The Hanoverian school of architecture or Hanover School is a school of architecture that was popular in Northern Germany in the second half of the 19th century, characterized by a move away from classicism and neo-Baroque and distinguished by a turn towards the neo-Gothic. Its founder, the architect Conrad Wilhelm Hase, designed almost 80 new church buildings and over 60 civil buildings alone. In addition, Hase taught for 45 years at the Polytechnic University in Hanover and trained around 1000 full-time architects, many of whom adopted his style principles.
The expanding industrialization of nineteenth-century Germany favored the development of the Hanover School, especially in urban areas, where a rapidly-growing population led to a great demand for new homes, schools and hospitals. The expansion of the railway network required new structures such as station and company buildings, and emerging industrial corporations built impressive factory structures that reflected their economic importance. Hanover itself saw the construction of numerous large municipal churches, schools, and factories as well as several thousand residences between the 1850s and the beginning of the 20th century. Stylistically, these buildings were characterized by their unplastered brick facades, which were perceived as "honest." Especially for factory buildings, it was already possible to recognize its internal function by the outer shape of a building. Exterior ornament used a number of design elements: stepped gables with finials, carved stone, and decoratively set bricks with a glazed surface derived from medieval church buildings.
For a long time after the Second World War, during which most large German cities were heavily bombed, the remaining buildings, especially in Hanover, garnered little interest in monument preservation. Large-scale transformation measures and the conversion of Hanover into a car-friendly city led to numerous demolitions.
The term "Hanover School of Architecture" probably first appeared in 1882 with Theodor Unger. At the time, however, the term also referred to the previously popular Rundbogenstil ("round-arched style" or Romanesque revival style) and the buildings shaped by Hase's influence. It was only later on that only the buildings designed according to Hase's teachings were counted as the "classic" Hanover School.
Origins The Hanover School was preceded by the phase of the Rundbogenstil, which lasted from about 1835 to 1865. This current was also a manifestation of historicism; that is, a revival and recombination of elements of older styles of architecture. The Hanoverian strand of the Rundbogenstil was not only widespread in the city itself, but also in the Kingdom of Hanover. Two branches of it can be distinguished: (1) the "Tramm style" (Tramm-stil) developed by court councilor Christian Heinrich Tramm, characterized by staves and corner pole towers, and (2) the style founded by city builder August Heinrich Andreae with three-dimensional brickwork.
The Hanoverian Church consistorial master builder and architecture professor Conrad Wilhelm Hase (1818–1902) took up the variation of Andreae's Rundbogenstil starting around 1853 and from it developed the formal vocabularies of the Hanover School. It is worth noting that the architectural theory of Berlin's Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the "Schinkelschule," at the Bauakademie, had no influence here. After a transitional period, the Hanover School coalesced independently around 1860. Its heyday lasted until about 1900; in exceptional cases it was used until the beginning of the First World War, and extended over northern Germany, as well as to a certain extent abroad.
Ulrike Faber-Hermann observed in 1989 that the Hanover School's "appearance can be described by certain characteristics," but that a precise "definition" remains vague, partly because at the time of its creation the style was "multilayered." For example, in 1882, the Hanover School architect Theodor Unger was employing both the Rundbogenstil and the Gothic forms of Hase. According to Faber-Hermann, only the latter were later associated with the concept of the Hanover School. On closer inspection, many students of Hase did not allow themselves to be characterized as strict representatives of this school, and only a few buildings assigned to the Hanover School are actually precise classic examples of its designers' work.
Conrad Wilhelm Hase's design work became the driving force for the Hanover School, aided by Hase's teaching position at the Technical University in Hanover (until 1879 it was still called the Hanover Polytechnic School), which obviously ensured the dissemination of his ideas. From 1849 to 1894, his teaching activities there included, among other things, subjects such as designing public and private buildings, sacred architecture, formal theories of medieval architecture, and ornament. Hase tried in his work to detach from the classicism represented by Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves as well as from the neo-baroque tendencies borrowed from France in favor of medieval forms, which he considered stylistically pure. The architect Friedrich von Gärtner, who taught in Vienna, exerted great influence on Hase with his position that unplastered stone should be used as the primary building material (otherwise called "pure construction"). In the 45 years that Hase taught at the university, around 35,000 students were enrolled in architecture subjects, of which only around 1000 completed the degree program in architecture and thus can be regarded as a direct student of Hase–still an impressive number. Hanoverian training in architecture enjoyed supra-regional recognition, so that students came from all over northern Germany, as well as from the Americas, England, the Netherlands and especially from Norway. Hase's successor at the university, Karl Mohrmann, continued the Gothic-revival program of his predecessor until 1924.
