Belgian Embassy in Berlin

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Belgian Embassy in Jägerstrasse in Berlin-Mitte

The Belgian Embassy in Berlin is Belgium's diplomatic mission in Germany. It is located on Jägerstrasse in the Mitte part of the district of the same name and is the only embassy building that is housed in a former state building of the GDR . The position of Belgian ambassador is currently vacant; Valentine has been head of Louis M. Mangez as a business agent since August 2019  . i. the message.

History of diplomatic relations

The earliest diplomatic relations between Belgium and Prussia date back to the early 19th century and were only interrupted during the world wars . After the Second World War , Belgium maintained a military mission in Berlin for the period from 1946 to 1951. After that, the Belgian government resumed diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany after 1951 through the Belgian embassy in Bonn and the military mission was transferred to the Belgian consulate general in West -Berlin converted. In 1973 the GDR received diplomatic recognition and the Belgian Embassy opened at Esplanade 13 in Berlin-Pankow . After German reunification , the Belgian government decided in 1993 to relocate the embassy to Berlin in view of the impending government move from Bonn to Berlin.

The consular section is responsible for all German federal states. Until 2015, the Belgian consulate in Cologne was responsible for the states of North Rhine-Westphalia , Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland .

History of the building on Jägerstrasse

The Belgian state had already acquired the property at Jägerstrasse 53 in 1913 and used it for a representative office. On this was Ernst Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's house , which was built between 1883 and 1884 according to plans by the architects Victor von Wielzen , Heino Schmieden and Rudolf Speer . In 1938, the neighboring property at Jägerstrasse 52 with the residential and commercial building of Bank Mendelssohn & Co., which was built by Martin Gropius and Heino Schmieden from 1873 to 1874 , was acquired.

Both buildings were destroyed in the Second World War and the land remained unused until the state expropriation in 1966. This year, the GDR government built a five-storey prefabricated building for the Ministry of State Security on the open space on Otto-Nuschke-Straße and used it until German reunification. After 1990, the Berlin Senate Department used the building as a health department for the Mitte district, which was located here until 1998. When the German government moved to Berlin in 1993, the Belgian government expressed its interest in buying the two plots again and signed the purchase contracts in the same year. When the health department moved out, an architectural competition for the renovation of the building with preservation of the prefabricated building structure was announced, which the Berlin architects Rüthnick Architekten headed by Elisabeth Rüthnick won. The renovation took place between 2000 and 2001 and cost around 7.5 million euros; the garden design was done by Benoît Fondu .

architecture

Building architecture

Belgian Embassy in Jägerstrasse, Berlin

For the embassy building, the reinforced concrete construction of the skeleton was taken over and adapted to the new building concept through break-ups and minor redesigns. The facade on the street side was given an anthracite-colored plaster with windows that are set in light gray and protruding frame elements. The rows of windows are modeled on the panel construction and at the same time show the spatial division of the interior of the building. Above all, the area of ​​the conference room is recognizable from the outside through wider rows of windows and the caretaker's apartment on the third floor has a balcony. The row of windows in the newly built mansard roof consists of wide biaxial windows. The ground floor with the entrance area was designed to be particularly striking; here the facade has been completely broken open and set back behind a double-row row of bright orange columns that protrudes into the second floor towards the entrance. It is accessible via stairs and a ramp for wheelchair users. The double-storey glass front in the entrance area enables a direct view of the garden behind the building.

The orange columns emphasize the building

On the courtyard side, the building is lighter and also more open. The facade plaster is champagne-colored and the window arrangement is less strict. The two lowest floors represent a continuous glass front up to the event hall. In the consular area of ​​the building there are three six-axis glass surfaces on top of each other, which are closed off by the roof. On the other side, there is a large, almost square glass front on the first and second floors, behind which the conference room is located.

In the garden of the property, an event hall for around 100 visitors with a conical base and a connecting passage to the main building was created. Like the columns in the entrance area and some smaller aspects of the building, the building is held in a light orange tone. It has a glass front with a narrow terrace on the east side, which opens to the garden area, the roof of the small building is green. In addition, an underground car park with a 300 m² parking area for 13 vehicles with an access through the ground floor of the building was created under the courtyard.

Interior design and functional structure

The interior design is mainly characterized by the different functional areas and can be reached via two staircases and an elevator. The ground floor and the floor above are characterized by the large foyer of the building, which extends from the street side to the courtyard. A walkway on the first floor spans this area and ends in a gallery that provides an overview of the entrance area. In the glass front to the courtyard, a corridor leads to the assembly room. In the building area to the right of the entrance are the rooms of the Belgian consulate, the left part of the building houses the embassy rooms. The two-story conference room is on the first and second floors. The ambassador's office with a glazed wall protrudes into this on the second floor. The third floor houses the press and information department on the one hand, and the caretaker's apartment on the other. The fourth and fifth floors house the offices of the Belgian national and regional representatives, with the office buildings facing the street and the more spacious reception areas facing the inner courtyard. The offices of the Flemish Government, the French and German-speaking communities, the Walloon Region and the Brussels- Capital Region are located here .

Interior

The basic design of the offices is identical and is emphasized regionally by the interior design: A furniture concept was developed by the planning office AMS Interieur Design for the general lounges and representative rooms. The rooms are designed according to their use via the office furniture and the selection of works of art and other accessories. Central works of art were also used in the foyer and the visitor areas. The work Essential Shadows by Thierry Renard is already in the entrance area , a multi-part glass rail measuring 4.2 mx 3.6 m in which three handwritten extracts of the constitution in the three official languages ​​of Belgium are engraved and which are only cast by the shadow become visible on the wall behind. Renard also made the 2.6 m × 2 m frosted glass pane called To keep them from falling on the opposite wall that separates the foyer from the consular section. It is wrapped in a three-colored ribbon in the colors black, yellow and red, which symbolizes the stability in the country and at the same time is supposed to remind of old official documents and certificates.

Also in the foyer is the historical document of the brass plate of the old embassy building destroyed in World War II with bullet holes from the war. This was ensured by the GDR authorities after the war and given to the son of the last Belgian ambassador after the resumption of diplomatic relations. When the new embassy building opened, he handed it over to today's representative office.

The shaft wall of the elevator was designed by the artist Jean François Octave with 16 cut-out, colored pictures that the viewer can only see when using the elevator from the basement to the fifth floor. These are typical Belgian objects and people, including the Atomium, the symbol of Brussels, a beer glass, the singer Jacques Brel and the writer Georges Simenon .

The large conference room contains, among other things, maps from Brussels during the early modern period and a portrait of the first king of Belgium, Leopold I. There is also a large tapestry from the late 16th century next to the ambassador's office protruding into the room. The official dining room as well as the offices of the representations and the ambassador are also furnished with various works of art.

See also

literature

  • Kerstin Englert, Jürgen Tietz (ed.): Embassies in Berlin. 2nd Edition. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-7861-2494-9 , pp. 164-165.
  • Lars Klaaßen: Belgian Embassy Berlin. The New Architecture Guide No. 36. Second edition. Stadtwandel Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-933743-74-5 .

Web links

Commons : Belgian Embassy in Berlin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Office - Representations Belgium , accessed on 23 August 2020

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 51.5 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 39.9 ″  E