On the death of Karl Ganser

Karl Ganser passed away on April 21, 2022. As Director of the IBA Emscher Park, he was responsible for the largest structural program in Germany from 1989 to 1999. An obituary.

Karl Ganser died on April 21, 2022 at the age of 84 in Nattenhausen, where he spent his retirement in his grandfather’s old village smithy in his home town of Breitenthal. Karl Ganser is considered one of the most important geographers and urban planners in Germany. He has received numerous honors and awards for his work, such as the “National Prize for Integrated Urban Development and Building Culture” from the Federal Ministry of Transport and the Bavarian Nature Conservation Prize. He was committed to issues of urban development and monument protection as well as nature conservation and environmental protection.

He became well known as managing director of the IBA Emscher Park. From 1989 until his retirement in 1999, Karl Ganser was responsible for the largest structural program in Germany. The Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, the Nordsternpark in Gelsenkirchen and the Zollverein in Essen were created under his leadership. He campaigned for the preservation of architectural witnesses to the industrial age in the Ruhr region. He saved buildings such as the gasometer in Oberhausen and the steelworks in Duisburg-Meiderich from demolition. Today, they are crowd-pullers in the region.

The fact that the steel and coal region developed into a knowledge and creative location is ultimately also thanks to Karl Ganser’s imagination and over 100 projects. He drove his ideas forward with great commitment and inspired other people. “He drilled the thickest boards, but with charm,” is how Roland Günther, art historian and biographer of Karl Ganser, describes him. “He was perhaps the most ingenious guy, who always found a way through unbelievable bureaucracies, through a constant ‘can’t, can’t, can’t’, to make it work after all. He made the impossible possible,” says Roland Günther. For this commitment, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia named him the “Architect of the New Ruhr Area”.

Karl Ganser’s career began with a degree in chemistry, biology and geography at the Technical University of Munich. His dissertation from 1964 dealt with the socio-geographical organization of the city of Munich according to election results. After completing his doctorate at the Institute of Geography, Karl Ganser became project manager in the urban development department of the City of Munich. Among other things, he was involved in the planning of the Olympic Games.

In 1970 he habilitated and in 1971 took over the management of the Institute for Regional Studies in Bonn (now part of the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning). He held this position until 1980. Ganser then moved to the Ministry for Regional and Urban Development in North Rhine-Westphalia, where he headed the urban planning department under the leadership of Christoph Zöpel. The 1987 IBA in Berlin prompted Ganser to propose an IBA in the Ruhr region as a structural program to the ministry. From 1989 to 1999, he was the managing director of the IBA Emscher Park. Karl Ganser retired in 1999. During this time, he continued to work as a publicist, expert and mediator.

The film “Geheimnis Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord” by Marika Liebsch tells the story of the Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park. You can find the film here.