Paul Schneider-Esleben

Paul Maximilian Heinrich Schneider von Esleben (née Schneider, 28 August 1915 – 19 May 2005), known as Paul Schneider-Esleben, was a German architect who worked in the modernist movement, mostly on airports, throughout the 1960s.

Early life Paul Schneider was born in 1915 in Düsseldorf to Maria Anna Elisabeth (née Esleben, 1881–1950) and (1877–1948), an architect,

Before completing his secondary school Abitur, he worked at his father's architectural practice and went on to study architecture at the University of Applied Sciences Stuttgart in 1937. He graduated in 1947; from 1939 to 1945 he suspended his studies to participate in the Second World War. In the 1940s, Schneider changed his surname to include his mother's maiden name. —followed the principles of the New Objectivity movement of the 1920s. In 1955 he won a competition to design the expansion of , Mannesmann's head office in Düsseldorf, He worked with artist members of Zero—Günther Uecker, Heinz Mack, Josef Piene and Joseph Beuys—in 1957–1961 to design the . From 1962 to 1970 he oversaw the redesign of the Cologne Bonn Airport into a layout that was adopted by numerous other international airports

Schneider-Esleben was a professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg from 1961 until 1972 as well as a visiting professor of the Vienna University of Technology in 1965.

Recognition and impact Schneider-Esleben is credited as an influential figure in the post-World War II modernist architectural movement in Germany. He received the North Rhine-Westphalia State Prize for Architecture in 1956, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1968 and 1987, and an honorary doctorate from RWTH Aachen University in 1993. They had three children: Florian (1947–2020), one of the founding members of electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk, Claudia (b. 1949), architect and designer, and Maria Katherina (1955–2002), graphic artist. After separating in 1995, Schneider-Esleben remarried to Anne Margarete Müller (b. 1942), an installation consultant, the following year.