POELZIG, HANS

born April 30, 1869, Berlin died June 14, 1936, Berlin German architect who is remembered for his Grosses Schauspielhaus (1919), an auditorium in Berlin that is one of the finest architectural examples of German Expressionism. Poelzig taught at the Breslau Art Academy (190016) and the Technical Academy in Berlin (192035). His Luban Chemical Factory, situated near Posen, and office building at Breslau (both 191112) contained novel elements, but nothing suggesting the imagination evident in his Grosses Schauspielhaus. This structure, a rebuilding of the Schumann Circus, has as its most notable feature an interior lined with stalactite shapes that, particularly under changing lighting conditions, create a grottolike atmosphere. Poelzig's later works, such as the administrative building of I.G. Farben in Frankfurt am Main (1930), although monumental in design, are held to be conventional.