Adolf Foehr

Originally a German architect who worked mainly in Prague between the wars, he is considered an important representative of conservative, traditionalist architecture, which he managed to develop along the lines of modernism, expressionism, and functionalism. He was born in Nuremberg into the evangelical family of an Annaberg pharmacist. Later, his father moved to Prague for work, followed by the whole family. In Plzeň, Foehr graduated from the State Real Grammar School (Státní reálné gymnázium) and continued his studies at the Prague School of Applied Arts under Friedrich Ohmann and Jan Kotěra. Later, he completed his studies at the Institute of Technology in Zurich, where his practice commenced. He participated in two architectural competitions in Prague, where he won first prize (the central building of the German Savings Bank and the chapel of the German Evangelical Cemetery in Strašnice). His success brought him to Prague permanently. In 1908, he established his own architectural studio in Prague's Holešovice.

As an architect, Foehr particularly made a name for himself among affluent German-speaking clientele. Most of his buildings can be found in Prague and in the border towns of Děčín, Chomutov, Liberec, Lovosice, Karlovy Vary, and Ústí nad Labem. A significant part of his work is represented by bank buildings and administrative palaces, which he mainly designed from the second half of the 1920s. With the palace of the Viennese insurance company Danube (Vídeňská pojišťovna Dunaj) on Národní Avenue in Prague at the forefront, these buildings show the architect's strong sense of monumentality, his work with materials, and his tendency to divide the building into horizontal strips. The transition from the classical look of the façades towards functionalism culminated in the Brandejs department store in Prague, where the architect clearly followed the appearance of the Pettersdorf department store in Wroclaw by the Berlin architect Erich Mendelsohn. Foehr's design office was one of the most prolific in the interwar period. Apart from public buildings, a significant part of the extensive list of buildings is represented by villas (Bloch's villa in Prague, Seidner's villa in Jihlava) and tenement houses, of which around fifty can be found in Prague's Holešovice.

Foehr was also politically active in Prague. From 1921, he was a member of the technical committee of Prague City Council and he served on the council on behalf of the Deutschdemokratischen Freiheitspartei from 1927–1938. At the same time, he was a member of the satirical Schlaraffia society. After the Munich Agreement, he moved with his family to Karlovy Vary, but soon returned to Prague to complete his last contract together with Franz Hruschka – a block of tenement houses called Little Berlin (Malý Berlín) for the German Building Cooperative of Bank and Savings Bank Officials (Stavební družstvo úředníků bank a spořitelen). In 1942, he applied for permission to go back to Germany, but never did. The following year, he died of a brain haemorrhage and cardiac weakness.

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