Heinrich Seeling


Heinrich Seeling was a German architect.

Life

He was born the son of a bricklayer in the Thuringian town of Zeulenroda, then part of the sovereign Principality of Reuss within the German Confederation. Seeling upon his apprenticeship received further academic training at the college for civil engineering in Holzminden in the Duchy of Brunswick and studied at the Prussian Bauakademie in Berlin, capital of the German Empire since 1871.
After studies in Vienna and Italy, Seeling began his career working as an assistant in the studios of Hugo Licht, Hermann Ende and Wilhelm Böckmann in Berlin. In 1882/83 he unsuccessfully competed with Paul Wallot in an architectural contest to erect the new Reichstag building. Nevertheless, he soon acquired renown as an architect of numerous lavish theatre buildings throughout Germany, starting with the construction of the Stadttheater Halle in 1886. He also designed two Protestant churches and several residential and commercial buildings in Bromberg in the Prussian Province of Posen, today Bydgoszcz in Poland.
In 1907 he was appointed director of the building authority in the then independent city of Charlottenburg, where he designed the Deutsches Opernhaus, as well as several municipal buildings together with his co-worker Richard Ermisch. Since 1896 Seeling was a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts.

Work

Many of Seeling's buildings were destroyed by strategic bombing during [World War II], though some were rebuilt either in a Modern style, in a simplified style or in the original style: