Constantin Lipsius
Encyclopedia
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, 20 October 1832 — died Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
11 April 1894) was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
and architectural theorist, best known for his controversial design of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and Exhibition Building (1883-1894) on the Brühl Terrace in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, today known as the Lipsius-Bau.
After attending Gymnasium, Lipsius initially studied architecture at the Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
Baugewerkenschule and in 1851 assumed a three-year course of study at the Royal Art Academy of Dresden in the atelier of Georg Hermann Nicolai
Georg Hermann Nicolai
Georg Hermann Nicolai was a German architect and educator, Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts on the Brühl Terrace in Dresden from 1850 until his death....
(1812-1881), Gottfried Semper
Gottfried Semper
Gottfried Semper was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture, who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden and was put on the government's wanted list. Semper fled first to Zürich and later...
's immediate successor at the Academy. Following his matriculation, Lipsius toured Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, where he was fascinated by the architecture of Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
. He continued his travels by heading to Paris, where he worked briefly for Jacques Ignaz Hittorf and became aware of he work of Henri Labrouste
Henri Labrouste
Pierre François Henri Labrouste was a French architect from the famous École des Beaux Arts school of architecture. After a six year stay in Rome, Labrouste opened an architectural training workshop, which quickly became the center of the Rationalist view...
and Charles Garnier
Charles Garnier (architect)
Charles Garnier was a French architect, perhaps best known as the architect of the Palais Garnier and the Opéra de Monte-Carlo.-Early life:...
and Eugène Emanuelle Viollet-le-Duc. French influences became marked in Lipsius's later work.
Beginning in the 1860s, Lipsius participated in a number of regional and national architectural competitions while he continued to broaden his practice with residential commissions and preservation work. His participation in the 1866 competition for an Art Academy in Dresden exhibits several features that would appear in his final designs some twenty years later. Lipsius's winning entry for the reconstruction of Leipzig's Johannis Hospital garnered him professional recognition as königliche Baurat, or "royal architectural counsellor." In the following decade, Lipsius continued to expand his work. In 1874 he was named president of the newly organized Union of Leipzig Architects and assumed directorship of the Baugewerkenschule. In 1877, Lipsius started his long-term work on the preservation of Leipzig's Thomaskirche, J. S. Bach's church; work continued until 1889. Local preservation authority Heinrich Magirius has stated that Lipsius's work was the most significant accomplishment of its kind in Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
. Also in the late 1870s, Lipsius began his professional association with architect August Hartel (1844-1890), which included designing the Peterskirche (Leipzig), the Johanneskirche (Gera) and an entry in the second Reichstag competition of 1882.
With Nicolai's death in 1881, Lipsius was named Professor of Architecture at the Dresden Academy. He received the commission to rebuild the Academy complex shortly after assuming his new academic post and it soon became a hotly contested project that was covered in the national trade journals. The basis for much of the controversy was that the building, in both major design phases, was considered too large for the site. In addition, it was not deemed by many to be an accurate reflection of the more delicate local Neorenaissance styles of Semper and Nicolai. Finally, the fact that the commission was given without the benefit of a public competition guaranteed no small amount of professional resentment. Opinions, then as now, tend to be rather polarized. Some residents, for instance, still regard the unusual pleated parabolic glass dome, locally called the "Lemon Press," an enduring annoyance. But there can be little doubt that the design represented the most advanced architectural thinking of the early- to mid-1880s on the continent. It represented a conservative approach to architectural iconography based on the decorative program of Semper's Kunsthistorisches Museum
Kunsthistorisches Museum
The Kunsthistorisches Museum is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on Ringstraße, it is crowned with an octagonal dome...
in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
; at the same time, Lipsius was employing architectural symbolism to advocate an evolutionary approach to stylistic innovation. Hence the bizarre glazed dome as a representation of an arbitrary, futuristic form for non-representational architecture. These ideas, which Lipsius based explicitly on the theories of Gottfried Semper
Gottfried Semper
Gottfried Semper was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture, who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden and was put on the government's wanted list. Semper fled first to Zürich and later...
, represent the first phase of architectural realism. Shortly after the Academy complex was completed, it was regarded as a grotesque, over-ornamented monstrosity, and architectural realism had already moved on to become a more strident theoretical stance in the work of Otto Wagner
Otto Wagner
Otto Koloman Wagner was an Austrian architect and urban planner, known for his lasting impact on the appearance of his home town Vienna, to which he contributed many landmarks.-Life:...
