Gustav Oelsner – architect and officer in Wrocław (Breslau) in the years 1904–1911

Agnieszka Gryglewska

doi:10.5277/arc150207

Abstract

The subject matter of this publication is the architectural creativity of Gustav Oelsner (1879–1956) in Wrocław in the years of 1904–1911 within the range of his work in national administration on the construction of Wrocław University of Technology and council administration, as a municipal building inspector. Serving the city Oelsner designed and built: schools (two primary schools and one secondary), restoration work, conversion and extension of the All Saints and the Wenzel-Hancke hospitals, temporary exhibition pavilions in Szczytnicki Park. Working under the supervision of city architects Richard Plüddemann and Max Berg, Oelsner gained a great deal of experience important for his future work in the building administration in Katowice, Altona and Hamburg. In Wrocław he had contact with the circle of artistic reform followers around 1900, among others, with Hans Poelzig. Rejection of historizing detail, use of simplifi ed motives of regional building art – Heimatschutz-style, turning to the idea of creating a form resulting from function, construction and material. These are the features that made Oelsner’s works close to objectivity of the industrial architecture and works of interwar avant-garde.