Konrad Adenauer House (Bonn)

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Stadtbahn and Konrad-Adenauer-Haus (1986)

The Konrad-Adenauer-Haus in Bonn's parliamentary and government district was the seat of the federal office of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) from 1971 to 2000 . It was located on the east side of Friedrich-Ebert-Allee ( Bundesstrasse 9 ) in the Gronau district and was blown up in December 2003.

history

The aim of erecting the building, named after the first Federal Chancellor and party chairman Konrad Adenauer , was to bring together the CDU headquarters, which were previously distributed in 17 buildings across the Bonn city area. She started her work in Bonn at the end of 1950 in the Poppelsdorf district . The main location was then in the building of the Association of the German Sugar Industry in the southern part of the city . In 1962 the CDU acquired the property on the B 9 from the city of Bonn for 450,000 Deutschmarks. As early as the spring of 1963, following an architectural competition, the two second-placed Frankfurt architects Max Meid and Helmut Romeick were hired for the project. At the end of 1965, the party applied for a building permit , which was granted in December 1967. However, the plans were postponed for cost reasons.

After the CDU switched to the opposition for the first time in 1969, the perceived need for a more effective party organization also increased due to the increasing number of staff in the party headquarters, so that the plans were pushed. The party-internal approval of the new building was given by the federal party congress in November 1969 in Mainz . Construction began in early 1970. The cost of around 20 million marks was initially to be raised by CDU MPs, pre-financed by a mortgage loan, without burdening the party fund through project-related donations ("building blocks"). Finally, after this financing basis had proven to be inadequate, at the end of 1970 the "Konrad-Adenauer-Haus GmbH & Co. KG" was founded with the CDU's own Union Betriebs-Gesellschaft as a general partner , which was to sell limited partner shares from 1,000 marks to the public . In addition, some floors of the high-rise first had to be rented. The skyscraper, built according to the design by Meid and Romeick, was moved into in December 1971. The official inauguration ceremony took place under party chairman Rainer Barzel in January 1973 and was associated with the erection of a Konrad Adenauer bust donated by the Adenauer family.

Due to the upcoming relocation of the parliament and government seat to Berlin (1999), the CDU sold the property to Deutsche Telekom in February 1998 for 17 million Deutschmarks . From August 23, 1999, the Federal Executive Board and the Presidium met regularly in Berlin. In the CDU donation affair , the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus was once again the scene of special meetings of the CDU committees: on December 8, 1999 by the federal board and the presidium, on December 22, 1999 and on February 4, 2000 by the presidium. The move of the party headquarters with 155 employees to the capital took place at the end of June 2000 under the newly elected party leader Angela Merkel as the last of the parties represented in the Bundestag to the new Konrad-Adenauer-Haus . An aid organization for Ukrainian orphanages was temporarily housed here. After previous demolition work from June 2003, the high-rise building of the former party headquarters was finally blown up on December 14, 2003. The Port Bonn office was built on the site from 2006 to 2008 , and the headquarters of the Telekom fixed-line network T-Home has moved into it. It is a stop on the Path of Democracy History Trail .

building

The Konrad-Adenauer-Haus was a reinforced concrete skeleton structure , clad with Italian limestone . The system had a total length of 115 m along Friedrich-Ebert-Allee (B 9). The eleven - story, disc - shaped skyscraper (height: 44 m) with around 7,200 m² of office space, which protruded towards the street with four pillars, was a two-story company and publishing house in the north and a canteen for employees, club rooms, meeting rooms and a conference room in the south 100 people and a 600-person ballroom ("Union halls"), which was also rented to non-party organizations, as well as an affiliated restaurant ("Union Stuben"). The north and south wings were supported by supports and each enclosed an inner courtyard; the roofing of the halls was a lightweight steel construction with diamond-shaped metal cladding. The building had a basement through a two-story underground car park. The office of the party chairman was on the ninth floor, one floor above the office of the general secretary; on the first floor met Bureau and Federal Executive . Characteristic of this building in what was then the government district were the large red illuminated letters "CDU" installed on the roof in autumn 1972 , which were dismantled on June 30, 2000, on the day the federal office moved out. They have been owned by the House of History ever since .