.
Lipsius was a thoughtful and philosophically inclined architect. His writings on the use of iron in architecture have found their way into several histories of architectural theory; his necrologies of both Semper and Nicolai are among the most well-conceived professional biographies of their time. His students remembered him with enormous affection. By the 1880s, Lipsius was an eloquent proponent of architectural realism, an approach to revitalizing contemporary architecture by changing the emphasis away from slavish imitation of historical forms by reconsidering the original and symbolic power of architectural motifs. Thus fortified, it was hoped by Architectural Realists in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
that stylistic innovation could continue to develop organically by salvaging worthy forms and discarding dry, pedantic and formulaic application of stock forms. Architectural Realism paved the way for the emergence of more strident perspectives on stylistic innovation we now recognize as pre-modernist, such as Jugendstil, Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
, Stile Liberty and other related stylistic phenomena that predate the rise of Neues Bauen (New Building) in the 1920s.
His friend K. E. O. Fritsch, editor of the Deutsche Bauzeiting and an enormously influential architecture critic, claimed that Lipsius' death may have been hastened as he came to see that his life's work, the Academy, was not going to have the presence he had hoped for; that indeed his critics may have been right all along.
After his death, Lipsius was succeeded as Professor of Architecture at the Academy by Paul Wallot
Paul Wallot
Paul Wallot was a German architect of Huguenot descent, best known for designing the Reichstag building in Berlin, erected between 1884 and 1894...
, architect of the newly completed German Reichstag
Reichstag (building)
The Reichstag building is a historical edifice in Berlin, Germany, constructed to house the Reichstag, parliament of the German Empire. It was opened in 1894 and housed the Reichstag until 1933, when it was severely damaged in a fire. During the Nazi era, the few meetings of members of the...
(Berlin, 1882-1894).
Private Commissions
- Funerary Chapel for Baroness von Ebestein, SchönfeldSchönfeld-Places in Germany:*Schönfeld, Brandenburg, in the district Uckermark, Brandenburg*Schönfeld, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in the district of Demmin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern*Schönfeld, Saxony, in the district Riesa-Großenhain, Saxony...
(Leipzig), 1855. - Ernst Keil Residence, Königstrasse (with Oskar Mothes), LeipzigLeipzigLeipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, 1860-1. - Frege Residence, Dörrienstrasse, LeipzigLeipzigLeipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, n. d. - Schloss Wetzelstein for Frege Family, Saalfeld, n. d.
- Mirror Hall in Schützenhaus, LeipzigLeipzigLeipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, 1876. - Café Felsche (AKA Café Français), Augustusplatz, LeipzigLeipzigLeipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, n. d. - Schloss Klein-Zschocher for Baron von Tauchnitz, LeipzigLeipzigLeipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, n. d. - Frege Chapel, Abtnaudorf (Leipzig), 1888-9.
- Mausoleum for Graf von Fabrice, DresdenDresdenDresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, 1891-3. - Restaurant Baarmann, Katharinenstrasse, LeipzigLeipzigLeipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, n .d.
Public Commissions
- Johannis-Hospital, Hospitalstrasse, LeipzigLeipzigLeipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, 1867-72. - Stock Exchange, ChemnitzChemnitzChemnitz is the third-largest city of the Free State of Saxony, Germany. Chemnitz is an independent city which is not part of any county and seat of the government region Direktionsbezirk Chemnitz. Located in the northern foothills of the Ore Mountains, it is a part of the Saxon triangle...
, 1864-1867. - Exhibition Hall, Leipzig Applied Art Exhibition, 1879.
- Royal Art Academy and Exhibition Building, DresdenDresdenDresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, 1883-1894 — Now Lipsius-Bau
Sacred Commissions
- Church, WachauWachauThe Wachau is an Austrian valley with a picturesque landscape formed by the Danube river. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations of Lower Austria, located midway between the towns of Melk and Krems that also attracts "connoisseurs and epicureans". It is in length and was already...
, 1866-7 - Johanniskirche, GeraGeraGera, the third-largest city in the German state of Thuringia , lies in east Thuringia on the river Weiße Elster, approximately 60 kilometres to the south of the city of Leipzig and 80 kilometres to the east of Erfurt...
