Anton Hoffmann was an important designer and builder in Prussian-time Bydgoszcz during the entire second half of the 19th century. He witnessed the transformation of Bydgoszcz, creating numerous residential buildings throughout the city. His activity became, in a sense, an indicator of Bydgoszcz building traditions, bridging old neo classicist masters and their successors, inspired by Historicism and Art Nouveau.[1]
Anton Hoffmann came from Greater Poland. He was born at the beginning of the 1820s in Chodzież (then Kolmar in Posen). He was the first-born son of Anton Hoffmann, a translator, and Johanna née Braun. His year of birth raises doubts, but one assumes Anton's most reliable date of birth is May 24, 1823.[2]He spent the first several years of his life in his hometown of Chodzież, probably graduating from elementary school here. Then, between 1835 and 1837, the Hoffmanns moved to Łobżenica, but after a few years they moved to Bydgoszcz. In December 1846 they certainly lived in the city, in a rented house or, most likely, their own, marked Nr. 377, at today's Father Ignacy Skorupka street.[3] The exact date of their arrival in the city is known by the registration book where is recorded the birth of Anton's five younger siblings (i.e. between 1840 and 1846[3]).
Anton was registered as involved in masonry when settling in Bydgoszcz: it seems likely he began his apprenticeship in Łobżenica, knowing the basics of profession while arriving in Bromberg at age 23, where he worked as an independent (his first own designs date back to 1847). However, he was getting educated under the direction of mason masters (Hermann Donner, Emst Koch, Johann Wilhelm Krause, Friedrich Meyer, Gottlieb Meyer, Carl Schultz and Wilhelm Adolph Sieg). Anton received his Masonry Master's diploma between 1855 and 1857. On May 8, 1866, Anton Hoffmann married Michalina Święcicka née Woytalewicz, widow of a Bydgoszcz shoemaker, in the parish church of Saints Marcin and Mikołaj in Bydgoszcz.[3] Michalina from the first marriage had eight children, the younger still living with her. Among them was seven-year-old Józef Stanisław (1859–1913), whom Hoffmann educated as a builder. Ha was to become one of the most famous Bydgoszcz architect, i.e. Józef Święcicki. In 1881–1882, Anton and Józef set up a common design studio.[4]
Unlike most construction masters at the time, Anton never built his own home nor lived in a property he owned: he rented the apartments in which he lived and worked.[5] With the help of address books, one can consequently work out the different houses he lived in with his family:[6]
Unlike his colleagues, he was not involved in lucrative and relatively popular real estate: many of his contemporaries purchased plots of land, invested in buildings, and then sold them for profit. Once retired, Anton moved to a rental flat located on the outskirts of the Bielsko Nowe commune. Here he spent the four last years of his life as a rentier. He died on Friday evening, February 14, 1908, and was buried four days later at the Nowofary Cemetery in Bydgoszcz.[7]
Anton's architectural achievements, shaped under the influence of the older generation of architects active in Bydgoszcz from 1825 to the late 1860s, is inscribed in the city landscape. Hoffmann, remarkably, designed and participated in the implementation of construction for half a century, working with most, if not all, of building companies in the city. No one else worked in the construction industry as long as he did. A. Hoffmann was the author of a considerable number of projects made for property owners located in Bromberg and its suburbs. He designed tenement houses, modest front houses, residential outbuildings, craft workshops and various outbuildings: warehouses, stables, laundries, coach houses, sheds and toilets.[3]
By and large, front houses designed by Hoffmann are realized in classicist and neo-renaissance styles: he was a traditionalist, not looking for new solutions, but repeated proven composition patterns. His projects were buildings of simple shapes, bearing no specific features identifying them with their author. He generally based the composition of his edifices on the axis of symmetry, as done according to Neo-Renaissance canons. In addition, the decoration of his buildings was very modest, referring to the Neo-Classicism style.[3]
Listing the overall achievements of Anton Hoffmann is difficult, since the authorship of many edifices, especially those built from 1875 to 1900, remains undetermined. Loyal as he was to stylistic conservatism, Anton could not compete with the skills of the following generation, inspired by historicism and early Art Nouveau: hence he was not remembered for any prestigious building. Be that as it may, Anton Hoffmann made a permanent place in the history of Bydgoszcz architecture and his architectural activity, and his work was appreciated for its reliability.
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