Ludwig Hilberseimer

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Ludwig Hilberseimer" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer (September 14, 1885 – May 6, 1967) was a German architect and urban planner best known for his ties to the Bauhaus and to Mies van der Rohe, as well as for his work in urban planning at Armour Institute of Technology (now Illinois Institute of Technology), in Chicago, Illinois.^[1][2]

Hilberseimer was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, on 14 September 1885. In 1906, he began his studies in architecture at the Karlsruhe Technical University. Following graduation in 1911, Hilberseimer moved to Berlin where he worked in the office of Heinz Lassen before starting his own practice in 1914.^[3] During World War I, he led the planning office for Zeppelinhallenbau (aircraft hangars) in Berlin Staaken. Beginning in 1919, he was member of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst and November Group, worked as independent architect and town planner, and published numerous theoretical writings on art, architecture, and city planning.

In 1929, Hilberseimer was invited to teach at the Bauhaus by then director Hannes Meyer. In July 1933, Hilberseimer and Wassily Kandinsky were the two members of the Bauhaus that the Gestapo identified as problematically left-wing. In 1938, Hilberseimer followed Mies van der Rohe to Chicago where he became director of city planning at the Armour Institute, later renamed the Illinois Institute of Technology. Hilberseimer taught at IIT for several decades before his death in 1967.