinrich Strack and Richard Lucae.[3] As a civil service trainee, he then contributed to a new post office administration building on Spandauer Straße in Berlin designed by the architect Carl Schwatlo, before successfully passing his second state examination qualifying him as an assessor. In 1879, Messel became a member of the Berlin Architects Society and, in 1881, he won the prestigious Schinkel Prize for his plans for an exhibition building on the Tempelhofer Feld, a military parade ground in southern Berlin.
Over the next two years, he traveled extensively through France, Spain, Italy and Great Britain and was a lecturer at the newly founded Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin). In 1886, he took a leave of absence from the civil service to work as a private architect. On 1 February 1893, he married Elsa Altmann and in November of that year their first child, Ena, was born. In February 1894, he was appointed professor at the Berlin School of Fine Arts and in the same year founded an architectural firm together with Martin Altgelt. His first buildings were on the Werderschen Markt in Berlin and, from 1893, he worked with the Wertheim department store dynasty, erecting in 1894 in Berlin's Oranienstraße the first department store in Germany to follow the French model. In 1896, his son Ludwig Leonhard was born (died during World War I).
In 1899, Messel converted from Judaism to Protestantism. On 17 May, that year he received the Order of the Red Eagle, 4th Class, which caused him to quip that from that date he could really feel “fourth class”. Also that year, his youngest daughter Irene was born (died 1992 in London). In 1900, he terminated his collaboration with Martin Altgelt. Beginning in 1902, he suffered from heart disease, which caused him to spend long periods at a health resort in the following years. He was busy with the second extension of the Wertheim store on Leipziger Platz in the period 1903 to 1906.
In 1906, Messel became a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin and in 1906 was awarded an honorary doctorate (Dr.-Ing.E.h.) from the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt (now Technische Universität Darmstadt). In 1907, he was officially appointed architect of the Royal Prussian Museums and worked until his death primarily on plans for a new building to house the German, Pergamon and Near East collections in Berlin.
Messel died on 24 March 1909 and was buried in the Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof in Berlin-Schöneberg. Since he was of Jewish descent, city streets named after him were renamed during the Nazi era.
