Wilhelm Kreis

The German architect Wilhelm Kreis studied at the Technical Universities in München, Karlsruhe, (Berlin-)Charlottenburg, and Braunschweig from 1892-97. Already during this period, he won the 1st prize in a competition for the Monument to the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig, which, however, was not realized. He thus became a specialist in monument and funeral architecture and in the following years erected almost 50 Bismarck towers and numerous funeral monuments.

In 1902, Kreis became a freelance architect and in the same year became a professor at the School of Arts and Crafts in Dresden. In 1908, he was appointed director of the Düsseldorf School of Arts and Crafts and eventually professor of architecture at the local Academy of Arts. From 1926-41 he was head of the architecture department at the Dresden Art Academy, and from 1940 also its rector. Due to his sensational public buildings (especially the Great Exhibition Düsseldorf 1926 for Health Care, Social Welfare and Physical Exercise [GeSoLei] and the German Hygiene-Museum in Dresden), he became one of the most renowned architects in Germany in the 1920s. Kreis was elected president of the Bund Deutscher Architekten (Association of German Architects, 1926- 33) and an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects in 1931. During this period, he was a member of the national liberal German People’s Party.

After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Kreis was initially not considered for public commissions. From 1936, however, he worked closely with Albert Speer (1905-1981), then German General Building Inspector, and was awarded several major contracts. In 1938, Kreis was awarded the Goethe Medal for Art and Science. Three years later, he was appointed General Architect for the design of German war cemeteries and designed over 30 war memorials and war heroes’ cemeteries in German-occupied territories. In 1943, he was appointed president of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts and was awarded the Eagle Shield of the German Reich. In the following year, he was included in the special list of the twelve most important visual artists within the “Gottbegnadetenliste” (God-gifted list). He was also a member of the board of trustees of the “Goebbels-Stiftung für Kulturschaffende” and of the “Kameradschaft der deutschen Künstler”. Despite his importance under National Socialism, Kreis continued to receive major commissions after World War II and was even awarded the Federal Cross of Merit in 1953.

Kreis’ memorial and tomb designs are characterized by an archaic monumentality. However, in the 1920s he opened up to the ideas of Neues Bauen. For example, his Wilhelm -Marx-Haus in Düsseldorf, completed in 1924, is considered Germany’s first high-rise building. In the Third Reich, he adopted the prevailing representational architecture. The heroic monumentalism of his later designs for war memorials showed clear parallels to his earlier designs. After 1945, Kreis made another stylistic change towards symmetrical post-war modernism.