Education
Henselmann studied at the Kunstgewerbe school in Berlin from 1922 to 1925.
architect politician member of the Volkskammer
Henselmann studied at the Kunstgewerbe school in Berlin from 1922 to 1925.
His early projects, such as a house on Lake Geneva near Montreux (1930) were Modernist in style, showing a clear Bauhaus influence, and due to this and Henselmann"s partly Jewish ancestry he was prevented from working as a private architect by the Nazi government. After the war he was appointed head architect in the city of Gotha and later in Weimar in the Soviet Zone of Germany, although his projects were subjected to harsh criticism for their Modernism. Henselmann would subsequently design the towers that cap each end of the Stalinallee boulevard (renamed Karl-Marx-Allee in the 1960s) at Frankfurter Tor and Strausberger Platz, which showed the influence of Karl Friedrich Schinkel as well as the "Seven Sisters", the Stalinist "wedding cake" skyscrapers in Moscow.
Henselmann was appointed head architect for the city of Berlin in 1953 and held various town planning positions until his retirement.
Plans for a "Signal Tower" drafted in 1958 became early drafts for the vast Fernsehturm, finished in 1969. Other late projects in a modernist and high rise style included the cylindrical Jen-Tower in Jena and a tower for the Leipzig University in the shape of an open book
Henselmann"s later projects gave a modern, technocratic face to the German Democratic Republic, akin to the skyscrapers being built at the time in Frankfurt. Henselmann retired as an architect in 1972.
He served in Hans Scharoun"s town planning group that tried to convert the Socialist Unity Party of Germany"s leaders to Modernism, although unlike Scharoun, Henselmann stayed in East Berlin after their rejection. He dismissed the brief period of as a "childhood illness", though his buildings on Karl-Marx-Allee are now protected monuments.