Schilling & Graebner

Both Schilling and Graebner had met each other when they were just over 20 years old around 1881 while studying architecture at the Polytechnikum Dresden. Even when they initially went their separate ways after completing their training, they did not lose touch, especially since they both worked in Berlin in two different offices in the mid-1880s. The two architects, who were roughly the same age, complemented each other very well. Together they were a formidable and very versatile team, as evidenced by the fact that they not only designed very complex buildings, but they also showed great stylistic differences amongst their entire oeuvre. Schilling, as the son of the well-known sculptor Johannes Schilling, provided the necessary start-up capital and contacts to numerous potential clients. Graebner's strength, on the other hand, was more artistic design.

Schilling and Graebner hired several trained architects in their firm over the years, including Oswald Bieber, Heino Otto and Johannes Rascher. During the late nineteenth century, their biggest local competitors were probably William Lossow and Fritz Schumacher. At that time, Schilling and Graebner were the leading architects of the fifth largest city in the German Empire. They were generally considered within the first rank of German architects and were particularly regarded as experts in contemporary Protestant church architecture. They were also inspired in their work by suggestions from Franz Wilhelm Dibelius and Cornelius Gurlitt.