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Wolf Hilbertz


Prof. Wolf Hartmut Hilbertz (April 16, 1938 – August 11, 2007) was a German-born futurist architect, inventor, and marine scientist.

Wolf Hilbertz was born in Gütersloh, Germany in 1938, the first child of Rudolf Hilbertz (1909–1995) and Erna Hilbertz, née Uslat (1906–2008). His parents had quite different personalities; whereas his father was artistic and inventive, thinking up one of the first electric razors, his mother had a more down to earth, practical approach. While his father would have liked to become an artist, circumstances forced him to start working in a bank, whereas his mother enjoyed her occupation, channeling her forceful personality into her job as a school teacher.

After Wolf Hilbertz was born, the family moved to Ústí nad Labem / Aussig in the Czech Republic. When World War II began, his father volunteered for the Wehrmacht and became a member of the Brandenburger special forces. Wolf's sister Uta was born in 1940. His father was badly wounded in Greece in 1944 and fled from the Red Army with his family towards the west in 1945.

As war refugees, he and his family settled in Detmold, Germany in 1946. He attended the Gymnasium (secondary school) there, which he didn't complete. This would normally have precluded his attending a German university. However, after completing his compulsory military service, he went to Berlin in 1959 and signed up for a high school equivalency entrance exam. He was one of the very few to earn a "pass". Thus he was able to attend the Hochschule der Künste Berlin, the Berlin University of the Arts, where he studied architecture. He married in 1961 in Berlin and, upon earning his architecture diploma in 1965, immigrated to New York City with his family in July of that year. 1966 he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he earned his Masters of Architecture at the University of Michigan in 1967.


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