Walter Rossow (1910–1992 · garden architect)

Rossow was born in 1910 in the Berlin district of Rixdorf, which was later renamed Neukölln to shed the former’s infamous reputation as a nightclub quarter. In 1926, Rossow began an apprenticeship as a gardener and passed his exam as a garden technician in 1932. A year later, he was hired by the office of garden technician Martha Willings, where he soon became a partner and from 1940 held the job of managing director. After the Second World War, Rossow was put in charge of green spaces to be created in the American sector. In 1948, he became a lecturer at the Berlin College of Fine Arts. Regarded as one of the most important landscape architects of the 1950s to 1970s, Rossow worked closely with Hans Scharoun and Egon Eiermann. In the early 1950s, Hans Hoffmann designed extensions to the Schillerpark Estate. Within this framework, Rossow planned and revised the greenery and open spaces of Schillerpark, including the park and the adjacent housing estate. Rossow's most famous works include the greens of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin's Hansa Quarter and in the Tiergarten, whose reconstruction he managed in 1950-51. From 1966 to 1975, he headed the Institute for Landscape Planning at the University of Stuttgart, and from 1976 he oversaw the Department of Architecture at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Rossow died in 1991 in Berlin.