House Warsaw
The House Warsaw (also Cafe Warsaw ) was one of seven of the state-owned Trade Organization operated (HO) Nationality restaurants in East Berlin . The two-storey café was inaugurated on May 1, 1953 in Block D of what was now a listed building complex in what was then Stalinallee (today: Karl-Marx-Allee 93 / 93a).
Building history
As part of the National Development Program in Berlin , work began in the early 1950s to rebuild Große Frankfurter Straße , which was destroyed in World War II . As part of the Friedrichshain residential cell program, the two arcade houses were built according to designs by Hans Scharoun in the first construction phase , which had a decisive influence on the design options for block D.
In the area of the construction site of Block D, the New Frankfurter Tor had been located since 1723 and was demolished in 1867.
The shortest construction section of the Stalinallee - Block D - was built in 1952 and 1953 according to a design by Kurt W. Leucht . The inauguration of the Café Warsaw, located in the corner building of Block D-Nord on Friedenstrasse, took place on the occasion of the celebrations on May 1, 1953. A year later, the Budapest House opened on the opposite side of the Friedenstrasse , offering Hungarian food and wine.
The café, which extends over two floors, had a dignified interior design based on Art Deco and Berlin classicism , in the style of socialist classicism . In the center of the entrance area was the staircase, decorated with wall-high mosaics , with a curved flight of stairs leading to the upper floor. The interior was subdivided by columns and half-columns , on the upper floor a large curved counter dominated the furnishings. In accordance with the design specifications for the establishment of the nationality restaurants, the interior was completed with folkloric decoration typical of the country . The initial equipment of the café included massive upholstered furniture and a terrace on the first floor. After the green areas had been laid out in Stalinallee, a garden restaurant was set up on the forecourt in summer. On the last day of the GDR's existence , on October 2, 1990, the building was entered in the list of monuments of the city of Berlin.
Due to the long vacancy, the café fell into disrepair and it was completely gutted . In 2005 a computer games museum was set up on the ground floor , the upper floor was rebuilt and houses the seat of the Friedrichshain district association of the workers' welfare organization . For this purpose, many parts of the interior furnishings were removed and an intermediate ceiling was put in, so that the large open staircase has now lost its actual function and is only decorative.
Use in the GDR
The Café Warsaw was next to a coffee house with a range of Polish confectionery products - such as the Warsaw cake - a normal eatery, in which mostly Polish cooks and service staff offered national dishes. In the summer months, parties, concerts and dance events were held in the outdoor area as early as the mid-1950s. There was room for 400 guests in the Warsaw café, and in summer an additional 200 people could be catered for in the outdoor catering area.
On August 6, 1954, the café was the scene of an encounter between Otto John, then President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and GDR personalities, which took place under unexplained circumstances shortly after he moved to the GDR on July 20, 1954. On the balcony there was a discussion between Erich Correns , Hermann Henselmann , Otto John and Wilhelm Girnus about a possible reunification of the two German states and the construction of the Stalinallee .
Café Warsaw was also a popular meeting place for artists and writers. Horst Bastian wrote a large part of his five-volume work violence and tenderness here in the 1970s and 1980s .
Until the political turning point in 1989, Café Warsaw was one of the most popular dance cafés in East Berlin.
Use after 1989
After the fall of the Wall, the guests stayed away and the café was closed. In the mid-1990s, the café was in disrepair, and plans were made to set up a restaurant with a local brewery.
However, these plans did not materialize. At the end of the 20th century, the building complex was owned by Depfa Bank (later Aareal Bank ), while the outside area was owned by the Friedrichshain housing association . This complicated ownership structure meant, among other things, that the café could not be rented for a long time and the building fell into disrepair.
In November 2002 a new operator, the Austrian investor Horst Nira, was introduced who wanted to set up a Croc's All-American Café by 2004 , in which an evening show program was to be performed.
From 2003, a beach café with 900 seats was set up in front of the former restaurant in the outdoor catering area of Café Warsaw, for which sand was supplied from the island of Usedom . Since January 21, 2011, the Berlin Computer Games Museum has been located on the ground floor .
Currently, a station of the information and guidance system Stalinallee with an information board located in front of the entrance to the building reminds of the former Café Warsaw.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stalinallee section D . Stadtentwicklung.Berlin.de: Monuments in Berlin, accessed on November 7, 2014
- ↑ Arne Sildatke: Decorative Modernism: The Art Deco in the spatial art of the Weimar Republic
- ↑ Heinz-Gerhard Haupt: The consumer society in Germany 1890-1990: a manual . Campus 2009, p. 187
- ↑ Forgotten Places - The Cafe Warsaw . ( 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. April 2, 2013, accessed February 12, 2018
- ↑ Neues Deutschland , July 21, 1955, p. 8
- ^ DEFA eyewitness , volume 33, 1954
- ↑ Pick up your pen pal . ( Memento of the original from March 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. In: Friedrichshainer Chronik.de , accessed on November 9, 2014
- ↑ 100 × Germany: the 100 most important cultural monuments . In: DuMont art travel guide , 2006, p. 71 f.
- ↑ berliner-zeitung.de , accessed on November 9, 2014
- ↑ The second life of Karl-Marx-Allee . At: welt.de , accessed on November 9, 2014
- ↑ Digital daddling in the Café Warsaw. At: faz.net , accessed on November 7, 2014
- ↑ Everything about Stalinallee . At: tagesspiegel.de , accessed on November 9, 2014
Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 2 " N , 13 ° 26 ′ 30" E