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OCR for page 87
ULRICH FINSTERWALDER
1 897-1 988
BY'ANTON TEDESKO
THIS UNIQUELY GIFTED, internationally renowned structural
engineer was born in Munich, Germany, on December 25,
IS97, and he died there on December 5, 1988.
Finsterwalder lived a full life, remaining active until the
very end, which came after a brief illness. He was an enthusiastic
skier in the Alps and continued when he was past ninety.
The task of running his farm was another source of enjoyment.
Of the great structural engineers of this century, U]rich
Finsterwalder should perhaps be ranked among the top
half-dozen. Among this group he was the most versatile.
Finsterwalder was known for his creative construction ideas,
and he had a decisive influence on the modern art of engi-
neering and construction.
Finsterwalder was a designer-constructor, researcher, in-
ventor, entrepreneur, and author. For many years he was
the chief engineer and the driving force behind the works
of Dyckerhoff & Widmann A. G. (Dywidag), the Munich-
based design and construction firm well known for its pio-
neering of reinforced concrete. He eventually became a
member of the firm's executive committee. In recent years
he was an independent consultant.
Finsterwalder was a designer of numerous monumental
and unique structures including buildings, highways, bridges,
dams, shell-type concrete ships, vessels for the transport of
87
OCR for page 88
88
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
liquefied natural gas, floating harbors, and tunnels. The
Dywidag thread bar, a device that has become standard on
many construction jobs throughout the world, was one of
ills Inventions.
He was among the leading innovators in prestressed concrete,
and many of today's standards of that material are the result
of his original ideas decades ago. Finsterwalder was a pio-
neer in free cantilever construction, which is now known as
segmental construction; he originated the stress ribbon bridge
and supervised the design and construction of one of the
first cable-stayed bridges in concrete.
His father, Dr. Sebastian Finsterwalder, a Bavarian, was
professor of mathematics at the Munich Institute of Technology
and became the originator of the fundamental principles
of modern photogrammetry. His mother was a member of
a well-known family from the mountains of South Tyrol,
which was then a part of Austria.
As a teenager, Ulrich Finsterwalder served in Worlc! War I.
Captured by French troops, he spent two years in a prison
camp, a time he used to study mathematics, which became
the foundation for his later scientific efforts and his life as
an engineer.
The following story is illustrative of his personality: The
ancestral family house stood in the southern part of the
Tyrol mountains. After the war this part of the Austrian
province became a permanent part of Italy; the change was
strongly resented by the population of South Tyrol. In
addition, the FinsterwaTcler family objected to fortifications
and antiaircraft batteries installed by the military very close
to the family home. Ulrich Finsterwalder decided that the
house should be moved. He organized his brothers and
with them he patiently numbered every beam and board
and carefully took the chalet-type house apart, piece by
piece. With his brothers he trucked the material one hundred
miles to North Tyrol where they reassembled the house at
the foot of mountains that are quite similar to those where
the house had previously stood. Today the old family home
stands in Going, Austria.
OCR for page 89
ULRICH FINSTERWALDER
89
UIrich attended the Munich Institute of Technology and
graduated with a doctorate in engineering, based on a thesis
of his bending theory of cylindrical shells. He excelled in
statics and dynamics and had an uncanny judgment as to
stresses and flow of forces. He was most productive in
coming up with new systems in design and construction
technologies. His love of engineering was reflected in his
inspired contributions. Always present in his mind was this
question: "How can it best be built?"
Dr. Finsterwalcler demanded as much of himself as he
did of others; at the same time, he was personally modest
and pleasant to work with. Coworkers and those who worked
under him considered it a privilege to be involved in his
efforts, were constantly astonished by how prolific he was,
and marvelled at his inventiveness, stamina, ant! tenacity.
He was a great teacher, judging the work of others fairly.
He spoke out against low-quality work and wasteful and
poorly conceived solutions.
He has left behind his imprint on millions of square feet
of long-span concrete shell structures as well as hundreds
of bridges in many nations. His first major shell structures,
the Great Market Halls of Frankfurt, Budapest, and Cologne,
were built in the 1930s. Long-span airplane hangars followed.
