Blum House (Essen)

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Building of the former Blum textile department store (view from Kardinal-Hengsbach-Platz)
Situation in 1921 (view from Kettwiger Straße ): left: the Grillo house in place of the later Blum house, behind it the tower of the old town hall , on the right St. Johann Baptist

The Blum House is a commercial building on Kettwiger Straße 37 in Essen , which in 1925 according to the architect Ernst Bode in prestressed concrete built construction method. The facades on Kettwiger Straße and Kardinal-Hengsbach-Platz have been under monument protection since 1995 .

history

Ernst Bode redesigned Essen's Burgplatz in the 1920s . The Blum House, the Baedeker House and the Lichtburg House were built there according to his plans .

The Lichtenstein Curia , a former residence of the canons of Essen , was once located on the site of the Blum House . The entrepreneur Friedrich Grillo bought the building and converted it into his villa. In 1925, a textile department store, the Blum House , was built for the Jewish merchant Gustav Blum (1879–1934 or 1935), who founded the Essen Retail Association and was a patron and benefactor ( Museum Folkwang , synagogue ). The department store was the largest German textile department store at the time with 600 employees. During the Aryanization in 1938, Blum's sons had to sell the building below its value. The department store was then named Textilhaus Loosen & Co., formerly Gustav Blum . It existed until 1987 and was converted into a department store for Peek & Cloppenburg in 1989 .

Kurt Loosen, who once carried out the takeover from the hands of the Blum family, who emigrated to the United States , had been a managing director of Karstadt . At that time he drew his capital from, among others, the Elberfeld textile entrepreneur Gebhard (see Gebhard building ). The textile company Loosen filed for bankruptcy in 1988; the sale of this company a few months earlier, together with the simultaneous change of ownership of the company that owned the building rented to Loosen, raised the suspicion that a company had been deliberately bought up and driven into ruin. The house with around 7,000 square meters of retail space was sold at a price of 29,000,000  DM instead of the expected 50,000,000 or 60,000,000 DM, which, however, would only have been achieved if the lease with Loosen had not existed, which was still three more years should have run. The company Peek & Cloppenburg, which had previously expressed interest in buying the Blum house, was suspected of being behind a mailbox company that was supposed to have engineered this coup. A short question by Mrs Krieger and the Group of the Greens on these matters was answered on 7 March 1988 with a negative answer. In principle, it is not the job of the federal government to provide financial aid to companies that have got into difficulties , and it is also not in the power of the federal government to check the accuracy of the press reports on the events that cost 340 people their jobs and intervene if necessary.

Building description

According to the description in the Essen list of monuments, the building adjoins the Baedeker House built between 1926 and 1928, which forms the western end of Burgplatz. The construction of the Blum House was completed by 1929 at the latest and the design of the building was based on the shape of the Baedeker House. However, the line of sight from St. John's Church to Kurienplatz ( called Cardinal-Hengsbach- Platz since 1994 ) was taken into account during the construction.

Conversely, a text on the Essen Monument Trail depicts the Baedeker House as an extension and extension of the Blum House. Here, Bode continued the exterior design that he designed for the Blum House, thus ensuring a uniform appearance of the two buildings.

The fronts of the Blum House differ significantly from one another: The front facing Kurienplatz is facing traditionalist facade art, while the construction section towards I. Hagen has a modern design language. The building is thus caught between traditionalism and avant-garde .

Probably after 1945 the building was raised by one floor; The facades also saw changes. Although these were viewed as impairments, they were not found to be so serious that the two facades would have been denied monument protection because of lost basic architectural or urban features. The internal renovations in 1989, however, represented such a significant intervention that the commercial building as a whole could not be placed under monument protection.

On April 27, 1995, the building was entered as a monument in the city of Essen's list of monuments.

The department store facade has a rusticated nose cone of roughly hewn limestone on. In the proportions and material of the façades, the building is based on the Stuttgart School as well as Paul Bonatz and his façade of the Stuttgart Central Station . The house is an example of the so-called new monumentality, a recourse by traditionalist architects to the monumental style around 1900, which has been cultivated since the second half of the 1920s.

There were two consoles on the facade . There were neon signs standing vertically on it with the name Blum. On the side wall there were three monoliths made of Ruhr sandstone with consoles on them, on which three vertically standing neon signs with the name Blum were attached. This equipment was lost.

literature

  • Berger Bergmann, Peter Brdenk (Ed.): Architectural Guide Essen 1900–1960. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8375-0246-6 , p. 109, no. 52.
  • Walter Blum: From storefront to the largest textile department store in West Germany, history of the Gustav Blum company . In: Hermann Schröter (ed.): History and fate of the Essen Jews: Memorial book for the Jewish fellow citizens of the city of Essen . Essen: City of Essen, 1980, pp. 133-137

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Baedekerhaus and Blum-Haus ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) 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. at essen-informativ.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.essen-informativ.de
  2. ↑ a b c d Excerpt from the Essen list of monuments of the city of Essen
  3. ↑ a b Kettwiger Straße as part of the monument trail on hv-essen.de
  4. ↑ Berger Bergmann, Peter Brdenk (ed.): Architectural Guide Essen 1900–1960. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8375-0246-6 , p. 109 No. 52.
  5. ↑ Holger Krüssmann, Tobias Appelt: On blue stones. Architecture and art on the Essen culture trail . Klartext, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0068-4 , p. 107 f .
  6. ↑ 1924–1925 Blum House on deutsches-architektur-Forum.de
  7. ^ Online architecture guide for the Ruhr area: Modehaus Peek & Cloppenburg (formerly: Textilhaus Loosen & Co. formerly Gustav Blum) on ruhr-bauten.de
  8. ^ Heinz-Günter Kemmer: A flimsy business. Who is behind the buyers of a run-down Essen department store? In: Die Zeit , No. 6/1988, p. 27.
  9. ↑ Answer of the Federal Government to the minor question from Ms. Krieger and the parliamentary group DIE GRÜNEN . (PDF) dipbt.bundestag.de
  10. ↑ Excerpt from the list of monuments of the city of Essen ; accessed on February 12, 2020
  11. ↑ Berger Bergmann, Peter Brdenk (ed.): Architectural Guide Essen 1900–1960. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8375-0246-6 , p. 26.

Coordinates: 51 ° 27 '20.2 "  N , 7 ° 0' 44.1"  E