Gottfried Semper
German architect and theorist of the Semper Opera House.
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Gottfried Semper was a 19th-century architect known for his writings on architecture's origins and his role in the polychrome controversy.[1] Semper's portfolio included both large-scale urban planning, like the Ringstraße redesign in Vienna, and small objects, such as a conductor's baton made for Richard Wagner.[1] Wagner repurposed Semper's unbuilt Munich opera house design for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus without obtaining permission.[1]
Life and work
He studied historiography and mathematics at the University of Göttingen starting in 1823.[2] He traveled to Paris in 1826 to work for architect Franz Christian Gau.[3] Between 1830 and 1833 he studied ancient architecture in Italy and Greece.[3] His 1834 publication on polychrome architecture brought him recognition across Europe.[3]
He became a professor of architecture in Dresden on September 30, 1834.[4] Born in 1803 in Hamburg, Semper came from a prosperous industrialist family.[2] In 1851 The Four Elements of Architecture came out, and in 1852 Science, Industry and Art was published.[5] In 1861 the municipality of Affoltern am Albis granted Swiss citizenship to Semper and his family as compensation for his work designing their church's bell-tower.[6]
What the cited sources add
The account details that Semper designed a church tower with a stepped gable, executed by his son Manfred as site manager.[7] The community of Affoltern granted Semper citizenship as compensation more valuable than any fee.[7] Semper escaped to Paris, where he faced poverty, and then moved on to London.[7]
References
- Wikipedia, "Gottfried Semper" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Dorothea Schröder: "Nibelungenring und mystischer Knoten. Gottfried Sempers Entwurf zu einem Taktstock für Richard Wagner" Jahrbuch des Museum für Kunst und Gew (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Gottfried Semper" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hölz, "Semper, Gottfried", Neue Deutsche Biographie, 2010; Hölz, "Semper, Gottfried", Neue Deutsche Biographie, 2010 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Gottfried Semper" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Rimmer, "The Symbolic Form of Architecture: An investigation into its philosophical foundations and a discussion on the development of the perception of architectural form by modern heoreticians and symbolist architects" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Gottfried Semper" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: H.A. Meek, The Synagogue, Phaidon, 1995, p. 188 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Gottfried Semper" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Curl, "A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture", Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 880 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Gottfried Semper" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bussmann, "Wie Gottfried Semper Schweizer wurde", In: ETHeritage. Highlights aus den Archiven und Sammlungen der ETH Zürich., 2 September 2016 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Bussmann, "Wie Gottfried Semper Schweizer wurde", In: ETHeritage. Highlights aus den Archiven und Sammlungen der ETH Zürich., 2 September 2016. facts only, no text reused. etheritage.ethz.ch
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Gottfried Semper (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Gottfried Semper (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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