“Where Friedrich-Ebert-Allee casually merges into Kölner Strasse, there is the white Adenauer-Haus, whose grid is familiar from everywhere, behind which, according to daily experience, the administrations, the bureaucracies, the insurance companies in particular, the banks also - and even more so the somewhat smaller corporations are at home. On closer inspection you can see that the window arrangement with the big breath is ennobled by the material of the parapet strips: it is white Carrara marble, just like in banks, insurance companies and the somewhat smaller corporations. What else is there to say? That the white pane stands on fine supports, across the street like a billboard with the sleek trademark of the company on top (...), also has green around it and is aimed at by the long shot of a lower pavilion wing (...). "

- Heinrich Klotz (1978)

literature

Web links

Commons : Konrad-Adenauer-Haus  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ City of Bonn, City Archives (ed.); Helmut Vogt : "The Minister lives in a company car on platform 4": The beginnings of the federal government in Bonn 1949/50 , Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-922832-21-0 , p. 232.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Kristin Bartsch: The Konrad-Adenauer-Haus in Bonn .
  3. ↑ a b c d functional building with tie and decorative cloth , Der Spiegel , March 15, 1971
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Hoffmann: Without power and without money , Die Zeit , No. 40/1971, October 1, 1971
  5. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Lange : Responsiveness and organization: a study on the modernization of the CDU from 1973-1989 , Schüren, 1994, ISBN 978-3894720902 .
  6. ↑ Miroslav Angelov: Wealth formation and entrepreneurial activity of political parties (= writings on public law , volume 1025). Duncker & Humblot, 2006, ISBN 978-3428120642 , p. 120.
  7. ^ Magere Kollekte , Der Spiegel , October 5, 1970
  8. ↑ Tendenz dull , Der Spiegel , September 13, 1971
  9. ↑ Beautiful facade , Der Spiegel , November 15, 1971
  10. ^ Foundation House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany , Federal Agency for Civic Education (ed.); Matthias Hannemann, Dietmar Preißler: Bonn - Places of Democracy: The Historical Travel Guide , Ch. Links Verlag 2009, p. 107.
  11. ↑ a b Former CDU headquarters will be demolished , Die Welt , June 3, 2003
  12. ↑ a b c History of the CDU - 1999 / 2000 , Konrad Adenauer Foundation
  13. ↑ The trail leads to Liechtenstein , Der Spiegel , December 13, 1999
  14. ↑ Kohl should name the anonymous donors of the CDU leadership , Hamburger Morgenpost , December 22, 1999
  15. ^ "Kartell des Schweigens" not broken , Manager Magazin , February 4, 2000
  16. ↑ For sale: two party headquarters , General-Anzeiger , February 12, 1998, Bonner Stadtausgabe, p. 7
  17. ↑ a b c The digger follows the cameras , Wiesbadener Kurier , November 2, 2000
  18. ↑ a b The end of a political institution , Kölnische Rundschau / Bonner Rundschau, June 29, 2003
  19. ↑ Helmut Kohl's counter is already scrap , General-Anzeiger , July 17, 2003
  20. ↑ Bruno Heck (Ed.): Die Politische Demokratie , Volume 16, Issue 138 / September 1971, Eichholz-Verlag, Bonn 1971, p. 86.
  21. ^ Union halls sink in dust , Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , July 18, 2003
  22. ^ CDU is the last party to leave Bonn , RP Online , June 30, 2000
  23. ↑ Three Federal Erasure Days , Der Spiegel , July 3, 2000
  24. ^ Heinrich Klotz: Iconology of a Capital - Bonn State Architecture . In: Ders .: Designing a new environment. Critical essays on contemporary architecture . CJ Bucher, Lucerne and Frankfurt / M. 1978, ISBN 978-3-7658-0280-5 , pp. 45-55; Martin Warnke (Hrsg.): Political architecture in Europe from the Middle Ages to today: Representation and community . DuMont, Cologne 1984, ISBN 978-3-7701-1532-7 , pp. 399-416 (here: pp. 406-408).

Coordinates: 50 ° 42 ′ 30 ″  N , 7 ° 7 ′ 48 ″  E