Franz Hillinger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Franz Hillinger (March 30, 1895, in Nagyvárad, Hungary – August 18, 1973, in New York) was an architect of the Neues Bauen (New Objectivity) movement in Berlin and in Turkey.
Hillinger was born to Jewish parents in the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, in what was known at that time as the Kingdom of Hungary. He intended to study architecture at the University of Budapest following the completion of his military service during World War I. Due to violent, anti-Semitic demonstrations and subsequent calls for bans on Jewish enrollment and the enactment of restrictive legislation curtailing the Jewish student population, Hillinger instead went to Germany and studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin-Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin) from 1919 to 1922. He met his Protestant wife, Grete, in Berlin. Until 1924, he mainly designed detached, single-family homes for private owners. His first project was a house for Grete's parents on a rural estate on the outskirts of Berlin.
Neues Bauen
In 1924, Hillinger became head of the design office at the Gemeinnützige Heimstätten-, Spar- und Bau-Aktengesellschaft (GEHAG), a position he held for nearly ten years; there he collaborated on several projects with Bruno Taut and Martin Wagner, who designed buildings for GEHAG as independent architects.[1] Hillinger's most significant achievement from this period is the Carl Legien Estate, a Berlin modernist housing estate in the Prenzlauer Berg subdivision, which he developed for GEHAG between 1928 and 1930 in collaboration with Bruno Taut.[2]
In 1925, Hillinger envisioned a model community in the Neues Bauen style consisting of 1,145 apartments of 1½ to 3½ rooms each, all with central heating, and each with an ample balcony or loggia. An integral part of his concept for this housing estate were several shops, a communal laundry with childcare, a management office, and large open areas and interior courtyards lush with greenery. Hillinger found inspiration for his endeavor in the Tusschendijken housing project in Rotterdam, built in 1920/21 by Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud; for this reason, the Carl Legien Estate is sometimes referred to as the "Flemish Quarter."[3]
Because of the Great Depression and the seizure of power by the National Socialists, who rejected the Neues Bauen style, only the first two construction phases were realized according to plan; the third, delayed until the end of the 1930s, was made to conform with the conventional Mietskaserne or rental-barracks style.
From 1931 to 1932, Hillinger was also a lecturer in architecture at TH Berlin as Bruno Taut's assistant.
