Embassy of the Republic of Austria (Bonn)

The embassy of the Republic of Austria in the Federal Republic of Germany had its seat in Bonn from 1955 to 1999 , with a branch office until 2006. The office building of the embassy , built from 1975 to 1977, was located in the Gronau district in the part of the parliament and the Johanniter district Government quarter on Johanniterstraße (house number 2). In 2007 it was canceled.

history

Austrian liaison office

After the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, the Republic of Austria had no official diplomatic and consular relations with it due to the reservation of the Allied Commission - and thus also the Soviet Union - laid down in the Second Control Agreement (1946) . Instead, Austria had set up liaison offices with a consular function in the respective occupation zones of Germany, most recently in Düsseldorf for the British zone . In February 1950 the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs (BMaA) ordered the liaison office to be relocated to the Bonn government seat. According to a notification to the newly appointed head of the liaison office and consul general 2nd class Josef Schöner on March 16, 1950, it was to have the character of a political representation and for internal traffic it was to be superordinate to the liaison offices in Munich , Frankfurt am Main and (in future) Stuttgart . The existence of this diplomatic agency had to be kept secret from the outside due to the unexpected approval of the Soviet Union for its establishment. After he took office in April 1950, Schöner made efforts to acquire office space in Bonn or the surrounding area. This initially turned out to be impossible due to the scarcity of space resulting from the city's new function as the seat of government. On June 5, 1950, Schöner moved from Düsseldorf to Bonn to the Hotel Königshof , from where he also went about his official business. On July 14, 1950, Schöner was accredited as Austrian Senior Consular Officer at the Allied High Commission . Due to the need for confidentiality, the liaison office officially only had consular functions.

Villa Kurt-Schumacher-Straße 10 , 1951–1954 Seat of the Austrian liaison office (2013)

At the beginning of February 1951, the liaison office moved to Villa Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse 10 , where both the office and the residence of the head of office were set up. For the first time, it was given its own - albeit cramped - office space, which was suitable for regular service operations. At this location, too, the mission's secrecy was taken into account by dispensing with the affixing of national emblems such as the national flag or an official shield . From January 1, 1952, Schöner held the title of Consul General, 1st Class , on February 2, 1952, he was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary and was subsequently given his own company car . In July 1953, Schoener's successor as head of the liaison office was Heinrich Schmid , who was allowed to retain his previous title of ambassador . At the beginning of 1954, the office of the liaison office was relocated to the house at Poppelsdorfer Allee 55 in Südstadt , which had been rented for this purpose from the beginning of the year , where, as evidenced by the official sign, it operated as the Austrian representation . Adrian Rotter , who was in office from March 1954, made efforts to resolve both the accommodation of the residence and the office of the liaison office. In the spring of 1954, the Villa Friedrich-Wilhelm-Strasse 14 was considered as a residence, purchased in July 1954 on the basis of a resolution by the Council of Ministers , and after completion of a renovation, occupied by December 1954. The construction of a chancellery building was initially planned on part of the villa's property, for which Rotter asked for three designs .

Austrian Embassy

Villa Friedrich-Wilhelm-Strasse 14 , former residence of the Austrian ambassador (2013)

On November 29, 1955, the Austrian Council of Ministers decided to convert the liaison office into an embassy following an agreement reached in the middle of the month on the occasion of the state visit by German Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano to the mutual establishment of embassies. This decision was solemnly implemented on December 20, 1955, making the house at Poppelsdorfer Allee 55 the first location of the Austrian Embassy in the Federal Republic of Germany. On July 6, 1956, the first Austrian ambassador, Adrian Rotter, was accredited by handing the letter of certification to the Federal President .

When the Austrian government began to adjust to a longer presence at the seat of government in Bonn, in the mid-1970s it took up the plans for a new embassy office building on the part of the property of the Villa Friedrich-Wilhelm-Strasse 14, which served as the ambassador's residence, on the Johanniterstrasse site back on. With the design of the in was Wesseling based architect Georg Rotter commissioned (1921-1999), who had already led alterations to the residence; the planning was carried out by the Federal Ministry for Buildings and Technology . After the building application of October 21, 1975, construction began in mid-December. In some places building materials from Austria were used. The topping-out ceremony took place on July 1, 1976 , on March 23, 1977 the new office building was ceremoniously handed over to the ambassador, and on May 1, 1977, people moved into it. The new building involved costs totaling DM 2,606,440  .

