Bockenheimer Landstrasse 102

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The house at Bockenheimer Landstrasse 102 in 2011

The city ​​villa Bockenheimer Landstrasse 102 , also called Villa Hoffmann , is a listed upper-class residential building on Bockenheimer Landstrasse in Frankfurt am Main .

history

The villa was built from 1910 to 1912 by the architect Alfred Engelhard . The neoclassical mansion of the upper class with an axially symmetrical main facade is characterized by the semi-cylindrical standing bay on the ground floor. According to tradition, this is supposed to be reminiscent of a ship's hull. The client was the Korvettenkapitän a. D. Anton Hoffmann (1872-1934). In 1912 he moved into the villa with his wife Ines, nee Meier, and used it until 1918.

Dr. phil. Albert Sondheimer (1876–1942), entrepreneur and partner in the Beer, Sondheimer & Co. company , acquired the property in 1918 and moved into the villa with his wife Margarethe and their four daughters. Sondheimer was considered a great book lover and set up an extensive library of Hebrew, German and international books in the house. In 1932 the Sondheimer family emigrated to The Hague and took 40 boxes of books with them. In 1935 the company Beer, Sondheimer & Co. ended its business activity. Sondheimer sold the vacant villa to the city of Frankfurt in 1937. The Sondheimer family, persecuted for their Jewish beliefs during the Nazi era , moved to New York in 1939 before the German occupation of the Netherlands . After the Second World War , Sondheimer's daughters received the villa back from the city in 1950. As they did not want to return to Germany after the experience of the Nazi tyranny, they sold the villa on in 1952. A plaque on the house has been commemorating the Jewish resident Albert Sondheimer and his forced emigration since 2005.

From 1939 the house was taken over by the Reichsarboretum e. V. rented. This operated a scientific facility for wood science with a collection of books, pictures and exhibits on the subject. In 1944 the house was badly damaged in an Allied air raid on Frankfurt . A bomb hit in the garden of the property destroyed the collections on the ground floor and damaged the building.

In 1945, the US occupation forces seized the house and used it as an office building until 1953. In 1952 the Schuh-Ring purchasing cooperative bought the house from the Sondheimer daughters and used it themselves from 1953 onwards. Later the house was rented to the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson .

In 1991 the city of Frankfurt rented the villa and ran the Literaturhaus Frankfurt there until 2006 . After the literary house moved out, several attempts at further cultural use were initiated without lasting success. On April 27, 2012, the KfW Foundation acquired the house for five to six million euros. The headquarters of the foundation are to be set up in the building after a renovation in accordance with the listed buildings. The building renovation began in 2014, but was not completed until the end of 2018.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ KfW opens Kultur-Villa in Westend. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 14, 2013.
  2. ↑ Details and photos of the renovation history on the website of Villa 102 , accessed on February 14, 2019.

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 56.4 "  N , 8 ° 40 ′ 8.8"  E