Franz Hillinger

Franz Hillinger (born March 30, 1895, in Nagyvárad, Hungary; died 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. He intended to study architecture at the University of Budapest following the completion of his military service during World War I. Due to violent, anti-Semetic demonstrations and subsequent calls for bans on Jewish enrollment and the enactment of restrictive legislation curtailing the Jewish student population, Hillinger instead went to Germany and studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin from 1919 to 1922. He met his Protestant wife, Grete, in Berlin. Until 1924, he mainly designed detached, single-family homes for private owners. His first project was a house for Grete’s parents on a rural estate on the outskirts of Berlin.

In 1924, Hillinger became head of the design office at the Gemeinnützige Heimstätten-, Spar- und Bau-Aktengesellschaft (GEHAG), a position he held for nearly ten years; there he collaborated on several projects with Bruno Taut and Martin Wagner, who designed buildings for GEHAG as independent architects. Hillinger’s most significant achievement from this period is the Carl Legien Estate, a Berlin modernist housing estate in the Prenzlauer Berg subdivision, which he developed for GEHAG between 1928 and 1830 in collaboration with Bruno Taut.

In 1925, Hillinger envisioned a model community of in the Neues Bauen style consisting of 1,145 apartments of 1½ to 3½ rooms each, all with central heating, and each with an ample balcony or loggia. An integral part of his concept for this housing estate were several shops, a communal laundry with childcare, a management office, and large open areas and interior courtyards lush with greenery. Hillinger found inspiration for his endeavor in the Tusschendijken housing project in Rotterdam, built in 1920/21 by Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud; for this reason, the Carl Legien Estate is sometimes referred to as the “Flemish Quarter.”

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