German book trade house

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The German book trade house around 1900

The German Book Trade House in Leipzig was the seat of the German Book Trade Association . After its expansion into the exhibition center, it was also known as the Bugra exhibition center . In World War II, in part destroyed and later rebuilt makeshift, took place from 2015 to 2017 an extensive reconstruction. The building now serves as a residential building.

location

The German book trade house was built in Leipzig's graphic quarter , seen from Hospitalstrasse (now Prager Strasse) behind the German bookseller house between Platostrasse (now Gutenbergplatz) andgerichtsweg. The main entrance was on the north facade on Dolzstrasse, which was later abandoned. In the 1930s, the Bugra Messhaus was built as a northern extension along the court path with access from Gutenbergplatz.

history

The German Book Trade Association, founded in 1884, was the umbrella organization for all associations in the graphics industry. At first he did not own a building of his own and used rooms in the German Booksellers House. The Swedish architect Emil Hagberg built a neo-renaissance building from 1898 to 1901 as a counterpart to the bookseller's house. In addition to the offices of the book trade associations, the house contained exhibition rooms for an annual novelty show, the German Book Trade Museum and a machine exhibition.

The center of the house was the twelve-meter-high Gutenberghalle designed by Bruno Eelbo as a festival and memorial room. The three-meter high statue of Johann Gutenberg created by Adolf Lehnert was flanked by portrait busts of Alois Senefelder (inventor of lithography ) and Friedrich Koenig (inventor of the high-speed printing press ). The frescoes of the end face painted Sascha Schneider .

For the Gutenberg Reich Exhibition planned for 1940, an extension was built by Curt Schiemichen in 1938 . This offered the opportunity to show a permanent exhibition on the history of books and writing in 24 rooms. With the exhibitions of graphic machines, the name Bugra-Messehaus became established for the book trade .

On December 4, 1943, the book trade building was largely destroyed in an air raid on Leipzig, but after 1945 it was rebuilt in a simplified manner and used as the Bugra exhibition center. The twelve meter high Gutenberg Festival Hall was lost during the reconstruction after the war. Only the windowless bay, in which a three-meter-tall Gutenberg figure had stood inside, remained legible on the outer wall. In 1954, the largest special exhibition for the graphic arts industry in the world was on view on 7630 m², before the division later moved to Hall 20 on the grounds of the technical fair.

In the basement of the 1938 extension, a restaurant was built that was taken over by the State Trade Organization (HO) in 1955 , the Gutenbergkeller. Jazz concerts were held here regularly from 1965 onwards. In 1991 the restaurant was closed.

A renovation measure for a museum of printing art started in 1990 failed, so the building remained unused until 2015. Comprehensive renovation work took place on the structure from 2015 to 2017. The roof landscape, which was destroyed in the war, as well as numerous elaborate details of the facade were reconstructed. The richly decorated bay window with a portrait of Gutenberg and heraldic shields of the “Black Guild” as well as the elaborately staggered neo-renaissance gable are now again a striking eye-catcher on the red brick facade. About a thousand running meters of sandstone decorations have been restored and reconstructed true to the original. There were also 150 reliefs and ornaments showing allegories , such as the use of papyrus . The cost of the entire building reconstruction with the neighboring Schiemichen building, which was built in 1938 for exhibitions of polygraphic machines, amounted to over 50 million euros.

  • Gutenberghalle - front wall with Gutenberg statue

  • Gutenberg Hall ceiling

  • Post-war fair 1951, banner inscription "The implementation of the five-year plan strengthens the world peace camp"

  • Bugra 1953

  • The book trade house 2012

  • The former book trade during the reconstruction, September 2017

  • Reconstruction of the gable of the former book trade building, September 2017

literature

  • Sabine Knopf: Buchstadt Leipzig: The historical travel guide , Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86153-634-5 , p. 10 ff.
  • Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z . PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , p. 75

Web links

Commons : Deutsches Buchgewerbehaus (Leipzig)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helmut-Henning Schimpfermann : Wirtliches on the Pleiße. Verl. Die Quetsche, Hanau 1991, ISBN 3-9802743-0-6 , p. 67
  2. ^ Jens Rometsch: fairytale castle on Gutenbergplatz saved . Leipziger Volkszeitung online, accessed on July 16, 2018.


Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 7.4 "  N , 12 ° 23 ′ 34"  E