July 07, 2022

Profile | Paul Bonatz (1877–1956)

 Mavi Boncuk | 

Paul Bonatz  (1877–1956).

Paul Bonatz[1] is German architect who was in Turkey during 1940’s. Bonatz was a jury member of Anıtkabir architectural project competition. At continuous years Bonatz came to Turkey (İstanbul and Ankara) to introduce German architecture with Turkish people. He was an instructor at İstanbul Technical University at Architecture Faculty and at the same time he was conducting restoration of architecture faculty at Taşkışla. He was a jury member at important Project competitions such as Çanakkale Casualty Monument, İstanbul Radio house, İstanbul Justice Palace. He designed many buildings at Turkey such as Saraçoğlu Buildings, Ankara Opera Building, Falih Rıfkı Atay House, Old Ankara Airport Building, Sirel House (İstanbul). He wrote two books which were name ‘Leben und Baven’ and ‘brücken’.

Works in Ankara

Ankara University, Faculty of Science (advisor), 1941–43
Gazi Education Institute, Male Technical Teacher's School
Saracoglu District , 1944–46
General Directorate of Turkish Sugar Factories, 1946
Ankara State Opera and Opera House, 1946/47

Sources
Bonatz, Paul: Leben und Bauen. Stuttgart 1950.
Bozdoğan, Sibel: Modernism and Nation Building. Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic. Seattle/Londra 2001.
Roser, Matthias: Paul Bonatz. Wohnhäuser. Stuttgart 1992. (FOTOĞRAF, s. 92)
Stuttgart Belediyesi (Yayın): Paul Bonatz 1877–1956. Stuttgart 1977 (Stuttgarter Beiträge, sayı 13).
Voigt, Wolfgang: Paul Bonatz. Konservativ, aber nicht reaktionär. Yayın: Stuttgarter Zeitung 09.01.2009

Sketch of Saraçoğlu neighborhood, Paul Bonatz (1945) Söylemezoğlu Archive / SALT Research

This housing group, which was started in accordance with the Civil Servant Housing Law, which was enacted in 1944 to prevent the housing crisis in Ankara, It constitutes an important example of the National Architecture Movement in the capital. In the settlement where he tried to bring the Siedlung concept of 1920s Germany, besides the residential blocks, the architect designed the children's playground, primary and secondary school, and the social building at that time, which now functions as the Provincial Public Library, for common use. The settlement layout of the neighborhood was the target of criticism in the years it was made, and it was stated that the adaptation to the topography was successful, but the orientation was not good.



642 flats with two, three and five rooms, planned on six types, have been realized in apartments designed in different types and heights, grouped in adjacent order. Housing blocks are two, three or four storeys above the basement. The parts of the facades corresponding to the rooms project outwards, some of which are balconies. The reflections of the "Turkish House" theme, which was put forward by Sedat Hakkı Eldem as a suggested solution in the search for national architecture of the architects in the 1940s, are observed in the exterior formations of the houses. Wide eaves, façade overhangs on the support emulating the bay window, window modulations, and lattice-shaped balcony railings made of sheet metal are quotations from the traditional Turkish house. However, the architect did not see the layout of the Turkish house as a source for these houses, and for this reason, the plans were found unsuccessful in the years they were built, both in terms of space organization and because the principles of building economy were not taken into account.

Türkiye Şeker Fabrikaları Genel Müdürlüğü (Paul Bonatz, 1954)

The Company's Headquarters Building on Ankara Meşrutiyet Street was designed in the 1950s. Although Ali Mukadder Çizer signed the construction project, According to the permit application project drawn in 1954, had a total construction area of 1075 m2 with basement, ground floor and 4 floors. In the 1970s, 3 more floors were added to the building.











The conversion of the Ankara Exhibition Hall into the Turkish State Opera in 1948 was one of the most debated incidents of the architectural and urban history of Early Republican Turkey. During this conversion, the modernist aesthetic of the exhibition hall was replaced by a classicistic and monumental language.




Şevki Balmumcu. Exhibition Hall, Ankara, 1933-1934. Floor plan. Published in: "Sergi Binası Müsabakası," Mimar 3, no. 5 (1933)


Paul Bonatz. State Opera, Ankara, 1946-1948. Floor plan. Source: Paul-Bonatz-Familienarchiv Peter Dübbers Stuttgart.

