Finsterwalder, Ulrich

Civil engineer

Born: 25.12.1897 in Munich

died: 05.12.1988 in Munich

Finsterwalder, brother of the architect Eberhard Finsterwalder, began his career as a structural engineer and designer at Dyckerhoff & Widmann (Dywidag) in Munich after studying civil engineering at the Technical University of Munich, where his father worked as a geodesist and professor of mathematics. In 1925, he moved to the company's Biebrich headquarters. In 1930, Finsterwalder obtained his doctorate with a thesis on the deformation calculation of circular segment shells, which was mainly used in bridge construction. In 1933, he took over the management of the design office at Dyckerhoff & Widmann. He was a member of the management team from 1941 and became a personally liable partner in 1949. The self-supporting prestressed concrete shell roof of the Schwarzwaldhalle in Karlsruhe, which he designed in 1973, caused a sensation with a surface area of 46 by 73 meters. The Nibelungen Bridge over the Rhine near Worms (1952), which he designed, was one of the very first prestressed concrete bridges with a span of 114 meters.

In Wiesbaden, Finsterwalder became known primarily as the designer of the Dyckerhoff Bridge, which spans the harbor exit of the Schierstein harbor in an elegant arch. The structure, built in 1967 as a prestressed concrete construction, in the planning of which architect Gerd Lohmer was also involved alongside Finsterwalder, was donated to mark the 100th anniversary of the Dyckerhoff cement works. Finsterwalder was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1963 and an honorary doctorate from the Technical Universities in Darmstadt and Munich in 1950.