Box Seven

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Box Seven , briefly known as the Freudenberg Areal , is a new residential area in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain . It is surrounded by Boxhagener Strasse , Holteistrasse and Weserstrasse to the south, west and north; to the east is the feather passage. The area in the form of an irregular square covers 26,000  square meters and is part of Block 74 . At the end of the 19th century, industrial companies were established on this site, which have been gradually abandoned since 1990. The AG Bauwert Investment Grouphad rental and condominium buildings built here between 2015 and 2018. The building ensemble received its final name at the beginning of 2017, derived from the location on Boxhagener Straße and in the vicinity of Boxhagener Platz and the number of individual properties. The investor officially completed the quarter in spring 2019.

Interior of the new residential complex, February 2019

history

First settlement, district foundation and company settlement, 1771 to 1920

Memorial plaque for Siegfried Hirschmann

In 1771, under the direction of Friedrich II, eight properties were first settled near the Boxhagen suburb , which for centuries was the only settlement in today's Friedrichshain. Three of these properties are on the area of ​​what is now Box Seven. In 1810 the newly founded manor district Boxhagen-Rummelsburg bought parts of it and built a school and a cemetery. This cemetery only disappeared in the 1950s due to grandfathering.

In 1894, the entrepreneur Siegfried Fritz Hirschmann acquired the building land advertised on the surrounding property from the previous owner, the laundry operator Wilhelm Spindler . His company, the Deutsche Kabelwerke (at that time still Siegfried Hirschmann OHG ) built a factory hall there to expand the production of cable and rubber products . In 1896, production was relocated to the 5,000 square meter property and the company was renamed a stock corporation . The main building of Deutsche Kabelwerke was built on the east side, which was only demolished in 2006 because of soil contamination .

From 1906, Hirschmann had the civil engineer Karl Bernhard build a large steel skeleton workshop for the Cyklon machine factory on the property (number 80).

In 1920, when Boxhagen-Rummelsburg was incorporated into Greater Berlin , there was also the Friedländer welding sheet factory (numbers 79 and 80) on the area described above, in addition to the Deutsche Kabelwerke (n) and the Cyklon machine factory . The porters, stokers and other employees lived in the factory entrance buildings like a cook. The cheap and popular motorized tricycles Cyklonette and later four-wheeled automobiles were manufactured until 1922 . After several company takeovers, the Cyklon brand became the property of Bayerische Motorenwerke (BMW) in 1928 . Around 23,000 square meters of today's site were owned by the parent company Deutsche Kabelwerke during this time, with the exception of the cemetery that is no longer in use and a part of the western property.

At the end of the 1920s, around 11,000 square meters of the entire property were built on with multi-storey work and storage rooms.

During National Socialism 1933 to 1945

The National Socialists , who had taken power in the German Reich at the beginning of 1933, quickly recognized the importance of cable and machine production for their aggression-oriented policy and arrested the company owner of the cable works in July 1933 under the pretext of "concealing balance sheets and fraud in the army administration". The company founder then lost his position on the board. Although he was quickly released, harassment began against him and his Jewish partners, who were also relieved of their positions on the board and in December 1935 had to forcibly sell their company shares to Dresdner Bank . The company became part of Kabelwerke Rheydt. After the de facto expropriation , the Hirschmann family fled to Guatemala , but company founder Siegfried and his wife only did so in August 1939, one month before the start of the Second World War .

During the war, Deutsche Kabelwerke AG was classified by the National Socialist leadership as important to the war effort, and the area temporarily housed the district military registration office. At the beginning of the war, the production halls were, among other things, the site of anti-fascist actions by the resistance fighter Hans Zoschke . The main building of the cable works and also the former Cyklon machine factory were badly damaged in several air raids . Shortly before the end of the war, the company management tried to relocate the production facilities to Affalter near Chemnitz.

Period 1945 to 2010

Shortly after the end of the Second World War , cable production was resumed under Soviet leadership and continued until the end of 1945. The expropriations of large manufacturers that were then carried out meant that the factory buildings and existing production facilities were continued as VEB Gummiwerke Berlin from 1949 . Malt sugar and oat flakes were later produced in unused halls . At the corner of Boxhagener and Holteistrasse, a panel building was built for the rubber works data center in the late 1970s .

After the fall of the Berlin Wall , the automotive supplier Freudenberg took over part of the production facilities and the administration building and set up its Berlin branch here. However, by 2008 all production activity ended, the 26,000 square meter property in the middle of Friedrichshain was now fallow and was sold worldwide under the name Freudenberg Areal .

