Bankhaus Mendelssohn (building)

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Bank building for Mendelssohn & Co.
Building of the Mendelssohn & Co bank

Building of the Mendelssohn & Co bank

Data
place Berlin
architect Heino Schmieden ,
Robert Speer
Architectural style Neoclassicism
Construction year 1892/1893
height 16 m
Floor space 482 m²
Coordinates 52 ° 30 '51.7 "  N , 13 ° 23' 43.8"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '51.7 "  N , 13 ° 23' 43.8"  E
particularities
ground floor, two courtyards

The building of the bank Mendelssohn & Co. is a Grade II listed building in the district center of Berlin Mitte district . It is located at Jägerstrasse  49-50. The palace was built in 1891–1893 based on a design by the architects Heino Schmieden and Martin Gropius as a new commercial building for the Mendelssohn & Co. banking house . Most of it has been preserved in its original condition.

history

The original seat of the bank, founded by Joseph Mendelssohn in 1795 , was the residential building at Spandauer Strasse  68. After various other business addresses and an interlude in Hamburg, the move to a house presumably built around 1770 at Jägerstrasse 51, which subsequently became a residential and bank building The Mendelssohn family was rebuilt, and the Mendelssohn Remise was built on their property in the backyard . In 1875 the bank moved to the new building at Jägerstraße 52 , which was built by Martin Gropius & Heino Schmieden on the left .

In 1891, the bank acquired the neighboring double property at Jägerstrasse 49-50 and had the houses on it demolished. The new building planned by Gropius & Schmieden and implemented under their leadership cost 366,600 marks. The first floor of the house served as the seat of the bank from 1893, the second floor accommodated the representative rooms for the partners. A “narrow corridor building” was attached to the courtyard, which stood at an “architecturally developed courtyard”. The same architects built the stables for three horses on a second courtyard.

The bank kept its headquarters here until the company was liquidated by the National Socialists in 1938. While the building at Jägerstrasse 52 was destroyed in the Second World War, the main building and the new building from 1872/1873 have been preserved. However, the former home of the Mendelssohns at Jägerstrasse 51 underwent major changes around 1950 when two storeys were added. The neighboring bank building at Jägerstrasse 49/50 was last used by the German Foreign Trade Bank during the GDR era .

Since 2002 the house has been the seat of the Federal Association of German Pharmacists' Associations . HGHI Holding has had its headquarters here since September 2017. In front of the building of the nearby Belgian embassy , which was partly built on the site of the destroyed Gropius building, there is an information board for the Jägerstraße History Forum Association . She reports on the eventful fortunes of the family and the Mendelssohn bank in Jägerstrasse.

Architecture and artistic design

The representative building in the style of neoclassicism has two storeys. Dominated on the street front, despite the seven axes , a horizontal layout with a strong cornice on consoles and a final Attica - balustrade . Above the portal in the right axis there is a narrow balcony in front of the window on the upper floor. The facade is made of light Seeberger sandstone . At the rear of the building, which is widened to the right compared to the street front, there are narrow, short side wings that surround a courtyard.

The vestibule previously served as a passage to the two inner courtyards (the second led to the coach house). In the middle of the vestibule, on the left, connected by arcades , is the entrance to the cashier's rooms on the ground floor and, on the right, a wide staircase to the upper floor. The architects tried to make the practical purpose as a passage through representative building elements optically into the background. This was served by columns on the walls and a varied ceiling, which is partly flat, partly a groin vault in the shape of a basket arch . Above the living rooms there was "a third floor for subordinate bedrooms, lodgings and utility rooms" in the rear part of the building. Like other rooms in the building, the stairwell has a delicate ceiling stucco. The staircase itself was made of polished black Belgian limestone and was given a wrought-iron railing, the decorative ornaments of which were richly gilded.

In the stairwell there is a bust of Franz von Mendelssohn the Elder designed by Reinhold Begas . Ä.

