(b Cologne, 12 Aug 1841; d Berlin, 11 Aug 1924). German architect. He studied at the Bauakademie, Berlin, under Julius Raschdorff and Karl Bötticher, before travelling in Italy (1868–9), funded by winning the Schinkel Prize. On his return to Berlin he set up in private practice. His large output was immensely varied. He held many official posts and designed a large number of prestigious buildings. From 1871 to 1882 he was head of the building department of a railway company, the Berlin Anhaltischen Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft. In this capacity he designed several railway stations, including the Anhalter Bahnhof (1875–80; destr.) in Berlin. Schwechten also designed railway bridges, including the Rheinbrücke (1880–85) in Mainz, and the Hohenzollernbrücke (1907–11) and the Südbrücke (1907–10), both in Cologne. He was one of the first architects approached by Emil Rathenau, founder of the Allgemeine-Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), to design some of the company’s factories, including that in Ackerstrasse (1888–90) and the Gothic entrance portal (1897) for the factory complex in Brunnenstrasse, both in Berlin. A distinguished figure of Berlin’s architectural establishment, he was a member of the Prussian Akademie der Künste and the Bauakademie. In 1902 he established his own atelier at the Technische Hochschule, Charlottenburg. Schwechten was equally successful in the field of official architecture. In 1890 he won the competition for the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (1891–5; destr. 1945; ruins survive), Berlin, which became a model for many Romanesque Revival churches throughout Germany. His designs for the imperial palace (1905–10) in Posen (now Poznan, Poland), were also Romanesque Revival, the heavy symbolism of which had made it one of the official styles under Emperor William II.

• Schwechten, Franz
  • Dessau
  • Poznan