On the right-hand side of the picture behind the parked cars in Holteistraße you can see part of the Box Seven area after the factory buildings were removed.
(2014)

At the same time, the city of Berlin launched a two-stage urban development ideas competition for the utilization of inner-city space on behalf of the potential investor Intertec Stadtentwicklungsgesellschaft mbH. In 2009, the Beyer-Schubert architects emerged as the winners: a Misach development on 58,000 m² without staggered floors was planned, an existing building was to be retained. However, after soil examinations had revealed extensive contamination from years of industrial production, the last historical building was also demolished. In addition to the residential buildings, the winning plans included a day-care center , a large car park and 5000 m² of commercial and service space, with the district to buy the construction area. In 2010, the plans were revised due to objections from citizens, which led to a smaller floor area and more green space. However, the investor jumped out and neither the district nor the Berlin Senate could raise the money for their own construction activities. So all plans were dropped in 2010.

New start as a residential area

After the real estate company Bauwert Investment Group acquired the area from the private owner in 2011, the Berlin Senate confirmed the unrestricted planning rights. As a result, in close cooperation with Arno Bonanni Architects, the district office and the citizens of the Boxhagener Kiez, the concepts for the reuse of the former industrial site were developed using ideas from the first ideas competition. There were also critical voices from a citizens' initiative and Nabu , complaining about the rise in rent levels and the lack of schools in the area. The representatives of Bauwert presented the first concrete new construction plans on December 12, 2012 at the district council meeting of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg . Some requests from the district and from committed citizens such as a more extensive green area, a daycare center and the planning of social housing were later incorporated into the final development plans, in return the gross floor area was allowed to be increased slightly.

At the end of 2015, the preparatory work began with the removal of the contaminated sites , which was soon followed by the first civil and structural engineering work. On April 24, 2017, the topping-out ceremony for the first wing of the building took place in the presence of the Governing Mayor Michael Müller and the grandson of the company's founder Tomas Simon Hirschmann . The buildings offer a total of 600 to 640 apartments, and shops and office space are also planned. In the center of the loose development, a public green area with an area of ​​6,000 square meters is to be created, to which wide footpaths lead from all streets and which will bear the name Siegfried-Hirschmann-Park . The total investment is estimated at around 250 million euros .

  • Froebel kindergarten on Weserstraße

  • Views

  • the plant

  • Nib passage, still under construction

After completion, the Howoge housing association acquired two buildings with a total of 122 rental apartments and took over a day-care center for up to 90 children. 226 apartments were sold to Patrizia Immobilien AG.

A supermarket , a café and an organic market were set up for the residents by summer 2019 and the Siegfried Hirschmann Park, which is open to the public, was inaugurated.

Transport links

Along the Holtei- and the Boxhagener road run trams , the train stations Ostkreuz and Frankfurter Allee are nearby and the subway runs close to the stations Samariterstraße and Frankfurter Allee .

Web links

Commons : Box Seven  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Green shopping just around the corner. Box Seven now with its own organic market , in Berliner Zeitung , 6./7. July 2019, real estate supplement, p. 3.
  2. ↑ Heinemann, Sven Author: Boxhagen begins The historical development of the property at Boxhagener Straße 79-82 from 1771 until today . 2016, ISBN 978-3-00-054063-9 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Jérôme Lombard: What remains is a park . In Neues Deutschland , April 24, 2017, p. 12.
  4. ^ History of the Freudenberg site , accessed on May 18, 2017.
  5. ^ Boxhagener Strasse . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1920, III, p. 96.
  6. ↑ Share of Kabelwerke Rheydt AG , accessed on July 9, 2019.
  7. ^ Boxhagener Strasse . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1943, IV, p. 95.
  8. ↑ Ann-Kathrin Hipp, Jana Weiß: Our story is poured in cement , In: Der Tagesspiegel , 2017, accessed on May 17, 2017.
  9. ↑ a b Chronicle of the Freudenberg Area , accessed on May 17, 2017; Retrieved February 20, 2019.
  10. ↑ Citizens' petitions for the Freudenberg-Areal housing project came about in: BVV press releases from March 23, 2015. Accessed on April 2, 2018.
  11. ^ Topping- out ceremony on the Freudenberg site in Friedrichshain ; Broadcast in the evening show of the rbb on April 24, 2017. Accessed on May 17, 2017.
  12. ↑ Homepage HoWoGe with the Freudenberg-Areal project , accessed on May 17, 2017.
  13. ↑ A completely new urban quarter is being built in the Boxhagener Kiez . In: Berliner Morgenpost , August 30, 2016, accessed on May 17, 2017.

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 30.5 ″  N , 13 ° 28 ′ 5.8 ″  E