Hermann Billing
Hermann Billing ( born February 7, 1867 in Karlsruhe, † March 2, 1946 ) was a German architect, designer and university lecturer. He is considered one of the most important representatives of Art Nouveau in Karlsruhe and all of Southwest Germany.
Life
Billing was the son of Karlsruhe contractor. He attended high school but did not make the high school. The school of applied arts and architecture studies, he broke off prematurely, he was, among other things Student of Otto Warth. Thanks to the assets of his wife, whom he had met during an architecture internship in Berlin around 1890, he worked as a private architect in his hometown (as of 1892) reasonably financially secure. At this time he was referring to 25 -year-old, with his wife, an apartment in the Peace Road 14 So he could afford it, initially only work on competitive designs - so avant-garde and bold that he quickly became known nationwide as "Modern ". From the mid- 1890s, he received large orders (facade Melanchthon House in Bretten / Maschinenfabrik Lorenz in Ettlingen / villas in the Jahn Street / Hofapotheke ). In 1899 he was a full room at the German Art Exhibition in Dresden set. He was always on the go and changed frequently, the agency partners, from 1895 to 1903 was billing already moved six times. Each year was practically a move into the house. It was the same with his family life. He was married three times and had eight children, also an illegitimate son (* 1905), which was considered at that time as scandalous. His first wife divorced him for that reason. With his third wife, he lived 7c on Leopold Street, Leopold Square on.
Due to the good order situation, he continually put a new employee and maintained branch offices in other cities. The " total work of art " Baischstraße made him known throughout Germany. In his best-known projects, the Kunsthalle Baden -Baden and the Kunsthalle Mannheim, he represented a powerful, succinct Art Nouveau, the already initiated to Neoclassicism. However, billing was not only an architect but also designers, university professors, experts and judges in numerous architectural competitions as far away as Russia and Finland.
Billing saw himself as a great artist. He was the artistic scene near Karlsruhe and joined in 1896 as the sole architect of the newly formed Association of Artists in Karlsruhe. This had been formed as secession and engaged in particular to the construction of a Kunsthalle in Baden -Baden. From Billing numerous paintings, drawings and etchings are obtained. The focus of his printed graphic works are architectural fantasies.
Billings artistic work remained - compared herein with the Belgian artists Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde - essentially limited to the period of Art Nouveau.
To study periods Billing was a member of the Academic Connection " Cheruskia ", which later became the Corps and was merged in the merger of the Corps Friso Cheruskia. Each year, the Hermann -Billing Prize is sponsored by the Corps Friso Cheruskia for outstanding theses or dissertations at the University of Karlsruhe. From 1903 to 1937 Hermann Billing was a professor at the Technical University of Karlsruhe and at the Art Academy in Karlsruhe. In the years from 1920 he was largely confined to his work as a professor at the academy ( to 1923 ) and at the Technical University ( until 1937 ).