Otto March (1845-1913)

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  Wilhelm Busch "FINDLINGSSTEINE AUF WIESE MIT SANDIGEN ABBRUCHKANTEN"

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Otto March Biography

(b Berlin, 1 Oct 1845; d Berlin, 1 April 1913). As a student at the Bauakademie and the Preussische Akademie der Künste in Berlin, March was taught by Richard Lucae, Johann Heinrich Strack and Martin Gropius. He then worked (1872–4) for Heinrich von Ferstel in Vienna. He entered the Prussian civil service in 1874 but left in 1880 to set up in practice as a private architect. He had a large clientele among German industrialists, for whom he designed substantial and elegant country houses and villas. His early style was German Renaissance Revival, for example the Villa Holtz (1881–2) in Charlottenburg, Berlin, but later he looked for inspiration to England and the domestic designs of R. Norman Shaw, W. E. Nesfield and T. E. Collcutt. Having visited England repeatedly from 1888, he revealed particularly marked English influences in his Queen Anne Revival design for the Villa Vörster (1893–4), Cologne. As an architect, however, March was versatile. His department store, the Neue Friedrichstrassestore (1895), Berlin, used three-storey bays of glass and iron. His innovative design for the municipal theatre in Worms (1889–90; destr. 1922) attracted much interest. In it he attempted to revive the principles of Shakespearean theatre by building part of the stage out into the auditorium. He also pioneered race-course and stadium design. His Deutsches Stadion (1912; remodelled 1935), Berlin, for the intended Olympic Games of 1916 (cancelled due to World War I) set new standards for modern sports complexes. He published widely on the theory of architecture, particularly on Protestant church building. An early supporter of the urban-planning movement, he initiated the urban-planning competition of 1909 called ‘Die Grosse Berlin’ and organized the first international urban-planning exhibition (1910) in Berlin.

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