, n. d. - Petrikirche (with August Hartel), Schletterplatz, LeipzigLeipzigLeipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, 1877-1885. - Nathanaelkirche (with August Hartel), LindenauLindenauLindenau is a municipality in the Oberspreewald-Lausitz district, in southern Brandenburg, Germany. Since 1992, it is part of the Amt of Ortrand....
/Leipzig, 1882-1884.
Restoration/Preservation Work
- Hotel Russie, Peterstrasse, LeipzigLeipzigLeipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, n. d. - Jacobikirche Tower, Ölsnitz i. Vogtland, 1866-8.
- Reconstruction of Borna Parish Church, BornaBornaBorna is a town in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, capital of the Leipzig district. It is situated approx. 30 km southeast of Leipzig. It has approx. 21,000 inhabitants.-History:Borna as a town is more than 750 years old....
, 1866-68. - Reconstruction of Tower at St. Peter's, BautzenBautzenBautzen is a hill-top town in eastern Saxony, Germany, and administrative centre of the eponymous district. It is located on the Spree River. As of 2008, its population is 41,161...
, n. d. - Reconstruction/Enlargement of Schloss Hohenthal, PüchauPuchauPuchau may refer to:*Púchov, Slovakia*Püchau, Saxony...
, 1873-79. - Reconstruction of Thomaskirche, Leipzig, 1878-89.
- Protective Porch added to the Goldene Pforte, FreiburgFreiburgFreiburg im Breisgau is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. In the extreme south-west of the country, it straddles the Dreisam river, at the foot of the Schlossberg. Historically, the city has acted as the hub of the Breisgau region on the western edge of the Black Forest in the Upper Rhine Plain...
, 1883-89.
Competitions
- MunichMunichMunich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
Town Hall, 1866. - Royal Art Academy DresdenDresdenDresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
, 1867 (Motto: "D. K. J. K."). - First ReichstagReichstag (German Empire)The Reichstag was the parliament of the North German Confederation , and of the German Reich ....
Competition, BerlinBerlinBerlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, 1872. - St. Gertrude's, HamburgHamburg-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, 1880. - Second Reichstag Competition (with August Hartel), Berlin, 1882 (Motto: "Das ist's").
English
- Berry, J. Duncan. The Legacy of Gottfried Semper: Studies in Späthistorismus (Ph. D. Diss., Brown University, 1989), pp. 111–190.
- Berry, J. Duncan. "From Historicism to Architectural Realism: On Some of Wagner’s Sources," in: Harry F. Mallgrave (ed.), Otto Wagner: Reflections on the Raiment of Modernity (Santa Monica, 1993), pp. 242–278. ISBN 0-89236-257-X
- Berry, J. Duncan. "Hans Auer and the Morality of Architectural Space", in: Deborah J. Johnson and David Ogawa (eds.) Seeing and Beyond. A Essays on Eighteenth- to Twenty-First-Century Art in Honor of Kermit S. Champa (Berlin/New York, 2005), pp. 149–184.
- Berry, J. Duncan. "Architectural Realism in Dresden: Semperian Themes from Lipsius to Schumacher," in: Henrik Karge (ed.), Gottfried Semper. Die moderne Renaissance der Künste (Berlin, 2006), pp. 311–22. ISBN 3-422-06606-3
- Mallgrave, Harry F. "From Realism to Sachlichkeit: The Polemics of Architectural Modernity in the 1890s,“ in: H. F. Mallgrave (ed.), Otto Wagner: Reflections on the Raiment of Modernity (Santa Monica, 1993), pp. 281–321. ISBN 0-89236-257-X
- Mallgrave, Harry F. Gottfried Semper. Architect of the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, 1996), pp. 107, 124, 339, 355f., 359-61, 365. ISBN 0-300-06624-4
- Mallgrave, Harry F. Modern Architectural Theory: A Historical Survey, 1673—1968 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 178, 207, 211. ISBN 0-521-79306-8
- Schwarzer, Mitchell. German Architectural Theory and the Search for Modern Identity (Cambridge, 1995). ISBN 0-521-48150-3
German
- Anon. "Die Entwürfe zum Umbau des Zeughauses und zum Neubau eines Kunstakademie- und Kunstausstellungs-Gebäudes in Dresden vor dem Sächsischen Landtage," Deutsche Bauzeitung 18 (1884), pp. 152–154, 157.
