Brüderstrasse 29 (Berlin)

The house at Brüderstraße 29 was a historic building on Brüderstraße on the Spreeinsel in Cölln (today Berlin-Mitte ). Originally known as the “Blüchersches Haus”, it gained art historical significance as the “Humbert House” when Karl Friedrich Schinkel furnished a room for the owner Jean Paul Humbert with six oil paintings in 1813/1814 .

Location and surroundings

Stridbeck's depiction of the Brüderstraße (around 1690)

Catel: The Brüderstraße around 1808

In the course of the Reformation , the Brüderstraße got a more secular look than it had before. It was built on with numerous half-timbered houses. Around the middle of the 17th century, however, several of these houses fell victim to a fire. The reconstruction was promoted by the Great Elector , so that Johann Stridbeck the Younger was able to immortalize numerous stately buildings on his prospectus from 1690. On the left side of the street in Stridbeck's time mainly Renaissance gabled houses were represented, on the right one can see buildings in the Dutch Baroque style, which Arnold Nering represented in particular , including the palatial house No. 10 , which was sold in 1737 by the cabinet minister von Happe because an innocent convict was hanged in front of the door.

About a century after Stridbeck, Catel depicted the street. The old Petrikirche had meanwhile been torn down and replaced by the hapless successor building, which was still unfinished in Catel's time. In September 1809, soon after the completion of the Catel painting, the ruins burned down. This fire of 1809 was also fatal for a number of residential buildings on Brüderstraße, but not for house number 29.

Description and owner

Beginnings

First evidence of the existence of this house is provided by a land register file from 1714. At that time, the house passed from the property of the von Eichstädtische heirs to that of the court and chamber judge Christian George von Blücher . The name "Blüchersches Haus", which it bore after this owner, was retained when it was sold in 1755 to the court and order councilor Peter Vigné . Vigné paid 12,000 thalers for the building,  twice the original purchase price.

The three-story building was plastered and had a front of five windows. A bat dormer was located in a steep gable roof above the receding center riser . The middle floor had straight beam roofs over the windows. Hans Mackowsky considered the house “a good sample of the house type that he developed in Berlin from the second decade of the eighteenth century, at the beginning of the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm I : thoroughly bourgeois and in the unadorned courtesy of that twisted baroque that lent its general character to the thrifty time of the soldier king. "

Decker

On April 1, 1765, Georg Jacob Decker bought the house for 15,000  thalers . Decker had come to Berlin in 1751 after business failures and was staying with the court printer Henning. There he had Reinhard Grynäus as a colleague, whose sister Luise Dorothea he married in early 1755 after the death of his father, who had resisted this connection. Decker tried successfully to make the Grynäussche Offizin economically viable again. After the Seven Years' War he earned, among other things, the Genoese Lotto set up by Calzabigi , for which special presses were required. These were in the Finckenstein palace. After an interlude as the lottery director and collector, Decker returned to his original profession and finally applied for the title of court printer. After his former employer Henning died, he actually received his title and office. At this point in time he bought the house on Brüderstraße, which was to be his residence and work as a court printer for a long time. This required some renovations: while the front building, the middle floor of which the Decker family moved into, remained unchanged, a side wing and the transverse building had to be redesigned for the print shop. Decker set up a type foundry on the second floor of the left wing of the courtyard.

Anton Wachsmann, string quintet at court bookseller Decker

The Decker family's apartment was accessed from the courtyard entrance via a staircase with a wrought-iron railing, which later came to the Märkisches Museum after the house was demolished . The apartment had three front and six courtyard rooms. Georg Jakob Decker and his wife had ten children, six of whom remained alive beyond toddler age. The family especially cultivated house music, of which an ink drawing by the painter Anton Wachsmann is evidence. Johann Jakob Engel , the personal physician of Friedrich II. Johann Carl Wilhelm Moehsen , the astronomer Bode , the botanist Gleditsch and the poet Gottlob Wilhelm Burmann and Karschin frequented Decker's house . The latter found out at Brüderstraße 29 that Friedrich Wilhelm II wanted to give her her own house. In June 1792, Decker left the business to his heirs. He lived on the first floor of the house until 1799 , although his son had moved the print shop to Wilhelmstrasse 75 in 1794 .

Humbert

In 1795 the house was sold to the silk manufacturers Jean Paul Humbert and Johann Franz Labry. They redesigned the right side wing, which had previously served as a wash house, into a warehouse and set up their sales rooms on the ground floor of the front building. After Decker's death in 1799, Jean Paul Humbert moved into the first floor of the front building. During Humbert's time, silk cultivation and manufacture were strongly promoted by Frederick II , and he quickly achieved prosperity as well as through various honorary positions in the French colony and as head of the city council from 1809 to 1819. Humbert's first wife died in 1812; In 1816 he entered into a new marriage. In total, he raised ten children.

