Hans Grisebach

Hans Grisebach (26 July 1848 – 11 May 1904) was a German architect whose buildings provided a backdrop for many celebrities from the arts world.

Life Hans Otto Friedrich Julius Grisebach was born at Göttingen where August Grisebach (1814–1879), his father, held a professorship in Botany at the university. He studied at the Polytechnikum in Hannover with the influential architect-professor Conrad Wilhelm Hase between 1868 and 1873 (with an interruption in 1870/71 for military service followed by a trip to Italy). Perhaps the most striking of his creations is the Schlesisches Tor overground metro station in Berlin, though it must be acknowledged that this development also carried unmistakably the architectural signature of August Dinklage who was working for/with Grisebach at the time. Other projects dating from the years of the partnership in respect of which it is not always clear which of the partners took the lead include St John's ("die Johanneskirche") in Gießen and St. Peter's ("die Petrusskirche") in Frankfurt - both of which were Evangelical churches. This family home became a meeting point for celebrities such as Gerhart Hauptmann, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Grisebach built the "Villa Röhl" at the Timmendorfer Beach (near Lübeck) for the Wahllaender/Gropius family. Walter Gropius used it as his summer house till 1933. (Today the Villa Röhl survives as a hotel. (This is another Grisebach building that has subsequently been converted into a hotel.) Newly wealthy industrialists from the west were also among his clientele, including the textiles magnate Paul Andreae for whom in 1882/83 Grisebach designed the flamboyant two-storey Gut Mielenforst "manor house" in the hills east of Cologne.

Another of his more eye catching commissions is the Schloss Tremsbüttel "mini-palace" near Bargteheide to the northeast of Hamburg. The client was the Remscheid entrepreneur-contractor Alfred (Fritz) Hasenclever, who wanted a prominently sited Historicist-style building as a belated wedding gift for his wife, Olga. Dating from 1893/94 the building has retained many of the fashionable decorations and details characteristic of the times, both internally and on the outside. Like Schloss Klink and Villa Röhl, Schloß Tremsbüttel has been converted into a hotel. All three buildings are therefore accessible to the public (2017).