Hermann Henselmann

Hermann Henselmann (3 February 1905, Roßla – 19 January 1995, Berlin) was a German architect most famous for his buildings constructed in East Germany during the 1950s and 1960s.

Henselmann studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin from 1922 to 1925. His early projects, such as on Lake Geneva near Montreux (1930) were Modernist in style, showing a clear Bauhaus influence, and due to this and Henselmann's partly Jewish ancestry he was prevented from working as a private architect by the Nazi government.

After the war he was appointed head architect in the city of Gotha and later in Weimar in the Soviet Zone of Germany, although his projects were subjected to harsh criticism for their Modernism. He served in Hans Scharoun's town planning group that tried to convert the Socialist Unity Party of Germany's leaders to Modernism, although unlike Scharoun, Henselmann stayed in East Berlin after their rejection. His neo-classical Weberwiese building in Berlin, emblazoned with quotes from his friend Bertolt Brecht (who had personally convinced him not to leave for the West) announced his conversion to the historical revivalism of the style known as Socialist Realism or Stalinist architecture. Henselmann would subsequently design the towers that cap each end of the Stalinallee boulevard (renamed Karl-Marx-Allee in the 1960s) at Frankfurter Tor and Strausberger Platz, which showed the influence of Karl Friedrich Schinkel as well as the 'Seven Sisters', the Stalinist 'wedding cake' skyscrapers in Moscow.

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