Old waterworks (Bonn)

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Old waterworks, pump house (2012)
Aerial view of the pump house (left) and the machine and boiler house (right)

The old waterworks is an ensemble of buildings in Bonn , whose pump house housed the plenary hall of the German Bundestag from 1986 to 1992/93 . It dates back to the end of the 19th century and used to be used to supply the city with water . Today it contains office and conference rooms. It is located above the banks of the Rhine (Stresemannufer) near the Bundeshaus in the Gronau district at Hermann-Ehlers-Straße 29.

history

The in neo-Gothic waterworks held forms was built in 1873 by the Rhenish Wasserwerksgesellschaft to Bonn Rhein - bank filtrate to supply; the opening took place on April 1, 1875. At first it consisted of a machine house, a boiler house , a chimney, a well and a home for the machinist. On April 1, 1900, the plant was acquired by the city of Bonn, which had it expanded to include a second well, a pump house with two additional piston pumps and two compound steam engines . In 1912 the coal shed at the pumping station of the waterworks was enlarged, in 1915 the apartment was slightly rebuilt and in 1919 the construction of the machinist's apartment was changed. In 1952 the property was fenced in and two pump houses and a well house were built.

After Bonn had been supplied with water from the Wahnbachtalsperre since the early 1950s , the waterworks was shut down in 1958. It was now in the immediate vicinity of the Bonn buildings of the German Bundestag in and on the Bundeshaus. In 1965 the Federal Republic of Germany acquired the two buildings; In the course of this, a large part of the technical systems was dismantled. The waterworks served until the construction of a replacement building in 1984/85 for water treatment for emergency reserves. When the plenary hall of the parliament was demolished in the late 1980s for the construction of a new building in the same place, the Bundestag needed an alternative quarter. The choice fell on the pump house of the former Gronau waterworks between the Bundeshaus and the Langer Eugen high-rise building . It was converted into a meeting room (so-called substitute plenary hall ), and the so-called “Lion Walk” was created as a connecting passage between it and the machine and boiler house; the topping-out ceremony took place on September 25, 1985.

The substitute plenary chamber of the Bundestag in the former pump house during the state act for long-time Federal Minister Gerhard Schröder (1990)

On September 9, 1986, the German Bundestag met for the first time in the old waterworks. The historic parliamentary resolutions on German reunification and the capital city resolution were taken at the time the replacement plenary hall was in use . With 500 m², the building has about half the floor space of the old and the new plenary hall, which means that the members of parliament were very cramped. Some participants report that the meetings were therefore exceptionally peaceful. After reunification, the shortage of space was exacerbated by the additional MPs from the new federal states, which is why folding chairs had to be set up in some cases. The last session of the Bundestag was to take place in the waterworks on October 29, 1992; after technical problems with the new building of the plenary hall, however, it was again used as a conference venue from November 24, 1992 to September 10, 1993. Subsequently, parliamentary group meetings of the parties represented in the Bundestag were held there occasionally . In mid-June 1996 an international Tibet conference with the participation of the Dalai Lama took place at the waterworks . Following the move of the Bundestag to Berlin, the city of Bonn took over the rights of use for the buildings from the federal government in 1999 and made them available to the International Congress Center Bundeshaus Bonn (today: World Conference Center Bonn (WCCB) ) for congress and event use. In 2012, the interior was completely renovated and the lion's walkway was completely overhauled, and the facade was renovated the following year.

The former substitute plenary hall during a European People's Party Congress (2009)

The area of ​​the pump house, machine house and boiler house as well as the machinist's house (“doctor's house”) is to become part of the UN campus in the future , which consists of the Langen Eugen and parts of the Federal Palace. For this expansion of the UN campus, the rights of use were again transferred to the Federal Republic of Germany. Since November 30, 2015, the buildings are no longer available for WCCB events and the general public. On this date the Federal Real Estate Agency took over the management of the property. It is planned to renew the technical equipment and the seating in the plenary hall and to install interpreting booths.

The Old Waterworks stands as a monument under monument protection and is a station of the historical round path towards democracy . The entry in the list of monuments of the city of Bonn took place on June 27, 1985.

architectural art

At the access area to the waterworks, the “mirror pond” (currently stored) by the artist Adolf Luther from 1982 is located as an art in the building . The work entitled Integration Water Lenses (Hommage à Monet) consists of 16 round, convex and arched movable concave mirror lenses on an artificially created water basin, five of which were added in 1990 as a result of reunification to represent the new federal states. It is a reminder of the water lily paintings by the French impressionist Claude Monet . Hann Trier's oil painting Counter (Large Composition) (1976) by Hann Trier was hung in the waterworks in 1986 as a supplement to the plenary hall .

