HÜBSCH, HEINRICH. - German architect, b. at Weinheim, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, on 9 February 1795, d. at Karlsruhe, on 3 April 1863.
After philosophical studies he traveled in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. He subsequently studied architecture in Italy; he was then appointed architect in 1827; he became a professor at that polytechnic, then director in 1842. As an architect, H., in the buildings he constructed, adopted a system in which the motif of the solid center prevails, which, through the modern unexpectedness given to it by the author, stands in evident contrast with the classical systems followed until then. His works include the Palace of the Ministry of Finance, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the court theater at Karlsruhe; the theater and the new market at Baden; the Customs and free-port buildings at Mannheim. He built Catholic and Lutheran churches in very many German cities; he restored the facade of the cathedral of Speyer, the most celebrated and largest of the Romanesque churches of Germany, although the overly radical restorations helped to cause the building to lose its primitive character; he also restored the parish house of Ludwigshafen.
His principal work relating to Christian antiquity is Die altchristlichen Kirchen nach den Baudenkmälern und älteren Beschreibungen, Karlsruhe 1862. Carlo Carletti