Branch office Bonn

In the course of the relocation of the seat of parliament and government , the Austrian embassy moved to Berlin in mid-August 1999 ; the ambassador resided there from August 13th, and official operations in the capital began on August 16th (→ Austrian Embassy in Berlin ). A branch office of the embassy was left in Bonn, the first head of which, Senta Wessely-Steiner , took office on November 25, 1999. Due to a resolution to restructure the Austrian representation authorities in the Federal Republic of Germany (July 1998), the state consulate general in Düsseldorf was closed on July 31, 2000 and its previous tasks were transferred to the Bonn branch. Since the former office building in Bonn was unsuitable for consular services, it was rebuilt at a cost of 360,000 euros . The administrative and consular district of the branch included the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse , Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland ; the foreign trade office in Frankfurt am Main formed the "trade department of the Bonn branch office". In addition to consular and cultural tasks, the field office also performed diplomatic tasks, which were based on maintaining contact with the federal ministries and supreme federal bodies that remained in Bonn as a federal city, as well as the newly established United Nations institutions . It had representation level 2 (of 5) in the hierarchy of the Austrian representation authorities and was therefore headed by a high official classified as a “permanent chargé d'affaires”, for whom the former residence of the ambassador was retained as an official residence.

At the beginning of 2002, the Austrian Foreign Ministry planned for the first time to close the Bonn branch for cost reasons - other reasons cited were the closure of the branches of other countries in Bonn and the conversion of the German consulates general in Austria into honorary consulates - and instead reopening a consulate general in Düsseldorf. The property of the Republic of Austria in Bonn was put up for sale in November 2002, which initially was unsuccessful due to the state's asking price. From February 2005 Rudolf Agstner acted as head of the branch office. In February 2006, the Austrian Foreign Ministry decided again to close the Bonn branch , which last had seven posts , now without re-establishing a consulate general in Düsseldorf. By purchase agreement on June 23, 2006, the Republic of Austria sold the property in Bonn to a project developer (office building) and a private person (residence building). On July 31, party traffic in the branch office was stopped, on August 31 it was closed. While the previous residence building was preserved, the former office building was demolished in spring 2007 and three apartment buildings were built on the property by 2008 , each with a name that refers to the history of the property (“Villa Salzburg”, “Villa Wien”, “Villa Graz ").

building

The office building of the embassy was two-story and had a flat ceiling . It contained a usable area of 1,048.98 m² with an enclosed space of 4,411.67 m². The living space was 112 m² and the office space in 18 rooms on the ground and first floors was 487 m²; In addition, 64 m² of secondary usable space, 245 m² of traffic space, 145 m² of storage space and 62 m² of other functional areas. The basement accommodated the porter's apartment, among other things. The parking lot belonging to the office building had 17 parking spaces.

In the front garden of the building on the corner of Johanniterstrasse and Zitelmannstrasse there was a sculpture ( Zeit ) from 1979 to August 2006 , which the Austrian artist Oskar Höfinger had created in 1969/70. It was on permanent loan from the Federal Ministry for Education, Art and Sport . The sculpture with the dimensions 2.2 × 3.1 × 3.1 m was an iron construction - Höfinger's first - and kept in neo- cubist forms.

See also

• List of diplomatic missions in Bonn (→ entry )
• List of Austrian ambassadors in Germany

literature

• Rudolf Agstner : Representation - Embassy - Branch Office: an obituary for Austria's diplomatic mission in Bonn from 1950 to 2006 . In: Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein , Stadtarchiv Bonn (ed.): Bonner Geschichtsblätter. Yearbook of the Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein , Volume 55/56, Bonn 2006, ISSN  0068-0052 , pp. 293–326.
• Rudolf Agstner: 130 years of the Austrian Embassy in Berlin: From Moltkestrasse to Stauffenbergstrasse. Handbook of the representative authorities of Austria (Hungary) in Germany since 1720. Philo Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-8257-0335-5 , pp. 79–92.

Web links

• Entry on the former location of the Austrian Embassy in Bonn in the database " KuLaDig " of the Rhineland Regional Association

References and comments

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z} Rudolf Agstner: Representation - Embassy - Branch Office: an obituary for Austria's diplomatic mission in Bonn from 1950 to 2006.
2. ↑ to 1968 at Drachenfelsstrasse 5
3. ↑ until 1965 Friedrich-Wilhelm-Strasse 10
4. ↑ Österreichisches Jahrbuch 1976 , Volume 48, Druck und Verlag der Österreichischen Staatsdruckerei, 1977, p. 387.
5. ^ ^{A b c d e} Rudolf Agstner: 130 years of the Austrian Embassy in Berlin: From Moltkestrasse to Stauffenbergstrasse. Handbook of the representative authorities of Austria (-Hungary) in Germany since 1720.
6. ^ Ministerialblatt (MBl. NRW.), Edition 2000 No. 54 of September 14, 2000, pages 971 to 980
7. ↑ The envoy leaves Bonn "very unwillingly" , General-Anzeiger , July 26, 2006.
8. ^ Former Austrian embassy makes room for residential buildings , General-Anzeiger , May 3, 2007
9. ^ Gabriele Zabel-Zottmann: Sculptures and objects in the public space of the federal capital Bonn - installed from 1970 to 1991 . Dissertation, Bonn 2012, part 2, p. 53. ( online PDF ; 5.8 MB)

Coordinates: 50 ° 42 ′ 45.6 ″  N , 7 ° 7 ′ 48.5 ″  E