Role of the railway The invention of the railway was of critical importance for nineteenth-century industrialization. In Lower Saxony, the development of the rail network and the formation of the Hanover School overlapped over several decades. Many architects who adhered to the architectural style were also active in railway construction, including Hase and some of his employees.
The railway fueled the rapid transport of goods and people, opened up rural regions to development, and ensured a strong economy. Initially, economics played a major role and freight transport enjoyed greater interest before passenger transport also became more important a few years later. The technical innovations emanating from the railway also had an impact on art and architecture, and they also determined village and urban development. In many places, the stations shaped the cityscape themselves. In Lower Saxony, brick construction was favored in station design after 1850. After a trip through Germany in 1857, the British architect George Gilbert Scott expressed his appreciation: "The best developments of railway architecture I have seen are on the Hanoverian lines." The development of the railway in Lower Saxony was already well-established by this point, as the first section, the route from Braunschweig to Wolfenbüttel, had begun operation at the end of 1838. By 1880, all of the most important lines had been completed, and in the following decades only additional feeder lines and secondary railways were constructed.
Scientists from the Institute of Building and Art History of the University of Hanover identified a total of 480 buildings in Lower Saxony in the early 1980s that they classified as "scientifically remarkable." In addition to the principal passenger railway depots, they also looked at other auxiliary railway structures, such as signal boxes, repair halls, post houses and railway housing. Their research revealed various architectural "style development stages" according to which the buildings were designed. According to the inventory published in 1983, an "independent design language based on the round arch style of the Hannover School" developed from 1852 to 1865, while over the next two decades the neo-Gothic of the Hanover School was then applied "irregularly." According to this study, many innovations took place in the field of "small architecture"–that is, minor stations, as well as in the first-generation structures that were later replaced by larger successor buildings (for example, the stations in Hanover, Uelzen or Oldenburg). The innovations concerned architecture as well as urban planning and technology.
Many Gothic-revival railway stations were built along the Hannöversche Südbahn from Hanover to Göttingen. The route was already planned in 1845, but its completion was delayed due to the uncertain political situation before the Revolutions of 1848. The first section, from Hanover to Alfeld, was inaugurated in May 1853, and the section to Göttingen followed a year later. Hase was commissioned to design many of these buildings, presumably in cooperation with Julius Rasch and Adolf Funk. Stylistically, these buildings reveal the transition from the Rundbogenstil to the Hanover School, especially structures such as the main station building in Sarstedt from 1855. The brick building, painted today, is divided vertically with lisens. Its middle transverse section uses a blind gable, which was decorated at the roofline. Other Hase stations on this route can be found in Nordstemmen (1858–1860), Elze (1855), Einbeck (then Salzderhelden, 1855) and Göttingen (1855). In Banteln and Freden, the stations show elements of the Rundbogenstil, but probably were only built between 1865 and 1870.
Contemporary reception In 1882, Theodor Unger published the first comprehensive presentation of the buildings of the Hanover School. It appeared in the first architectural guide of the city - Hannover: Führer durch die Stadt und ihre Bauten (Hanover: Guide through the city and its buildings) - and consisted of a juxtaposition of the Hanover School with the Hanoverian buildings of the Renaissance. Unger attested that the new style had given the city a "highly characteristic and interesting external appearance." Its supporters saw the Hanover School as a "universal style" that had to be used for all building types, from churches to buildings of secular and pedestrian functions. Because of this far-reaching claim, there were also numerous critical voices and rejections, which Unger also addressed in his publication. In Unger's architectural guide, the Berlin architect Hubert Stier, who had recently designed Hanover Central Station, also commented on the "Renaissance buildings" in Hanover. He counted among these "artically remarkable" monumental and private buildings, for which "real materials" had been used in the pursuit of "genuine monumentality." The buildings are determined by the medieval echoes and distinguished themselves as "advantageous" compared to other contemporary buildings. Both critics, Unger and Stier, judged the Hanover School from a certain distance: Unger had belonged to the Vienna School around Friedrich von Schmidt, while Stier belonged to the Berlin School.
Supporters of the school