Hans Freese – Architect of a Forced Labour Camp
Hans Freese was born in Oldenburg in 1889, the son of an educated middle-class family, and attended the local Gymnasium (grammar school). He served in the First World War from 1916 to 1918. After studying architecture at the Technical Universities of Munich, Dresden and Berlin under architects Paul Bonatz and Friedrich von Thiersch, Freese worked in various municipal building departments in Germany.
From 1926 onwards, Freese worked as a university lecturer and private architect in Karlsruhe and Dresden. He was also able to continue his career under the Nazis. Probably due to introductions by his former mentor Paul Bonatz, Freese was an artistic consultant in the building of the Reichsautobahn, the German motorways, in 1935 and 1936, designing motorway bridges in Saxony and Thuringia.
Architect on the staff of Albert Speer
From 1937 onwards, Freese was one of the architects commissioned by Albert Speer to design monumental buildings for the redesign of Berlin as the “Capital of the Reich”, colloquially known by “Germania”. Hans Freese produced designs for major architectural projects for the newly created office of the General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital (GBI). Freese’s designs included the Supreme Command Headquarters of the Navy and the GBI’s headquarters on the planned East-West Axis.
Construction of forced labourers’ camps
By 1941, Freese was also a professor at the Technical University of Berlin. The function of the GBI changed during the war. The reconstruction of Berlin was put on hold, as by 1943 all resources had to be channelled into war production. In order to “keep” his architects (and later use them for Germania after all), Speer made them available for work on the construction of air-raid shelters, repairs, the upgrading of railway lines in the Ukraine and the construction of camps for forced labourers. The GBI was involved in the construction of 600 forced labour camps and ran 75 of its own camps in Berlin. In 1943, Hans Freese planned the construction of a forced labour camp, GBI Camp 75/76. It is likely that forced labourers were used to build this camp.
In 1944, Freese and fifty other architects were placed on the “God Gifted List”. This list, drawn up by the Ministry of Propaganda, had, among other ideological functions, the pragmatic purpose of exempting artists who were important to the regime from military service. From that year onwards, Freese was also part of Albert Speer’s Task Force for the Reconstruction of Cities Destroyed by Bombing. After the war, many of these architects were able to slip into this very reconstruction work.
Career in post-war Germany
After the war, Freese’s work also focused on reconstruction projects. He took part in town planning competitions for Potsdam, Oranienburg, Cottbus and Eichwalde, all near Berlin. Freese also held senior posts at the Technical University of Berlin in the post-war period, even serving as its rector from August 1949 to July 1950.
Freese died on 13 January 1953 as a distinguished professor in Berlin.
