Roderich Fick

Roderich Fick was an architect and professor at the Technical University of Munich. He studied in München, Zürich, and Dresden, but did not graduate. In 1912, he was a member of a historic expedition to Greenland. His brother Roland died in 1916 during World War I in a French military hospital. Roderich served in the then German colony of Cameroon, but was also interned for three years in Spain after crossing the border into a Spanish colony. During the Third Reich he initially became one of the favorite architects of Nazi chancellor Adolf Hitler, and was one of the busiest architects on the Obersalzberg, Hitler’s favorite residence, until his tensions with Hitler’s secretary Martin Bormann led to a split. After World War II he was suspended from his services and, in 1946, was convicted by the Munich Tribunal of lesser offenses. In 1948, however, he was finally classified by the Starnberg Tribunal as a follower and beneficiary of the Nazi regime. He worked as a freelance architect, and was retired on a pension in 1954.

Fick’s buildings followed the principles of the homeland security architecture and the Deutscher Werkbund and thus differed from the many monumental buildings of the Nazi era. His “Ernst-Sachs-Bath in Schweinfurt” was one of his first major assignments in 1931, possibly also because his brother-in-law was a senior civil engineer there. Fick not only designed the building, which was completed in 1933, but also doors, windows and furniture, and even luminous elements and fittings. The bath was severely damaged during the war but was in operation until 2004 after reconstruction. After that it was rebuilt as an art exhibition hall.