Architect Fritz Noppes has shaped the city like no other. In the series “Geretsrieder Lebenslinien” we present his work.
Geretsried / Degerndorf – Fritz Noppes (1895-1982) was the first Geretsried city architect. Many of his plans remained visions. After the end of World War II, for example, he designed a settlement for around 6,000 displaced persons northwest of Blumenstrasse. On the Isar he thought of 482 houses with a lido. He could also imagine a film city in place of the former armaments factories and bunkers. Geretsried should become a “harmonious ideal city”, as he described it in an essay. But all of this was never realized – also due to lack of money. But hundreds of other designs do.
A picture from the old days: the Geretsried city architect with his son of the same name.
© Private
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In November 1949 Fritz Noppes prepared an “economic plan” for Geretsried, which was about to be founded, similar to a current land use plan. The costs for the plan were borne by the State Office for Asset Management and Reparation, under whose administration the site of the former armaments works was at the time. During this time, there were repeated controversial discussions between Noppes and Mayor Karl Lederer and the municipal council, as the former long-time building authority manager Jochen Sternkopf writes in the Geretsrieder chronicle “Eine Doppelschwaige wird Stadt”.
He was also involved in the design of Karl-Lederer-Platz and Neuer Platz
While Noppes was planning houses in the two existing centers of the armaments works DAG and DSC, the municipality wanted to establish a single center in the area of Tattenkofener Straße. The district administrator supported the municipality, but the supreme building authority represented the architect’s opinion. So it came about that Geretsried has no real town center to this day, even if Karl-Lederer-Platz and Egerlandstraße are now undisputedly the centerpiece.
Fritz Noppes was highly recognized by the city fathers of the time, not only because of his professional skills, but also because of his clear ideas and his straightforwardness. From 1956 he ran the “local planning office” as a freelancer, which had roughly the status of a municipal building authority. Until 1976 he had his office in the town hall. There he drew his buildings, such as the now demolished blocks on Egerlandstrasse, the entire residential area around Marienburgweg, parts of the flower district, sports fields and the indoor swimming pool on Jahnstrasse. He was also involved in the design of Karl-Lederer-Platz and Neuer Platz.
Father and son: Fritz Noppes from Degerndorf with a picture of his father. Both have realized joint projects.
© Sabine Hermsdorf-Hiss
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“My father set great store by functionality,” says his son Fritz Noppes junior (81), who lives in Degerndorf. It was important to the architect to create living space for people, preferably close to their workplaces. He worked closely with the building cooperative, of which he was co-initiator. After the primary aim was to give the displaced persons a roof over their heads, from the 1960s onwards Noppes planned more visually appealing houses and apartments for the citizens who had become somewhat prosperous.
“He was an esthete”
The architect who studied architecture, who came from Reichenberg in the Sudetenland and who experienced both world wars and who luckily survived unscathed, no longer had to show any architectural figureheads. Together with his architect colleague Josef Effenberger, he planned the “Städtische Lichtspiele” in Reichenberg in the 1920s, the later Varsava cinema in the art deco style with over 600 seats, as well as numerous representative villas and houses. “He was an esthete. In Geretsried, too, despite all the functionality, he never just wanted something practical, cheap, but something in which people felt comfortable, ”says his son.
Noppes junior and his sister Barbara Wiedemann-Noppes say that they rarely saw their father relaxed and at leisure. He worked until two o’clock in the morning, either in Geretsried or at his desk in the family’s home in Ickingen. The Degerndorfer has fond memories of his childhood and youth in Geretsried. However, his first experience was a shock, he says. When he was about ten years old, he and his father visited the barracks on the Böhmwiese: “Whole families lived there crammed together on five by five meters,” he says.
Fritz Noppes senior died in 1982 at the age of 87
As a teenager he earned his pocket money as a ball boy on the tennis court of the TC Geretsried am Isardamm – 50 pfennigs were given from each player. With this money, Fritz Noppes junior bought material from Gänßbauer Holzbau to build model airplanes. His impression of Geretsried was very good. “The people in always seemed very open to me. I never had the impression that the young people I was with saw themselves as future entrepreneurs, even if their parents had built or rebuilt companies. “
Father and son even carried out one project together in the 1970s. Fritz Noppes junior, who studied mechanical engineering, installed the lifting platform in the indoor pool together with the Filigran Bau company, which makes it possible to separate the non-swimmer area from the swimmer area by lifting the floor.
Fritz Noppes senior died in 1982 at the age of 87 after a fulfilled life. His wife Trude – she, too, an artistically gifted esthete – followed him in 2005 at the age of 93.
Tanja Lühr
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