Eching: Why did the Wieland house have to go? – Bavaria

Then there were only three: The “Wielandhütt” is history. The unusual summer home of the Swiss painter Hans Beat Wieland was the oldest of four listed houses on the Kaaganger in Eching, and it was the nucleus of a small colony that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. After a conversion that was practically equivalent to a new building, it lost its monument status in 2006 and had become a black building. With the demolition, which was ordered by the Landsberg district office after a long legal dispute, a place where cultural history was written was also lost.

Hans Beat Wieland is said to have discovered the Kaaganger, a meadow surrounded by forest on the way from Eching to Unterschondorf, on a steamer trip in 1899 and bought it soon afterwards. In the 18th century there was a small chapel dedicated to Saint Nicholas in the open space above Lake Ammersee, but it was demolished after secularisation in order to build the schoolhouse in Oberschondorf from the bricks. After that, the Kaaganger was used for agriculture. The malicious joy of the locals is legendary when once again a townsman bought one of their sour lake meadows, which was of little value to them.

Wieland, born in Gallusberg near Mörschwil in 1867, came to Munich in the mid-1880s to study art. He first attended the School of Applied Arts and then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts together with his Swiss colleagues Cuno Amiet and Giovanni Giacometti, who were about the same age, under Nikolaus Gysis and Ludwig von Löfftz, among others. In 1896 and 1897 he took part in two cruises to Spitsbergen as a “drawing reporter”. Back in Munich he married Elsa Henckell. She was the daughter of Rudolf Henckell, the owner of the famous sparkling wine cellar, and also trained as a painter in Munich. The wedding was celebrated in grand style in Mainz in September 1898 and probably with lots of champagne. Wieland designed a representative Art Nouveau villa with forty rooms for his brother-in-law. The magazine “Dekorative Kunst” dedicated a multi-page article to the extravagant design of the “Haus Henckell” in Wiesbaden.

Open detailed view

Wieland, a member of the “Munich Secession” since 1894, soon celebrated successes not only as an architect, but also as a landscape painter. His impressionistic pictures of glacier landscapes are early highlights in his work, later the Bavarian and Swiss Alps were among the favorite motifs of the passionate mountaineer and plein-air painter. The influence of the Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler is unmistakable in Wieland’s work.

Open detailed view

Open detailed view

In 1900, Wieland, who came to Lake Ammersee not only to paint but also to sail, initially built a hut on his property with one large and two smaller rooms. In memory of the Norwegian houses he had seen on his travels, the “Wielandhutt”, as he called his summer home, was painted oxblood red and had a turf roof. In those days, water had to be fetched from the lake or from a nearby spring. Only after the painter Adelbert Niemeyer, who was a friend of Wieland’s, had also built a little summer house on the neighboring property to the north, did the friends together buy the spring above the street. They had water pipes laid to their houses and built a small wayside chapel over the spring. “To commemorate the old St. Nikla chapel, donated by Adelbert Niemeyer and Hans Beat Wieland in 1907” is written on a small plaque.

The “Wielandhütt” was expanded several times after three children were born between 1904 and 1907. In the end, the initially simple dwelling had turned into a small summer villa with several bedrooms, which, however, with its green roof, fitted into the spacious garden that slopes gently towards the lake in such a way that its actual size could not be seen from the street. The beautiful trees on the property and the lovely flowering rock garden are documented in a 1935 painting.

There was also a bathing hut where Wieland sometimes retired to paint. The painting “Ammersee, Wolken und Wasser” was probably created in 1932 down here on the lake shore. Three boats were also purchased for the summer stays: the sailing boat was named “Beata” after the daughter, the rowing boat was named “Klaus” after the older son and the last motor boat purchased was called “Joggeli”. That was the nickname of the younger son, who had actually received his grandfather’s first names and had been christened Richard Rudolf.

The Wieland’s hospitality was legendary

In his “Norwegian” summer house, Wieland also kept souvenirs from his trips north, including a sled and a pair of skis belonging to polar explorer Salomon Andrée. In 1913, a disused cannon was added, which from then on stood on the meadow in front of the house. Gun salutes were fired with it on the Swiss federal holiday, as the youngest son reports about his father in a souvenir booklet.

Above all, however, the lakeside property with the red wooden house was a place to socialize, even after the family had moved to Switzerland during the turmoil of the revolution and only came to Lake Ammersee in the summer holidays. The Wieland’s hospitality was legendary. Not only Fritz and Erich Erler and other members of the artists’ community “Die Scholle” were guests, the painters Julius Diez, Ludwig Herterich, Friedrich Fehr, Fritz Burger and Max Buri also entered the “Hüttenbuch”. Thomas Theodor Heine, Eduard Thöny, Olaf Gulbransson and Ernst Stern went in and out of the “Wielandshütt”. Felix Schlagintweit and Max Reinhardt also belonged to Wieland’s circle of friends.

In particular, Wieland cultivated a close friendship with his neighbor Adelbert Niemeyer, which extended to both families and was maintained by the sons into old age. With Niemeyer, who held a professorship at the Munich School of Applied Arts, Wieland invented the “Cococello”, a one-stringed instrument whose resonance body is made of half a coconut. “With or without friends and guests, you sit by the fireplace in the evening and talk until the guitar finally sounds and Hans Beat sings some of his funny songs in Bavarian or Swiss German,” writes the son in his memoirs.

Open detailed view

Wieland also appeared as an architect on the Kaaganger. In 1912, above the footpath to Schondorf, he planned an equally highly original house for “Privy Councilor Anna Michel”, who was a distant relative of his wife: It is paneled with dark wood and has a boldly curved roof in the shape of a ship’s keel. The white shutters and white fascias that follow the arches of the roof contrast nicely with the dark wood. Mrs. Michel’s daughter married an officer. Colonel Albrecht Schultz wished for many children and made this wish visible from afar: The summer house that he built on his mother-in-law’s property has a semi-circular, bulbous bulge facing the lake and a semi-circular balcony above it. Its white-painted balustrade consists of 15 carved figures of children shaking hands. The wish almost came true, the Schultz couple had at least six children. The locals jokingly called this house “steamboat” because of its unusual shape, sometimes they simply spoke of the “Wielandhütten” when referring to the houses on the Kaaganger.

Hans Beat Wieland died in August 1945, three years after his wife. The four houses that had been built on the Kaaganger by the First World War, like the small wayside chapel, were listed as historical monuments in the 1990s. With the removal of the original “Wielandhütt” a deep wound was inflicted on this uniquely grown ensemble. The house, whose historical roof truss was supported by carved beams in stylized Art Nouveau animal shapes, was not only demolished, but also destroyed with heavy equipment on the instructions of the building authority. Only windows and doors could be saved by the owners.