Paul Stohrer

Text in German. Paul Stohrer was born in Stuttgart in 1909 and died there in 1975; from the 1950s to the 1970s he was among that city's most eminent and successful architects. He took advantage of rebuilding phase after 1945 for his professional development, and the boost given by the years of the economic miracle led to a peak in his architectural creativity. Today his name has largely disappeared from public memory in his field, and it is not well known that many of his buildings made a considerable contribution to Stuttgart's appearance. As he built several theatres and cinemas he was familiar with the glamorous world of theatre and cinema, and he created exclusive family homes for clients on the scene at the time. In addition to this, his commissioned repertoire included mainly commercial, office and factory buildings, as well as interiors for restaurants and shops. One of his best-known works is his house for the psychiatrist, filmmaker and collector of contemporary art Ottomar Domnick in Nurtingen near Stuttgart, which is now under the aegis of the Stuttgart Staatsgalerie. It is difficult to place Stohrer's architectural work within the existing categories of contemporary building history. Stohrer follows his own pathways with his stylistic and formal repertoire, but the influence of Le Corbusier, and also Oscar Niemeyer and others can be clearly discerned. As professor of design and interior design at the Staatsbauschule in Stuttgart (now the Hochschule fur Technik) he inspired generations of students with his unconventional teaching approach. Stohrer can be described as an "artistarchitect". He saw architecture not just as an artistic task, but was also an artist in the more limited sense, devoting himself to painting throughout his lifetime.