Bernardbau
The Bernardbau is an industrial monument and a building complex with administration and factory floors in Offenbach am Main , the construction of which was completed in 1896. Except for the roof area, which was damaged in World War II , the facades are largely in their original condition. After the extension of Herrnstrasse to the Main in 1892, the Bernard brothers had the Bernardbau built as a snuff factory. The complex was planned by the architect Max Schröder , the construction of the facility was in the responsibility of the Beck brothers.
The Bernardbau is a cultural monument according to the Hessian Monument Protection Act .
history
Count Wolfgang-Ernst III. zu Isenburg-Birstein (also known as Wolfgang Ernst I. Prince of Isenburg and Büdingen) allowed Johann Nicolaus Bernard, who had immigrated from Strasbourg , to set up a snuff factory in Offenbach on January 31, 1733 . This soon assumed a leading position through privileges and perks. For example, in 1772 she was granted the tobacco monopoly for the Duchy of Saxony-Gotha-Altenburg.
The Bernard and d'Orville families , who jointly ran the company, built the Büsing Palais a few years later as a mansion and to expand the old factory . In 1850 the actual industrialization of the company took place with the commissioning of a steam engine. After completion of the Bernhardbau, production could be completely outsourced from the Büsingpalais in 1896.
Production in the Bernardbau was stopped in 1955 because the loss of sales areas after the Second World War forced the company to give up the Offenbach operation in favor of the Regensburg branch established in 1812, which had become the company's headquarters in the early 1920s.
building
The building is a four-sided system of three-story brick buildings with stone elements . The facade is structured vertically by brick pilaster strips with decorative stones and horizontally by cornices . Above a dark basalt base with polygonal masonry and artistically barred cellar windows there is a high ground floor with arched windows. The first floor has segmented arched windows and coupled rectangular windows, while three to five rectangular windows are combined on the second floor.
The dates “ 1733/1896 ” can be found above the entrance to the courtyard and the initials “ GB ” for the Bernard brothers above the entrance portal . Towards the Main, the building is adorned with a corner bay over two floors. On the courtyard side, the building is only executed with a simple plaster facade . The former water tower can also be found here, which was only preserved to the bottom of the former container after war damage in World War II . It served to feed the steam engines. The almost square floor plan of the tower tapers above the roof edge to a polygonal shape as a transition to the round tower above. It is decorated with blind arches , oculi and patterns in darker bricks. The former model room with wood paneling and coffered ceiling has been preserved from the interior . Overall, the monumental and well-designed Bernard building is an important industrial monument of Offenbach despite the damage and changes in use.
The Bernardbau is part of the Route der Industriekultur Rhein-Main project .
The facility is a listed building .
Current usage
Today, the Bernardbau houses, among other things, the House of City History , which combines a city museum and the city archive . In the historic industrial hall, which formerly housed the tobacco bottling of the Bernard Brothers company, temporary exhibitions and events that attract national attention take place. The hall with the city models of the permanent collection of the Haus der Stadtgeschichte used to form a single high room with the exhibition hall, in which tobacco ramming presses stood in front of the false ceiling. The former director's room of Adolph Freiherrn von Büsing-Orville, a spacious, wood-paneled room, now serves as a reading room for the archive of the Haus der Stadtgeschichte.
In 2011, a department of modern art / graphic collection was set up in the rear wing of the Bernard building on 400 m² with depot and workshop rooms, in which a central graphics magazine was set up, which also contains the holdings of the Klingspor Museum and the modern lithographic works owned by the International Senefelderstiftung includes. The first exhibition was entitled: Modern Art: Erich Martin .
The Bernardbau also houses the children's and youth library and the music library of the Offenbach City Library .
From November 2014 to October 2018, the city of Offenbach's citizens' office was also located in the complex .
Web links
- Bernardbau . Official website of the city of Offenbach
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c State Office for Monument Preservation Hesse (ed.): Herrnstraße 59–61 In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hesse .
- ↑ Local route guide No. 13 of the Route der Industriekultur Rhein-Main. (PDF; 686 kB) (No longer available online.) In: krfrm.de. KulturRegion FrankfurtRheinMain gGmbH, August 2006, archived from the original on November 17, 2015 ; accessed on November 14, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Martin Kuhn: Citizens' Office in Offenbach: Moving to Bernardbau. In: op-online.de. November 1, 2014, accessed June 19, 2015 .
- ↑ The Citizens Office has arrived at Kaiserstrasse 39 and is easy to find. October 17, 2018, accessed August 12, 2019 .
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 30.1 ″ N , 8 ° 45 ′ 42 ″ E