Theodor Fischer. Architektur der Stuttgarter Jahre

With almost every new building, the architect Theodor Fischer sets new standards. In contrast to the preceding historicist architecture, but also to Art Nouveau, Fischer always plans from scratch, starting from the respective requirements: In Gaggstatt, he achieves a completely new organization of the church interior. The Heusteig School had an exemplary effect far beyond Stuttgart. The Reutlingen workers’ settlement of Gmindersdorf can be seen as Germany’s first garden city. A warehouse in Stuttgart’s Talstrasse, now largely destroyed, is one of the first reinforced concrete skeleton buildings. Fischer found a patron in Louis Laiblin, the heir of a Pfullingen paper manufacturer, and another in Gustav Siegle from Stuttgart. Thus the Pfullingen Halls, the Schönberg Tower, Laiblin’s Erlenhof residence, workers’ houses in both towns and the Gustav Siegle House in Stuttgart were built. Many buildings from Fischer’s Stuttgart years are amazingly well preserved, and some were rebuilt in modified form by his students after the war. They are presented here in photographs by Rose Hajdu and explained in expert texts by Dietrich Heißenbüttel, which aim to bring back to consciousness the work of this important German architect and urban planner in the period of his greatest effectiveness, also to make his teachings fruitful again for today.