Bremer Höhe
The Bremer Höhe (originally Bremerhöhe ) is a listed ensemble of residential buildings that were built between 1870 and 1913 in what is today the Pankow district of Berlin , Prenzlauer Berg . The houses have been owned by the housing association of the same name since 2000 .
Building history
Construction work on the Bremerhöhe (later Bremer Höhe), at that time just outside the city gates, began in 1849. With the help of the social reformer Victor Aimé Huber and his wife Auguste, née Klugkist, the properties at Schönhauser Allee 58 / 58a with six small houses became ( Cottages ) built for 15 families who had to submit to a rigid code of conduct. The settlement was named Bremerhöhe because the Bremen Senator Hieronymus Klugkist financially supported the initiative of his daughter and son-in-law.
Soon the city was drawing closer. Land prices rose and the use of the land had to be intensified, because without higher return expectations no financiers could be found. The multi-storey perimeter block development, which has been preserved to this day, began in 1870. In 1888/89 the last neglected cottages were demolished. The last new buildings were completed in 1913. Despite the 43-year construction period, the four-storey residential buildings with their environmentally resistant brick facades give the appearance of a closed ensemble.
Instead of rear buildings and side wings, the courtyards remained undeveloped as green spaces and for the residents to be self-sufficient. In most of the houses in the (new) Bremer Höhe there are only two apartments per floor. Contrary to the typical Wilhelminian tenement house, the floor plans and the level of equipment are the same on all floors and based on Huber's ideal designs. The wet rooms (kitchen and toilet) built with Prussian cap ceilings contribute to the solid construction .
Second World War
Because of the nearby defensive belt along the S-Bahn ring, the entire area was the scene of fierce street fighting when the Red Army took Berlin . The numerous bullet holes in the brick facades of the Bremer Höhe testify to this to this day. The buildings at Bremer Höhe survived the Second World War without any serious loss of substance. An aerial bomb hit the courtyard facade on the south side of Gneiststrasse . Repairs were necessary, but the affected houses remained habitable.
Post-war years and GDR
In the post-war period , before the founding of the GDR , the Bremer Höhe was "transferred to public property" on April 30, 1949. The rent freeze imposed in 1935 was also maintained in the GDR. In the following decades, the municipal housing administration limited itself to security and emergency measures in terms of maintenance. For a long time, priority over the renovation of the old buildings was the elimination of the housing shortage by means of industrially manufactured large housing estates.
The war damage to the facades was repaired only occasionally, leaky roofs and chimneys were repaired, and gas stoves were installed instead of the coal stoves. The dismantling of numerous dilapidated balconies and the sealing of parts of the courtyards were the most serious interventions in the ensemble.
Despite the now outdated standard, almost all apartments could be rented continuously until 1990.
Establishment of a cooperative
In 1990 the municipal housing administration, which was responsible for the houses in Bremer Höhe, was transferred to the Prenzlauer Berg housing association (WIP is now part of the Gewobag network). The mountain of debt that weighs on the municipal companies has been reduced through sales since 1994. In November 1999, the short-term announcement came that Bremer Höhe would be privatized by the end of the year. Resistance was organized among the tenants, which led to a tenants' meeting on November 17th. Around 350 of the 400 tenants called for a sale to be stopped and for a cooperative concept to be drawn up.
Nonetheless, on December 17th the houses were sold. Two months later, on January 27, 2000, the Bremer Höhe cooperative was founded, which entered into the existing purchase agreement on May 1, 2000 instead of the private investor.
The purchase and subsequent renovation of the houses was only possible thanks to strong political support, which extended to changes in subsidy guidelines at the state level. The Bremer Höhe has thus become a model case for further cooperative foundations.
Since January 1, 2010, the houses in Hobrechtsfelde belong to the housing cooperative, which bought the whole village for 900,000 euros.
Surroundings
In the immediate vicinity of the Bremer Höhe there are three green spaces, the Mauerpark , the Cemetery Park Pappelallee and the Helmholtzplatz .
literature
- Ulf Heitmann: The Bremer Höhe. In: Prenzlauer Berg through the ages. be.bra-Verl., Berlin 2004. pp. 190–197.
- 5 years housing association Bremer Höhe . Exhibition, May 2005. ( Online version ; PDF; 1.3 MB).
- Tino Kotte (ed.): The Bremer Höhe in Berlin. A neighborhood in Prenzlauer Berg . History workshop Bremer Höhe, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-00-020150-9 .
- History workshop Bremer Höhe (ed.): 10 years of housing cooperative Bremer Höhe eG. Festschrift. Berlin 2010.
Web links
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 52 ° 32 ′ 39 ″ N , 13 ° 24 ′ 50 ″ E