Inside the building, the rich furnishings with elaborate materials have been very well preserved and the spacious room layout has been largely preserved. Centrally located is the square counter hall with columns, large skylights, light marble floor and arcades that open to the upper floor, extending over both floors . Office rooms, an inner staircase and two steel-armored vaults are grouped around the counter hall on the ground floor. The larger of these is two-story and has a circumferential gallery. The chamber is so spacious that it can be used as a conference room. Instead of the previous lockers, there are now bookshelves here. The smaller vault has a close-meshed, diagonal network of steel strips, which should make bank visitors aware of the security of their deposits. The former management rooms of the bank, which have also been well preserved, are located on the upper floor of the building.

Little known are partly genre-like, partly allegorizing stucco reliefs that are mounted in lunettes above some doors on the upper floor. They come from the workshop of the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow . Produced on behalf of Joseph Mendelssohn, they decorated a hall in the old building of the Berlin Stock Exchange at the Lustgarten from 1802 . When this was demolished in 1893 for the new construction of the Berlin Cathedral , the Prussian state returned the works of art to the founder's heirs. The reliefs are dedicated to the topic of trade. Among them are several representations of long-distance trade in the style of Orientalism . They depict contacts between dealers from Europe and Arab countries in an exotic setting.

literature

  • Bankhaus Mendelssohn & Co. In: Handbook of German Art Monuments : Berlin. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-422-03111-1 , p. 123.
  • Bankhaus Mendelssohn & Co, Jägerstrasse 49–50. In: Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Ed.): Monuments in Berlin. Mitte district. Mitte district. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2003, ISBN 3-935590-80-6 , pp. 326-327.

Web links

Commons : Bankhaus Mendelssohn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Spandauer Strasse 22 . In: Karl Neander von Petersheiden: Illustrative Tables , 1799, street representations, p. 169.
  2. ↑ Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Ed.): Monuments in Berlin. Mitte district. Mitte district. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2003, ISBN 3-935590-80-6 , pp. 322-327. Stone witnesses. History mile Jägerstrasse. The Mendelssohn family is honored by a memorial course. In: Der Tagesspiegel , March 9, 2004.
  3. ↑ a b c residential building in Berlin, Jäger-Straße 52. In: Zeitschrift für Bauwesen , 1876, Verlag Ernst & Sohn Berlin; Pp. 521/522 and drawings in the atlas; Retrieved April 24, 2015.
  4. ↑ Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Ed.): Monuments district center. Pp. 325-327.
  5. ↑ Thomas Bellartz: German Apothekerhaus. The safe became a library. On: Pharmazeutische Zeitung Online , 2002; accessed June 1, 2009.
  6. ↑ HGHI Holding GmbH - Real Estate Development | Imprint. Retrieved December 22, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Stone witnesses. History mile Jägerstrasse. The Mendelssohn family is honored by a memorial course. In: Der Tagesspiegel , March 9, 2004.
  8. ↑ Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Ed.): Monuments district center. Pp. 326-327. Institute for Monument Preservation of the GDR (Ed.): The architectural and art monuments in the GDR. Capital Berlin. Volume ICH Beck Verlag, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-406-09599-2 , p. 235. Bankhaus Mendelssohn & Co. In: Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler: Berlin. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-422-03111-1 , p. 123.
  9. ↑ Bellartz: German Apothekerhaus. Institute for the Preservation of Monuments of the GDR (Ed.): Architectural and Art Monuments Berlin. Volume IS 235. Stone Witnesses. History mile Jägerstrasse. The Mendelssohn family is honored by a memorial course. In: Der Tagesspiegel , March 9, 2004.
  10. ↑ Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Ed.): Monuments district center. Pp. 326-327. Institute for the Preservation of Monuments of the GDR (Ed.): Architectural and Art Monuments Berlin. Volume IS 235. Bankhaus Mendelssohn & Co. In: Handbook of German Art Monuments: Berlin. P. 123.
  11. ↑ Thomas Lackmann: My father's son. Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the ways of the Mendelssohns. Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 3-8353-0111-X , pp. 76-77. Stone witnesses. History mile Jägerstrasse. The Mendelssohn family is honored by a memorial course. In: Der Tagesspiegel , March 9, 2004.