Borsig Villa Reiherwerder
The Borsig Villa Reiherwerder is a former country house of the Berlin entrepreneur family Borsig . It is located on the 12.37 hectare Reiherwerder peninsula on the northwest side of the Tegeler See, which belongs to the Berlin district of Reinickendorf . Today it belongs together with the neighboring buildings to the premises of the Foreign Service Academy of the Foreign Office , where all members of the middle, upper and higher foreign service have been trained since the beginning of 2006 . The villa itself serves as the Foreign Office's guest house. Immediately north of the villa there is a garden in front of the waterfront in neo-baroque style ( garden monument villa garden of the Borsig country house ). The entire area is not open to the public.
history
After the industrialist Ernst Borsig in 1898 the seat of his grandfather the August Borsig founded A. Borsig GmbH of " Tierra del Fuego " in the Oranienburger suburb (now part of the district center ) to Tegel had moved, he acquired by descendants of the family of Humboldt at that time the islands of Großer and Kleiner Reiherwerder, separated by marshland . First of all, from 1903 onwards, he had the swamp area drained; The Reiherwerder peninsula was created from the two islands . In the area of the Kleiner Reiherwerder, the construction of a simple country house - currently called the Alte Villa - began, which was completed in 1908. However, this villa soon no longer met Borsig's requirements, and so he commissioned the architects Alfred Salinger and Eugen Schmohl to design a new, more representative villa on the Großer Reiherwerder. It was important to Borsig that the new villa should resemble the Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam . The building was finally built from 1911 to 1913 and was the residence of the Borsig family until autumn 1937. After the death of Ernst von Borsig († 1933) the property was sold to the German Reich . Until the end of the Second World War , the area was used as a Reich Finance Academy.
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After the end of the war, the area was part of the French sector . The Borsig villa became the residence of the commander-in-chief of the French troops. In 1958, a French officers' mess was built north of the villa, the Pavillon du Lac . The villa itself was used temporarily as a guest house for the city of Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany and, from 1959, as the seat of the German Foundation for International Development . The villa was completely renovated in the mid-1980s.
In the mid-1990s, Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl planned to convert the villa into the official residence of the Federal Chancellor, as the new building of the Chancellery did not provide for any representative and living space comparable to that of the Bonn Chancellor's bungalow. After taking office in 1998 and moving to government in 1999, Gerhard Schröder decided on the more modest former federal guest house in Dahlem , the Villa Wurmbach , as his residence.
In 2003, work began on converting and expanding the property into the Foreign Service Academy , with a total of around 24 million euros invested. In addition to the renovation of the existing building stock, including the Borsig Villa, several new buildings were built as student accommodation. At the turn of the year 2005/2006 the former academy moved from Bonn-Ippendorf to the Reiherwerder, with the Borsig-Villa assuming the special role as the guest house of the Federal Foreign Minister .
Web links
- Page on the Foreign Office Academy with the Borsig Villa on the Foreign Office homepage
- Entries in the Berlin State Monument List
Coordinates: 52 ° 35 ′ 14 ″ N , 13 ° 15 ′ 37 ″ E
Individual evidence
- ^ Daniel Brössler : King Guido and his castle In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , online edition, March 4, 2010