Architect of the world heritage housing site in Berlin: Who is Franz Hillinger?

Franz Hillinger was born on March 30, 1895, in Nagyvárad (formerly Austria-Hungary).

After the end of the First World War, studying architecture at the University of Budapest was hampered by political exclusion from higher education. That's why he went to Berlin. Here he studied architecture at the Technical High School between 1919 and 1922.

From 1924 he worked as a manager at the design office of Gemeinnützige Heimstätten-, Spar- und Bau-Aktiengesellschaft (GEHAG). Among the people he worked with during this period were Bruno Taut and Martin Wagner.

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.

The Carl Legien housing estate in Berlin, one of the most important architectural works of Franz Hillinger, built between 1928 and 1930 and declared a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage in 2008, also emerged in the same period.

In the early thirties, he worked as an associate professor of architecture and assistant to Bruno Taut at the Technical University Berlin-Charlottenburg. After the National Socialists came to power, Franz Hillinger was forced to leave his position at GEHAG.

When Bruno Taut was banned from the Imperial Chamber of Fine Arts and banned from practicing his profession in 1937, he decided to move to Turkey, where he had been living for a year.

In addition to working as a design architect at the Ministry of Culture, Planning Department, he started teaching at the Istanbul Fine Arts Academy. He directed the Ankara School of Architecture from 1940 to 1943.

Franz Hillinger collaborated closely with Bruno Taut and completed all of his projects after his death.

At the end of the fifties, he was once again in Ankara to supervise the progress of the construction of the Turkish National Assembly building designed by Clemens Holzmeister.

Franz Hillinger eventually emigrated to the United States, where he died in New York in 1971.

----------------------------

CARL LEGIEN HOUSING ESTATE (1929–30)

URBAN LIVING

https://world-heritage-estates-berlin.com/carl-legien/