As a sociable man, Humbert attached great importance to appropriate premises. Before his second marriage, he had a wall broken out between the two rooms on the north side of the house, thus creating a hall which, in addition to two windows on the front, had a hopper window. Despite the unfavorable lighting conditions, this room should be decorated appropriately. After Humbert had asked Karl Friedrich Schinkel about a suitable painter on the occasion of a visit, Schinkel took on the task of furnishing this room in 1813/1814 and, above all, equipping it with the corresponding pictures himself. Schinkel provided low furniture for the Oil paintings executed on canvas did not impair. On the long wall of the hall there was a women's desk and a sofa area, which also included a round table and chairs. The wing stood on the other side of a wall support, which interrupted the long surface and could not be removed for static reasons. Between the windows on the front narrow side there was a mirror above a console table with leafy plants. The rear window had a step on which there was a sewing table . The second long wall was occupied by a double door, oven, candy cupboard, etc. A chandelier hung from the white ceiling, the furniture had Pompeian red upholstery.

Schinkel's time of day cycle

Above the painted panel were the six oil paintings that Schinkel created within six months, possibly with the help of colleagues such as the theater painter Karl Wilhelm Gropius and the early deceased Karl Ferdinand Zimmermann : The Morning , The Midday , The Afternoon , The Dusk , The Evening and night . Depending on the requirements of the room, they were of different widths, but each almost exactly 2.60 meters high.

• 

  The morning

• 

  The noon

• 

  The afternoon 

• 

  Twilight

• 

  The night

The paintings had very different landscape elements and accessories, but formed a unit not only because of their relatively uniform height, but also because of the mood created by the change in weather conditions. Mackowsky described this with the words: “The morning reveals itself to be bright and cloudy, over midday light clouds are already gathering, which condenses into heavy thunderstorms in the afternoon; in the fire of the evening the air melts in again, stands pale and cool over the dawning world, until the moon chases away the last delicate haze from the purified atmosphere. "

In Der Morgen , Schinkel combined the landscape around a northern Italian lake with a city with an advanced fort that is more reminiscent of Naples . Further in the foreground within a park landscape was a domed church with colonnades , reminiscent of St. Peter's Basilica , as well as an ancient temple. Midday , on the other hand, showed a landscape of the northern lowlands, in which in a clearing under mighty beeches straw-roofed farmhouses and a herd of cattle on the bank of a stream could be seen. The narrow, portrait-format afternoon showed a weather fir, disheveled by the thunderstorm, under which a horse and carriage drove with two travelers. In the background was a Gothic church under a rainbow. In the picture The evening , the afternoon thunderstorm was over; but the path on which two hikers and a haybarrow were traveling was still soaked. A high forest, above which a golden light stood, filled about two thirds of the picture area. The dusk reflects impressions from Schinkel's trip to the Salzkammergut . On the right you can see a building with a shingle roof, under the pergola of the forecourt, people have come together to dance and music. A romantic moonlight landscape with a Gothic church ruin on a headland in a lake was shown in the painting The Night .

After Jean Paul Humbert's death in 1831, his eldest son Eduard moved into the bel étage at Brüderstraße 29. He kept the hall in the shape his father had chosen. In 1834 a “show locker” with a Schinkel palmette frieze was planned for the shop ; However, it is not certain whether this was actually built. Eduard Humbert ceded the business to his nephew Louis Gärtner in 1854, who had already replaced Labry as a partner in 1816. The Schinkel paintings were bequeathed by will to King Wilhelm I , who handed them over to the National Gallery , which opened in 1876 . Its director Max Jordan took over the afternoon and evening in the permanent collection, the rest of the pictures in the series came partly into the depot and partly outside the house. Morning , noon and night spent a long time in Count Raczyński's palace before it was demolished in order to build the new Reichstag building. In 1902 the whole cycle of the times of day came to the official residence of the Upper President in Danzig ; about ten years later the pictures came back to Berlin. During the Second World War , they were evidently relocated to the Friedrichshain flak tower; five of the six paintings have since been lost. Only dusk escaped this fate. It is still part of the inventory of the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

cook

Advertisement from Koch und Bein

After Eduard Humbert and his wife died, the house was sold to Ernst Benjamin Koch in 1868 . He set up the metal and glass letter factory Koch und Bein at Brüderstraße 29, which had been founded in 1857, had been in the house at Brüderstraße 11 for a short time before the move and was apparently originally located at Neue Friedrichsstraße 49. Among other things, Koch and Bein produced company signs, and the station signs for almost all railways in Germany came from this company. Koch adorned the facade with all sorts of shields, medals and coats of arms, as well as men from the Prussian coat of arms one and a half meters high in free plastic cast zinc. He took particular care with the decoration on the occasion of the victory celebration after the Franco-German War : Koch and Bein erected a dome on pillars in front of the house, which carried the German imperial crown. The outer sides were decorated with the coats of arms of the German princes and free cities that took part in the war. Four towers with niches in which statues of the emperor, the crown prince, Bismarck , Moltkes and Roons stood surrounded this temple, which was also decorated with banners, flags and medals. Inside were the Prussian coat of arms, huge shield holders and various memorial plaques.

