(b Mallmitz, Poland, 1902; d Wiesbaden, Germany, 1978). German architect. He studied architecture at the Technische Hochschulen in Munich and Charlottenburg, Berlin. He worked in Theodor Fischer’s office in Munich (1925–6), was a trainee architect (1927–9) and managed an office for Dominikus Böhm before entering private practice in 1931. He also became director of the construction department (1934–6) of the Heinkel aeroplane works at Oranienburg, where he made his name as an industrial architect. His factory buildings were modern in character but incorporated subtle neo-classical features. The factory halls were designed along an axis corresponding to the production stages and achieved monumentality through their tower-like features. For the adjoining workers’ village he designed different types of traditional-style houses with steep saddle roofs, some with stables and vegetable gardens, all arranged in rows as in traditional villages. In this work and as director of the construction departments (1937–45) of the Wohnungswerke A.G., Salzgitter, for Reichswerke Hermann Goering, where he designed plans for the Hermann-Goering-Werke town (1937; unexecuted), Rimpl expressed a connection between economics, politics and urban planning that was in accordance with Nazi theories. From 1944 he was a member of Albert Speer’s staff planning the reconstruction of destroyed towns. In 1946 he set up an independent office in Mainz and then Wiesbaden; he was one of the architects of the Third Reich who continued to receive state commissions and were involved in the development of West German architecture after 1945. Later buildings included steel works (from 1949), Brunswick; the Modernist Bundeskriminalamt and village for civil servants (1953–4), Wiesbaden; housing for employees of the Bundespostministeriums (1954) in Bad Godesberg; and the Ingenieurakademie Gauss (1960–64; now the Technische Fachhochschule), Berlin.

• Rimpl, Herbert
  • Germany, §II, 7(i): Architecture, 1900–39
  • Germany, §II, 7(ii): Architecture, after World War II
  • Nazism, §2: Art and architecture
  • Urban planning, §V, 4: c 1890–1945: Functionalism