Heinrich von Hügel

Georg Heinrich Hügel, known since 1875 as Ritter von Hügel (7 August 1828 - 2 August 1899) was a German architect and railway construction contractor.

Life Heinrich von Hügel came from a middle-class background. His father, railway inspector David Martin Hügel (1794–1875), had first become a Rhine shipowner in Mainz and later a freight forwarder for the Grand Ducal Hesse Main-Weser Railway in Giessen. In 1822 he married Margarethe née Brehm (1799–1839).

Career After passing a "special examination in construction" in Darmstadt in 1850, he found employment in railway construction in the Circle of the Rhine from 1854 to 1856. He then made a name for himself in the 1850s and 1860s as chief director architect of the Bavarian Eastern Railway. In this role, he planned and built railway lines and the associated operational buildings. This included the Regensburg Central Station, which opened in 1859, but had to make way for a new building further north in 1886. A carriage depot designed by him has been preserved as a Regensburg architectural monument and was relocated to its current location near the train station east of the Galgenberg Bridge in 1888. The hall is now used as a school building for the Music College under the name Lokschuppen.

Later, Heinrich von Hügel became self-employed as an architect in Munich and built the armory and the palace for Adolf Friedrich von Schack. He also built the Villa Kustermann in Tutzing and, in 1867, the theater in Franzensbad (today Františkovy Lázně, Czech Republic).

In Regensburg, in 1868, after the demolition of the city wall, von Hügel built the first city palace in the Renaissance style for the private citizen Johann Gschwendtner in the area of the green belt of the Fürstenallee on the foundations of the city wall and the Roman wall. The elegant building, reminiscent of Schinkel's pavilion in the Charlottenburg Palace Park, housed the district leadership of the NSDAP during the Nazi era. It was officially called the Ostmarkhaus, but was generally known as the Schwarzhaupt Villa after the previous Jewish owner. In 1935, the city extorted the villa from the widow of the wholesaler Schwarzhaupt for a ridiculous price. After the war, the villa was demolished in 1955 to make way for a new building for the Regensburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In Bad Kissingen, Heinrich von Hügel had the casino built between 1878 and 1880 in collaboration with his construction manager Wilhelm Carl von Doderer. According to his plans and under his construction, the Alice Hospital in Darmstadt (Dieburger Straße 21) was completed in 1883. In order to support this charitable project, von Hügel waived his fee.

Awards and honors

Heinrich Hügel received various honours for his services. In 1867 he was appointed Grand Ducal Hessian Geheimen Baurat and in 1883 he was appointed Royal Bavarian Building Councillor. In 1875 Heinrich Hügel was awarded the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown in the Kingdom of Bavaria and thus raised to the personal nobility for life. In 1881 he was awarded with ennoblement in Austria-Hungary.