Garden area Schminke House Digital contributions to the monument value of an outdoor facility

The first private client of Hans Scharoun (1893-1972), Fritz Oswald Schminke (1897-1971), had a villa built in Löbau in 1933 that is an outstanding example of modern architecture. The Villa Schminke is internationally known as the highest-ranking monument to the architecture of classical modernism.

But the building intentions for a "country villa" go back to the middle of the First World War. Wilhelm Schminke, the father of Fritz Schminke, wanted to realize such a villa already in 1916. By the then existing building ban, however, only changes to the property could be made.

The first commission for a garden design was given to the Dresden garden architect Wilhelm Röhnick in 1919. When Scharoun began planning the house in 1930, he wanted to ensure that the already existing garden would become a natural extension of the living spaces. Thus, view axes into the garden are made possible from important common areas of the house. Seen from the garden, the house is both backdrop and staging.

Before deciding to build a new house, the Schminke couple, who were interested in architecture, visited various building exhibitions. The Weißenhof exhibition in Stuttgart in 1927 and the experimental housing estate in Breslau in 1929 were initiated by the German Werkbund and were trend-setting housing estates of the classical modern era. As the already great interest in modern building among the Schminkes was intensified even more by the different housing concepts at the Werkbund exhibitions, Fritz Schminke turned to Hans Scharoun. In 1967, Scharoun himself wrote about this: "The house that was dearest to me was built by the Schminke factory owner in Löbau in Saxony."

The Schminke family used the villa as their home for 12 years. With the end of the Second World War they left the villa. A short time later, Red Army troops seized the building and occupied it with officers. After a year of military occupation, the house was returned to the family. Initially, a rest home was set up for children of bomb-damaged families from Dresden. In April 1951 the Schminkes left Löbau and one year later the city of Löbau became the owner of the building and garden. After 1952, the building and its grounds underwent a variety of changes of use. From the initial kindergarten it became the clubhouse of the "Free German Youth" (FDJ) and then, from 1963, the district pioneer house. From 1990 onwards, the listed building was used as a youth and leisure centre.

As a result of the various claims for use, some of the original fabric of the building and the grounds was lost. In order to stop the progressive decay of the building, the renovation of the building was started in 2000. In May 2009, the city of Löbau and Hess AG established the "Haus Schminke" Foundation, which has been taking care of all matters relating to the complex to this day.

When Wilhelm Schminke had the excavation pit for the new house built in 1916, the soil masses were primarily used to fill in and reshape the terrain, which sloped down towards the north. The garden architect Röhnick designed the Schminke villa garden in 1919 before construction of the house began. On the basis of the already existing terrain modelling, the enclosure in connection with the quarry stone walls, he planned the garden around and anew. Among the most important changes and installations by the garden architect Röhnick are the enclosure to the Kirschallee, the pavilion at the roundel and the bridge between the ponds.
With the definition of the view axes into the garden during the planning of the house, Scharoun wanted to create unity between garden and building. The main planning interventions in the garden by Hans Scharoun's architecture are: The garden gate in the northwest in 1933, the bridge bench on the central garden path in 1934 and in 1937 the brick garden bench in the west, the new utility shed in the west and the garden house in the northeast corner of the property.

Hans Scharoun had already considered changes and improvements to the garden design together with the Hammerbacher-Mattern couple when they visited the house shortly after its completion. In the family's guest book at this time, Scharoun left a sketch of the transformation of the garden pavilion into a garden house. Visits to Löbau by the Mattern couple, who were friends, are also noted there. What influences Herta Hammerbacher or Hermann Mattern had on the design of the Schminke family's garden is not known to this day.