His first major prestressed concrete spans over the Rhine
River at Worms were built in 1953. Bridges in central and
southern Europe followed. One of his favorite designs was
the spectacular Mangfall Bridge that, like the Brooklyn Bridge,
was designed so that pedestrians can walk through the structure.
His Bendorf Bridge (1964) over the Rhine River, a 4,000-
foot prestressec! concrete crossing with a main span of 682
feet, served as the textbook for later structures of this kind.
The span was a record at that time but soon thereafter was
exceeded by the 754-foot Urado Bridge in Japan.
In Japan alone, there were more than one hundred bridges
built prior to 1973 that were based on Finsterwalder's designs
and construction techniques. His lectures in the United
States in the mid-1960s led to numerous other such struc-
tures in California, Hawaii, and Canada.
OCR for page 90
go
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
In recent years he was involved in numerous studies of
major bridges and tunnel projects, including proposals for
crossings of the British Channel, the Bosporus, and the
Strait of Messina. He was pleased when at age ninety he
was appointed to the multigovernment planning board for
the proposed Brenner crossing of the Alps. Also in 1988 in
a joint venture with a New York City firm, he participated
in a proposal for a new I,600-foot suspension span to replace
the Williamsburg Bridge in New York. Dr. Finsterwalder
was also a consultant in the early planning for Florida's
Dame Point Bridge, a cable-stayed span that established
the U.S. record at 1,300 feet.
UIrich Finsterwalder's honors and awards were many, and
they came from governments, engineering groups, and
educational institutions throughout the world. His first
American award, the Longstreth Medal of the Franklin In-
stitute of The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, came even
before World War IT. In addition to honorary membership
in the American Concrete Institute, he was accorded the
Institute's Charles S. Whitney Medal in 1967 for "distinguished
contributions to the engineering development of concrete
shells and prestressed bridges."
He was the first bridge engineer to receive the International
Award of Merit from the International Association for Bridge
and Structural Engineering (1977) and was also the first
non-American structural engineer to be elected a foreign
associate of the National Academy of Engineering of the
United States (1976~.
Other honors included the Inventor's Prize of Honor of
the German Fecleral Republic, the Great Cross of Merit
also of Germany, the Fritz Schumacher Prize of the Senate
of the City of Hamburg, the Emil Morsch Medal of the
German Concrete Association, and the honorary membership
in the British Concrete Society. He was elected an extraordinary
member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and re-
ceived honorary doctorates of the universities at Munich
and Darmstadt, the Carl Friedrich Gauss Medal, the Gustave
OCR for page 91
ULRICH FINSTERWALDER
9
Magnet Gold Medal of Belgium, and the Freyssinet Medal
of the International Federation for Prestressing. He held
nearly twenty patents on his inventions and authored more
than eighty technical papers including some on specialized
subjects, for example, self-stressing trusses or a slipform-
constructed, suspended floating underwater bridge (a tun-
nel) .
His love and devotion to his family were outstanding. In
the days that followed World War IT, food shortages were
not uncommon in devastated Germany, and the Finsterwaid~er
family was not alone in their needs. As a result, UIrich
made frequent nightly trips on foot across the mountains
into Austria in order to bring back food for his family.
Such crossings were forbidden and violators were threatened
with the death penalty. On one occasion UIrich was arrested
by a border patrol guard, but speaking to the man as a
priest would have talked, he convinced the guard that the
moral law of a father and a husband was stronger than the
rules of military occupation authorities. The guard let
Finsterwalder escape.
Those postwar days resulted in Finsterwalder's purchase
of a cow, and this led to his interest in farming. A family-
owned large dairy farm was the outcome of this, and
Finsterwalder's ingenious mind was in evidence even in this
endeavor; for example, the cow barn was a concrete shell.
His family included his wife, Eva; three sons, Klemens,
Lorenz, and Thomas; two daughters, Ruth and Renate; and
twelve grandchildren. Three of the children have doctorate
degrees in engineering or science. Thomas, the youngest,
also a Munich engineer, holds the world record in hang-
gliding. The Finsterwalder name is known not only for
imaginative bridges designed by the father but also for the
hanggliders researched, designed, and built by his son Thomas.
When death came in a Munich hospital, he was surrounded
by his family. His last words to them were "Love is the
most important foundation of our existence."
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Jo Hi. ~
Representative terms from entire chapter:
shell structures