Koch actually wanted to completely rebuild the house, but then decided to move to Ritterstrasse 49 instead and sold the building to Rudolph Hertzog in 1888 .

Hertzog

The Brüderstraße in the 19th century

In the 19th century a memorial plaque for Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky , who lived in the neighboring house , was mistakenly attached to the house at 29 Brüderstraße.

Hertzog had the old gable roof torn down with the bat dormer. The ledge has been raised and the facade simplified. The hall that Decker had created was now combined with other rooms to form a whole suite. The Brüderstraße had become a shopping street in the 19th century. The entire front of one side, from Scharrenstrasse to Neumannsgasse, now consisted of the rear of the Hertzogschen department store, whose headquarters stretched almost over the entire area between Brüderstrasse, Neumannsgasse, Breiter Strasse and Scharrenstrasse until 1930. The listed building at Brüderstraße 26 from 1908/09 has been preserved from this building complex.

Demolition and later development

Situation in 2012

House no.29 was still there after the Second World War and, like the neighboring buildings on the left, was demolished in the 1960s to make way for a new building by the GDR Ministry of Construction, which also fell victim to the entire development of this block on Breite Straße . This building from 1968 is to be demolished in 2012.

literature

• Hans Mackowsky : Brüderstraße 29 , in: Hans Mackowsky, Houses and people in old Berlin , Berlin 1923, reprint Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-7861-1803-5 , pp. 79–115.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quoted from Weblink Image Index of Art and Architecture.
2. ^ Karl Scheffler, Art and Artist. Illustrated monthly for fine arts and applied arts , vol. 17, B. Cassirer 1919, p. 440. There is also a pen drawing by Otto Stipp , which bears the title attempt to restore the old facade of the house at Brüderstraße 29 .
3. ↑ August Potthast, The Descent of the Decker Family. Festschrift for a hundred years of the royal privilege of the secret upper court book printer. On October 26, 1863 , Berlin 1863, p. 28
4. ^ Hans Mackowsky, Brüderstraße 29 , in: Hans Mackowsky, Häuser und Menschen im alten Berlin , Berlin 1923, reprint 1996, ISBN 3-7861-1803-5 , pp. 79–115, here p. 84.
5. ↑ August Potthast, The Descent of the Decker Family. Festschrift for a hundred years of the royal privilege of the secret upper court book printer. On October 26, 1863 , Berlin 1863, p. 28
6. ^ Announcements of the Association for the History of Berlin (PDF; 1.7 MB), p. 188, accessed on May 24, 2012.
7. ^ Announcements of the Association for the History of Berlin (PDF; 1.7 MB), Issue 2, April 2009, p. 189 f., Diegeschichteberlins.de, accessed on May 27, 2012.
8. ^ Announcements of the Association for the History of Berlin (PDF; 1.7 MB), Issue 2, April 2009, p. 189 f., Diegeschichteberlins.de, accessed on May 27, 2012.
9. ^ Mario Alexander Zadow: Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Life and Work , Edition Axel Menges ³2002, ISBN 978-3-932565-29-8 , p. 79.
10. ↑ Mackowsky names this title for this picture. The Image Index of Art and Architecture assigns this image to the title Evening and lists two images at dusk, but none on the afternoon theme .
11. ^ Hans Mackowsky, Brüderstraße 29 , in: Hans Mackowsky, Häuser und Menschen im alten Berlin , Berlin 1923, reprint 1996, ISBN 3-7861-1803-5 , pp. 79–115, here p. 112.
12. ↑ Hans Mackowsky, Brüderstraße 29 , in: Hans Mackowsky, Houses and people in old Berlin , Berlin 1923, reprint 1996, ISBN 3-7861-1803-5 , pp. 79–115, here pp. 109–111.
13. ↑ Hans Mackowsky, Brüderstraße 29 , in: Hans Mackowsky, Häuser und Menschen im alten Berlin , Berlin 1923, reprint 1996, ISBN 3-7861-1803-5 , pp. 79–115, here p. 114.
14. ^ Image index of art and architecture
15. ^ The International Exhibition of 1862. The Illustrated Catalog of the Industrial Department , Vol. IV, p. 119
16. ^ Paris exhibition 1867. Official special catalog of the exhibition of Prussia and the North German States , Berlin 1867, p. 37
17. ↑ Der bayerische Landbote 47, 1871 (July to December), p. 129 f.
18. ↑ Nina Simone Schep Frankowski: Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. Art agent and painting collector in Frederick's Berlin , Oldenbourg Akademieverlag 2009, ISBN 978-3-05-004437-8 , p. 265.
19. ↑ Explanation of the development plan I-218 , 3 September 2009, pp. 6 and 9  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 871 kB)  
20. ^ Art blog , based, among other things, on Magnet für Modemacher , in: Spiegel 1, 1993, pp. 132-136.
21. ↑ Horst Peter Serwene, Alt-Cölln ( Memento of the original from February 26, 2014 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. 

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 49.9 "  N , 13 ° 24 ′ 12.1"  E