Obituary for my friend and companion
by Volkwin Marg
With deep gratitude I say farewell to my friend and companion of many years, Meinhard von Gerkan. Behind us lie six creative decades of shared designing and planning – starting out in our shared student pad and, since 1965, in the office of our architectural partnership. What started as a two-man enterprise with a small ad in the Hamburger Abendblatt (“Architectural drawings produced very cheaply, Tel.: 451026”) has today become a worldwide successful company.
I am proud of what Meinhard and I, together with our partners and staff, have created over the last half century. Proud of our buildings, which enjoy recognition and appreciation in Germany and worldwide. Together, we have always made a stand for good architecture; very often we were successful, and sometimes we were not. At the same time, our working style changed only slightly over the more than fifty years of our time working together. Loosely based on General Moltke’s maxim, “Marching separately, defeating together”, we produced our designs separately, but always discussed all major principles with each other. We were of one mind in our approach to design, so that we were able to act on the basis of the same principles – both conceptually and in terms of content - always discussing the genius loci, the functional purpose, and the need for social quality and dignified architecture. To the very last, we enjoyed our bond based on inspirational cooperation. I will sorely miss this exchange with him.
In addition, we shared the experiences of our generation: the horrors of the Second World War, the consequences of the Cold War, the partition of Germany, the fall of the Berlin Wall, German reunification, and the European Union. We had the good fortune to start in times of peace and to live in a democracy. In both architecture and urban design, we had the freedom to produce solutions for shaping the environment at various different levels. We both felt equally committed to passing on our experience to the younger generation, also outside of our practice. Therefore, our work as university professors and in the gmp Foundation was particularly important to us. Meinhard’s creative thinking will stay alive and flourish, in particular at the Academy for Architectural Culture (aac).
Meinhard von Gerkan passed away surrounded by his loving family. In the end, he lost his strength and his passing came as a relief to him. He reached the end of a truly fulfilled life.
Volkwin Marg