- Berry, J. Duncan. "Steinerne Glock gegen Zitronenpresse: Lipsius' Ikonologie der Kuppel," in: Gilbert Lupfer et al. (eds.), Der Blick auf Dresden. Die Frauenkirche und das Werden der Dresdner Stadtsilhouette (Dresden, 2005), pp. 16–19. ISBN 3-422-06576-8
- Fleischer, Ernst. Constantin Lipsius. Rede bei der Gedächtnissfeier im Dresdener Architekten-Verein am 10. Mai 1894 (Dresden, n.d.).
- Fritsch, Karl Emil Otto. "Die Börse in Chemnitz. Erfunden von Constantin Lipsius, Architekt in Leipzig," Deutsche Bauzeitung 5 (1871), p. 370 + ills.
- Fritsch, Karl Emil Otto. "Die neue Petrikirche in Leipzig. Architekten: Hartel & Lipsius," Deutsche Bauzeitung 16 (1882), p. 433 + ill.
- Fritsch, Karl Emil Otto. "Der neue Entwurf zum Bau eines Kunstakademie- und Kunstaustellungs-Gebäudes in Dresden. Professor Baurath C. Lipsius," Deutsche Bauzeitung 20 (1886), pp. 109f., 157-159 + ills.
- Fritsch, Karl Emil Otto. "Zur Erinnerung an Constantin Lipsius," Deutsche Bauzeitung 24 (1895), pp. 181–184, 186-187, 189-191, 194-195, 201-203.
- Gurlitt, Cornelius. "Constantin Lipsius †," Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung 14 (1894), pp. 157f.
- Helas, Volker. Sempers Dresden. Die Bauten und die Schüler (Dresden, 2003), pp. 38, 42, 49-51, 71. ISBN 3-930382-95-4
- Kirchbach, Wolfgang. "Der Kunstaustellungspalast zu Dresden und die neue Königliche Kunstakademie," Die Kunst für Alle 9 (1894), pp. 257–264, 273-79.
- Kühn, Bernhard. Rede beim Begräbnis des Königl. Baurates und Professors an der Akademie der bildenden Künste Johann Wilhelm Constantin Lipsius in Dresden (Leipzig, 1894).
- Lier, H. A. "Constantin Lipsius," Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. 52 (1905), pp. 5–7.
- Lipsius, Constantin. "Über die ästhetische Behandlung des Eisen im Hochbau,“ Deutsche Bauzeitung 12 (1878), pp. 363–366.
- Lipsius, Constantin. "Konkurrenz für das 2. städtische Gymnasium zu Dresden," Deutsche Bauzeitung 13 (1879), pp. 251–253.
- Lipsius, Constantin. Sammlung moderner Zimmereinrichtungen, Holz- und Metallarbeiten, Keramik... (Dresden, n.d. [ca. 1879]).
- Lipsius, Constantin. "Georg Hermann Nicolai," Deutsche Bauzeitung 16 (1882), pp. 304–307, 314-316.
- Lipsius, Constantin. "Gottfried Semper in seiner Bedeutung als Architekt,“ Deutsche Bauzeitung 14 (1880), pp. 2–4, 13f., 33f., 65f., 75-77, 87f., 91, 109-111, 129f., 145, 181-185, 193-195.
- Lipsius, Constantin. "Dem Andenken Gottfried Sempers. Festrede zur Enthüllung des Semper-Denkmals in Dresden am 1. September 1892," Deutsche Bauzeitung 26 (1892), pp. 425–428.
- Loeffler, Fritz. Das alte Dresden. 8th ed. (Leipzig, 1983), p. 389. ISBN 3-86502-000-3
- Rother, Wolfgang. Der Kunsttempel an der Brühlschen Terrasse. Das Akademie- und Ausstellungsgebäude von Constantin Lipsius in Dresden (Dresden/Basel, 1994). ISBN 3-364-00292-4
- Schumacher, Fritz. Strömungen in deutscher Baukunst seit 1800 (Braunschweig/Wiesbaden, 1982 [1935/1955]), p. 75. ISBN 3-528-08686-6
- Schumann, Paul. Dresden (Leipzig, 1909), p. 267f.
- Temper, ?. "Das Akademie- und Ausstellungsgebäude and der Brühl'schen Terrasse zu Dresden," Zeitschrift für Architektur und Ingenieurwesen 42 (1896), cols. 465-474 + ills.
- Thieme-Becker XXIII, p. 280.