Gustav Friedrich Halmhuber was born and died in
Stuttgart. At the same time he was attending courses at the
Stuttgart Fine Arts Academy ("Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart"). Subsequently, he also studied at the
Fine Arts Academies in Berlin and
Karlsruhe. At Karlsruhe he studied with the painter-professor
Ferdinand Keller. Following the conclusion of his formal training Halmhuber worked briefly in
Nuremberg with the architect
Adolf Gnauth. In 1885 a nationwide competition was launched for the design of a large
water tower for
Mannheim. The organisers included the stipulation that the exterior of the tower should be both simple and worthy to fit in with the surrounding city architecture. This was in a quarter of Mannheim full of modern houses, many of them representative of the richly forthright
Willhelmine style. Most of the 74 submissions considered by the jury were content to feature iron structures. Gustav Halmbuber was only 23, but his 60-meter-tall winning design, which earned him a 1,000 Mark prize, as well as considerable fame in the appropriate quarters, featured a yellow sandstone facing and drew unapologetically on models from Roman antiquity. The tower was constructed between 1886 and 1889, by which time Halmhuber had relocated to
Berlin and, it would appear, lost interest in attempting to oversee the tower's construction. The city authorities sent him several requests, seeking his support over problems with the building contractors, but Halmhuber seems to have been unable to help: it is not known whether he responded to an invitation from the city fathers to visit Mannheim and see the tower after the scaffolding had been removed during or shortly after March 1889. While he was engaged on the Reichstag project he was "spotted" by the sculptor
Reinhold Begas, at whose instigation in 1894 he was offered, and accepted, a commission to draw up plans for the
National Kaiser Wilhelm Monument in central Berlin. While Begas himself led up a small team creating the equestrian figure of
the late emperor, Halmhuber dealt with the extensive architectural aspects of the structure. The bombastic layout and overwhelmingly masculine selection of sculptures were revealing, possibly in ways that the designers did not intend. It was (and more than a century later remains) controversial. During his later career Halmhuber was increasingly, though never exclusively, focused on teaching. Between 1897 and 1906 he taught at the
Stuttgart Institute of Technology ("Technische Hochschule Stuttgart"). Moving to
Cologne he found time to produce a design for an extensive redevelopment of the
"Fine Arts Museum" ("Kunstgewerbemuseum") while serving, till 1909, as director at the institution then known as the
"Kunstgewerbeschule" ("School of Arts and Crafts"). He also taught at Cologne's recently relaunched
"Commercial Academy" ("Handelshochschule"). Eggert was conspicuously absent on 20 June 1913 when
the emperor visited Hannover to attend the celebration for the inauguration of the new city hall. ==Recognition==