Willy Weyres

He was Kölner Dombaumeister [de] from 1944 to 1972, diocesan master builder for the Archdiocese of Cologne for more than ten years, and full professor of architectural history and monument preservation at the RWTH Aachen from 1955 until his retirement in 1972.

The latter in particular convinced him to study architecture, whereupon Weyres transferred to the Rheinisch Westfälische Technische Hochschule in Aachen in 1924, where Hans Karlinger was one of his teachers.

As early as 1945, Weyres had also been appointed as Cologne's diocesan architect and was thus responsible for the reconstruction of the approximately 200 destroyed churches in the archdiocese as well as around 25 new buildings until 1955.

In 1988, he published the comprehensive work Die vorgotischen Bischofskirchen unter dem Kölner Dom on the early history of the cathedral.

As a young architect specialising in the preservation of monuments, Weyres was mainly involved in the restoration of numerous churches in the Rhineland and the Eifel in the 1930s.

An early rescue measure was also directed at the south transept, whose southwest corner had suffered severe damage from a bomb strike.

Weyres also made the decision, which was considered far-sighted, not to fill in the site about two metres below the current floor, but to secure it statically with concrete and make it permanently accessible.

He engaged young and established artists who introduced numerous modern elements and sculptures to the freely designed components that did not directly affect the architectural form as a whole.

[3][4] The destroyed organ was replaced by a new one, for which Weyres had a completely new concrete structure built on the east side of the northern transept.

He drew on architects such as Dominikus and Gottfried Böhm, Hans Schilling [de] and Rudolf Schwarz and significantly promoted modern church building during this period.

[6] Weyre's approach to the new buildings in the diocese, which was considered successful, was characterised by the idea of "[bringing in] the best architect possible and then [allowing him] the greatest possible degree of freedom".