Others

From April 2014, the waterworks was the broadcasting location for the ZDF program Vier sind das Volk with Wigald Boning as moderator and Bernhard Hoëcker , Sebastian Pufpaff , Philip Simon , Susanne Pätzold , Kai Magnus Sting and Wolfgang Trepper as politicians.

Web links

Commons : Altes Wasserwerk  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry by Elke Janßen-Schnabel on the monument area of ​​the government district in Bonn ( report ) in the database " KuLaDig " of the Rhineland Regional Association , accessed on July 24, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b c Entry on old waterworks, temporarily seat of the German Bundestag, Hermann-Ehlers-Straße 29 in the database " KuLaDig " of the Rhineland Regional Association (with a brief description of the LVR Office for Monument Preservation in the Rhineland , 2005)
  3. ↑ a b Landschaftsverband Rheinland , Udo Mainzer (Ed.): Yearbook of the Rhenish Preservation of Monuments. Volume 38, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-7666-0177-6 , p. 178.
  4. ↑ Karl-Heinz van Kaldenkerken , Oberstadtdirektor Bonn (ed.); Friedrich Busmann : Expansion of the federal capital. 10 years capital city agreement 1975 - 1985 . Bonn 1986, p. 59.
  5. ^ A b Bundestag in Bonn: "Langer Eugen", "Wasserwerk" and "Behnisch-Bau" , German Bundestag
  6. ↑ German Bundestag: Plenary Minutes 10/227 (PDF file)
  7. ↑ German Bundestag: Plenary minutes 12/115 (PDF file)
  8. ↑ German Bundestag: Plenary Minutes 12/122 (PDF file)
  9. ↑ German Bundestag: Plenary Minutes 12/174 (PDF file)
  10. ↑ Mehr Mut , Der Spiegel , No. 24/1996, June 10, 1996
  11. ↑ China - Tibet , Die Zeit , No. 30/1996, July 19, 1996
  12. ↑ beyß architects: Waterworks and Pump House (reference sheet ) ( Memento from December 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF)
  13. ^ Projects ( Memento from June 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), Antonia Petschat
  14. ↑ UN campus is being expanded , General-Anzeiger , May 30, 2011.
  15. ↑ Statement of the administration: Plenary hall of the German Bundestag in the old waterworks (Hermann-Ehlers-Str. 29 / Stresemann-Ufer) , printed matter no. 1410743ST2
  16. ^ Events in the waterworks and pump house ( Memento from July 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), World Conference Center Bonn; queried on November 26, 2015
  17. ↑ Altes Wasserwerk , WDR local time from Bonn
  18. ↑ Printed matter no. 1510087ST6: Statement from the administration: Advice on the budget charter for the 2015/2016 budget years as well as the financial and investment program 2014 to 2019 and the budget security concept 2015 to 2024 Committee for Economy and Employment Promotion from April 28, 2015 Online PDF / Online in the Bonn Council and Information -System
  19. ↑ The old waterworks becomes a UN fortress , Express, December 2, 2015
  20. ↑ List of monuments of the city of Bonn (as of March 15, 2019), p. 25, number A 870
  21. ↑ General-Anzeiger, August 10, 1985, Bonn city edition, p. 4.
  22. ↑ Statement of the administration: Plenary hall of the German Bundestag in the old waterworks (Hermann-Ehlers-Str. 29 / Stresemann-Ufer) , Bonner Rats-Informationssystem, printed matter no. 1010758ST2
  23. ↑ Development plan No. 6720-1 of the federal city of Bonn - Bonn district, Gronau district , p. 18
  24. ^ Gabriele Zabel-Zottmann: Sculptures and objects in the public space of the federal capital Bonn - installed from 1970 to 1991 . Dissertation, Bonn 2012, part 2, p. 37. ( online PDF ; 5.8 MB)
  25. ↑ Integration of water-lenses (homage to Monet) , Museum of 1000 Places ( Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning )
  26. ↑ Ute Chibidziura: Inventory of art in building at the federal government . In: Federal Ministry for Transport, Building and Urban Development (Ed.): Art value, asset value, monument value. What is the value of art in architecture? - 11th workshop talk (PDF), September 2012, pp. 2–10 (here: p. 8).
  27. ↑ Four are the people ( Memento from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive )

Coordinates: 50 ° 43 '9.3 "  N , 7 ° 7' 35.2"  E