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George Bahr

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Name
  
George Bahr

Structures
  
Dresden Frauenkirche

Role
  
Architect


Died
  
March 16, 1738, Dresden, Germany

George Bahr (15 March 1666 – 16 March 1738) was a German architect.

Life

George Bahr was born into a poor family of in Furstenwalde (now a part of Geising, Saxony), the son of a weaver. The village priest, however, helped pay for his education, and Bahr was able to become a carpenter’s apprentice in Lauenstein, Saxony.

In 1690, Bahr went to Dresden to start work as a carpenter. His dream was to go to Italy and see the famous buildings there, so in his spare time he studied mechanics, calling himself both an artist and a mechanic, and designing not only castles and palaces but also sketches of organs.

In 1705, aged 39, Bahr was named Dresden’s City Master Carpenter, although he did not even have a master carpenter’s certificate. One of Bahr’s main goals was to modernise the city’s churches. He believed that the existing buildings did no justice to Protestant church services in particular.

His first building was the parish church in the Loschwitz area of Dresden, a building in the shape of a stretched-out octagon, completed in 1708.

The Dresden Waisenhauskirche (Orphanage Church) was built around 1710, followed by the Dreifaltigkeitskirche (Trinity Church) in Schmiedeberg, in the Ore Mountains, 1713-1716. Between 1719 and 1726 the church in Forchheim was built, as well as more in Konigstein, Hohnstein and Kesselsdorf (all in Saxony) and a considerable amount of housing in Dresden.

But Bahr is most famous for designing the Frauenkirche in Dresden. He was given the task in 1722; in 1726, the design was approved and work began. From 1730, Bahr became the first in Germany to go by the title of “Architect”.

Whilst working on the Frauenkirche, Bahr also oversaw the building of the Dreikonigskirche (Church of the Three Kings) in Dresden’s Neustadt area – the church had however been designed by Matthaus Daniel Poppelmann.

George Bahr did not live to see the Frauenkirche completed – he died in Dresden, aged 72, and was buried in the church’s vaults. In 2004, a memorial was built to him in the castle at Lauenstein, where he learned his trade.

References

George Bahr Wikipedia