[1] Born in Solgne, Lorraine, he studied in Munich and assisted Theodor Fischer 1902–6 at the Technische Hochschule (Technical High School), Stuttgart, before himself becoming a professor in 1908. In partnership (1913–27) with Friedrich Eugen Scholer (1874–c.1949) he designed the City Hall, Hanover (1911–14), and the Hauptbahnhof (Main Railway Station), Stuttgart (1911–28), which owes something to Saarinen's great terminus at Helsinki as well as to the AEG buildings of Behrens. The partnership also designed locks, bridges, weirs, and other structures on the Neckar Canal (1926–36), the Graf Zeppelin Hotel, Stuttgart (1929–31), and many other buildings, including several private houses. Among Bonatz's other buildings the Henkel warehouses, Biebrich (1908–9), and the University Library, Tübingen (1910–12), may be cited. Later, Bonatz was consultant to Fritz Todt for the design of the Autobahnen (motorways) and their handsome bridges (1935–41). He was a signatory of the Block manifesto, and most of his domestic work was rooted in traditional forms. With Paul Schmitthenner (1884–1972) and Heinz Wetzel (1882–1945), Bonatz built up the Stuttgart School of Architecture as a bastion of traditionalism against the ferocious onslaught of International Modernism, and so it was no accident that the Weissenhofsiedlung was established at Stuttgart as a challenge and almost a declaration of war. The response of Bonatz and his colleagues, in collaboration with the local timber industry, was to build the Kochenhofsiedlung (1933—the name suggested basic realities (Kochen ‘cooking’) as opposed to the white impracticalities of the rival Siedlung (settlement, colony, or housing-estate) ), drawing on regional vernacular architecture, traditional timber construction, and craftsmanship, as a riposte to the alien imagery favoured by Mies van der Rohe and his associates.

Under National Socialism Bonatz prepared schemes for the Naval High Command (1939–43) as part of Speer's reordering of Berlin, and for the Hauptbahnhof in Munich (1939–42)—both unrealized. He also designed the War Memorial Chapel, Heilbronn (1930–6), the Stumm Company Building, Düsseldorf (1935—with F. E. Scholer), and the Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland (1936). Disheartened by lack of recognition and by the dearth of building commissions during the 1939–45 war, he emigrated to Turkey in 1943, where he was appointed City Architect of Ankara, and became Professor at the Technical University, Istanbul, in 1946. The State Opera House, Ankara (1948), was erected to his designs. On his return to Stuttgart in 1953 he concentrated on repairing war-damage suffered by his earlier projects, published Leben und Bauen (Life and Buildings) in 1950, and worked on the reconstruction of the opera-house at Düssoldorf in the 1950s.


This book focuses on the years spent in Turkey by the German architect Paul Bonatz, who lived between 1877-1956. The architect, who visited Turkey three times for various reasons in 1916, 1927 and 1942, lived in the country between 1943-1954. This text, on the one hand, tries to reveal the ideological and morphological productions of Bonatz in Turkey, and on the other hand, tries to make an architectural history reading on the axis of the mentioned years in order to identify the surfaces that these productions hit in the architectural environment of the country. These two parallel readings are critical in order to correctly interpret Bonatz's relationship with Turkey and its architectural circles.

The main idea of ​​this study is based on the fact that Paul Bonatz is a power figure. In the context of the “National Architecture” discourse, all the channels used by Bonatz, who consolidated his power with various methods from the moment he came to Turkey, are closely examined and analyzed in all details. Paul Bonatz's position is tried to be understood within the discourse and power, which are twisted in a spiral that constantly produces each other.

Paul Bonatz's Years in Turkey claims to be one of the most comprehensive studies on Paul Bonatz's years in Turkey. At the same time, it aims to make an important contribution to the literature within its own subject by trying to underline Bonatz's productions by presenting a narrative of architectural history.

BOOK | Paul Bonatz’ın Türkiye Yılları (IN TURKISH)   
PUBLISHED:  08.03.2021 | ISBN: 9786257677585

Aslı Can

“The year 1927, when Paul Bonatz made his second visit to Turkey, can be considered as the breaking point of the paradigmatic transformations series to which the architectural representation of the young republic corresponds. The arrival of Clemens Holzmeister and Ernst Egli in Turkey in 1927 (Tanyeli, 2007), which corresponds to the death of Kemaleddin Bey, the leading actor of the First National Architecture, together with Vedad Bey, and which Tanyeli interprets as "emblematic" in this context. The enactment of the Encouragement Law, the establishment of the Turkish Architects Association, the opening of an international competition for the city plan of Ankara, and the like, which happened one after another, witnessed extremely symbolic developments in the context of architectural history, when a revolutionary and, of course, allegorical reading is made. Therefore, 1927, which is actually the date of Bonatz's touristic trip with his family, can be considered as one of the critical dissolution and solidification points of the ideological field that forms the background for architectural practice in Turkey.”Available from SALT Research.

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