Elisabeth Böhm

Elisabeth Böhm (born Haggenmüller; born June 18, 1921 in Mindelheim, † September 6, 2012 ) was a German architect. She was the wife of Gottfried Böhm and the mother of architect Stephen, Peter and Paul and the artist Markus Böhm. She was responsible for numerous realized Böhm - buildings and a number of unrealized projects, but remained as a woman in a famous architect dynasty always in the background. In 2000, she was honored by the Cologne architect and engineering team with a badge of honor for lifetime achievement.

Life and work

Elisabeth Haggenmüller was born in 1921 as the daughter of the goldsmith Georg Haggenmüller and his wife Magdalena Haggenmüller in Mindelheim. To be your early desire architect ("if I were a boy " ), she was able to put on their High School in Munich in 1942 by the inclusion of a degree in architecture at first. In 1944, she had to interrupt her studies because women at universities were no longer desired. She completed an internship in an architectural office in Innsbruck and continued her studies after the war continued. In 1946 she closed it with a thesis in which she designed a settlement for artists and craftsmen, with honors. Following the study Elisabeth Haggenmüller completed an internship in the purchase Beuren Stadtbauamt

During her studies she met her future husband Gottfried Böhm know who still wavered in this time between a career as an architect or sculptor. Some authors, it is attributed to the influence of Elisabeth Haggenmüller that Böhm finally turned the architecture.

After marrying in 1948, she worked with her husband in assumed by Dominic Böhm architecture office together, as a wife but not officially as an employee. After the birth of four sons in the years 1950-1959 Elisabeth Böhm was primarily concerned with budget and education; only when the sons smashing her career, she showed more presence in the office Böhm.

Her focus in the design of floor plans, particularly for houses and settlements as well as in the design of interiors. So She created the interior design of the Godesburg, the Bensberg Town Hall and the Kauzenburg. With the expansion of the Stuttgart Theatre (1984 ), in which Gottfried Böhm could not enforce its complete project for the actual theater room design, came eventually realized extension of the foyer primarily of her as a circular pavilion.

In the 1980s, followed by various independent housing projects and 1991, the transformation of the Bulgarian Embassy of the European Union in Strasbourg. Designs for villas in Italy and the Bulgarian Embassy to the Vatican remained at the project stage.

Significantly involved Elisabeth Böhm was the design for the WDR -Arkaden in Cologne, the - apply have a " refreshing" deconstructive character and as a highly versatile project - very uncharacteristic of Gottfried Böhm.

Elisabeth Böhm lived and worked in Cologne.