Assenheimer car dealership (Heilbronn)
The Assenheimer car dealership is the former business building of a car dealership at Stuttgarter Straße 2 in Heilbronn . The 1961-related building stands as a cultural monument under monument protection .
history
Company history
The company was founded in 1911 by Emil Assenheimer (1884–1951) as an automobile repair and trading business. The company's workshop was located at Badstrasse 34 in Heilbronn, where several traders had rented rooms on the premises of the merchant Gustav Kiess. Assenheimer traded vehicles from Benz and Nagant . The company was idle during World War I , as Assenheimer and his three journeymen were called up for military service. From 1919 on, business activities were resumed. In 1922, Steiger cars were also traded . In 1925 the company moved to Weststrasse 51 and in 1926 finally to a larger area with a new residential building and new workshops at Mozartstrasse 4-6.
After the merger of Daimler-Benz in 1926, Assenheimer became the sole agent for the Mercedes-Benz brand within an area that corresponds to today's Heilbronn district and the area around Öhringen . In 1932 the company had 12 employees.
The company had a mixed relationship with the Nazi regime. Junior boss Walter Assenheimer (1913–1991), who also worked as a racing driver, was a member of the NSDAP and the Motor-SA in 1933 and was involved in the riots against the Heilbronn mayor Emil Beutinger , but was expelled from the Motor-SA at the end of 1933. Senior boss Emil Assenheimer also joined the NSDAP in 1933 and was partly in the favor, partly in the disapproval of district leader Richard Drauz . Regardless of party entanglements, the company benefited from the general motorization in the 1930s and was able to increase the workforce to 20 employees by 1939. After the beginning of the Second World War , the car dealership became a military workshop, where repairs were carried out for the Wehrmacht . With 35 employees (including forced laborers from France and the Netherlands), the company was the largest Mercedes-Benz agency in Württemberg in 1941.
The buildings in Mozartstrasse were badly damaged in an air raid on September 10, 1944. The company immediately received financial support to continue the repair business. The repaired buildings were largely destroyed in the air raid on December 4, 1944 . The armaments industry provided for a makeshift reconstruction, but a third air raid on March 1, 1945 destroyed the workshops again.
After the end of the war, business was slow to get going again. Due to the ongoing denazification process, the senior and junior bosses temporarily had no authority to issue instructions, and in any case the reconstruction of the destroyed buildings was the first priority. Only after the currency reform in 1948 did the company get going again. In December 1948 a gas station was opened on Mozartstrasse. At the beginning of 1951 a new large hall was completed and a little later the remaining areas on Mozartstrasse were also built over. In the midst of this upswing, founder Emil Assenheimer died. Son Walter continued the business and in future only traded in Daimler vehicles.
The economic miracle allowed the company to flourish. In 1953 the car business moved into new premises in Untere Neckarstrasse, while the truck business and the sale of used cars remained in Mozartstrasse.
New building on Stuttgarter Strasse
In 1955 the company had 80 employees and again ran out of space. In that year negotiations began with private individuals and authorities to acquire a large commercial property on one of the city's transport axes. In 1959, Assenheimer acquired several adjacent properties on Stuttgarter Straße. The 7500 m² site posed challenges to the planning: it was located on a hillside and was surrounded on three sides by another piece of land that had not been acquired.
The Heilbronn architect Julius Hoffmann planned an ensemble of five-storey office buildings with exhibition rooms, a car repair hall with 36 parking spaces and 10 repair pits, a truck hall with 24 parking spaces, a parts washroom, repair shop, foremen's offices and spare parts warehouse. The area of all buildings was 6400 m². Hoffmann used the hillside location to create a 1,100 m² deep courtyard, under whose courtyard area he placed tank capacities of 500,000 liters.
The groundbreaking ceremony took place on February 17, 1960, the topping-out ceremony was celebrated in November 1960 and in October 1961 almost 100 employees moved into the new business complex. Particularly innovative was an assembly line cycle process developed by Walter Assenheimer for customer service, in which the vehicles were serviced on an assembly line similar to their manufacture. With four petrol and two diesel pumps, the car dealer's petrol station was large for the conditions at the time. Because the gas station was leased to the Italian company Agip , Assenheimer also set up an espresso bar where customers could enjoy Italian flair until the gas station attendant had finished his work. Employees were also tried with exemplary social institutions, since there was a serious shortage of workers at the end of the 1950s. Assenheimer wooed his employees with a canteen, two common rooms, a classroom and a few company apartments.
The location on Stuttgarter Strasse was sufficient for the entire operation of the company for about a decade. In the 1960s, the company carried out around 60 repairs every day and sold three cars.
Moving out of the car dealership
From 1969 to 1974 a large new truck repair shop was built at the Obereisesheim exit of the A6 Heilbronn-Mannheim, so that from 1974 only the car business remained on Stuttgarter Straße. In the first ten years, the new truck operation had an annual run of around 10,000 vehicles for inspections and repairs. In the mid-1980s, the workshop technology and the presentation rooms for cars on Stuttgarter Strasse were getting on in years. The company decided to build a new car dealership on Südstrasse , where land was purchased in 1985 and construction began in September 1987.
The building complex on Stuttgarter Strasse was acquired in 1987 by the trading company Aldi , which set up a branch in it after Assenheimer moved out in 1989. Meanwhile listed, the buildings were extensively renovated in 2000.
description
The main building consists of a five-story office tower and a three-story extension attached to the side. The side walls of the office tower are drawn forward at an angle. The striking office tower dominates the streetscape of Stuttgarter Strasse near Silcherplatz and thus acts as a landmark .
literature
- Carmen Palm: Tradition meets innovation. 100 years of AssenheimerMulfinger. Heilbronn 2011.
- Julius Fekete , Simon Haag, Adelheid Hanke, Daniela Naumann: Heilbronn district . (= Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany , cultural monuments in Baden-Württemberg, Volume I.5.). Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1988-3 , pp. 127-128 .
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 7 '59.8 " N , 9 ° 13' 39.8" E