Cremer & Wolffenstein

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Administration building of the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft ( AEG ) at Schiffbauerdamm 22
Facade of the synagogue on Lindenstrasse 1890/91
Residential and commercial building on the corner of Behrenstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse 1886/87
Breakthrough in Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse with the two front buildings by Cremer & Wolffenstein

The architecture office Cremer & Wolffenstein was founded in 1882 by Wilhelm Cremer and Richard Wolffenstein and existed until the death of the two architects in 1919. In the up-and-coming Berlin of the late 19th century, the office specialized in buildings for trade and traffic and built numerous commercial and upscale residential buildings next to hotels and villas.

A specialty of the office was the construction of synagogues , perhaps aided by Wolffenstein's Jewish origins. The two architects are considered to be the most important representatives of synagogue construction around 1900. They were based on the Dresden Synagogue , Gottfried Semper's only executed sacred building, with its simple, square basic shape and cube-shaped arrangement of the building dimensions. In addition to Semper's neo-Romanesque forms, they used other styles of eclectic historicism for the facades . They were more opposed to the Moorish-Oriental forms that usually predominated in synagogue construction at the time, such as the New Synagogue in Berlin. With the exception of the New Synagogue in Posen (1906–1907) , all of the eight planned synagogues out of the eleven planned were destroyed during the Night of the Pogroms in 1938 and suffered the same fate as the model in Dresden .

The architecture office was known for its simple and functional floor plans. Initially, the two architects preferred the neo-renaissance , but later used all styles of historicism. The residential and commercial buildings for the breakthrough in Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse were among the first neo-baroque buildings in Berlin. Art Nouveau touches can already be found in later works .

Buildings and designs (selection)

  • 1884: Draft for the development of a property on the Peter-Paul-Passage in Liegnitz
  • 1886–1887: House on the corner of Wilhelmstrasse and Behrenstrasse in Berlin (destroyed)
  • 1885–1887: pair of corner houses on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse (today Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse ) / Burgstrasse (house numbers 1–3, 47–49), with “ Feenpalast ” (between Burgstrasse and Heilig-Geist-Strasse) ( destroyed)
The two buildings were located directly across from the Berlin Cathedral and the City Palace on the other side of today's Liebknechtbrücke as an urban entrance on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße.
A purely decorative steel structure was erected over the new high station, built in 1955, for the BVG's centenary in 2002, based on the shape of the original dome by Cremer & Wolffenstein.
  • 1901-1903: publishing house Rudolf Mosse in Berlin, Schützenstrasse 18-25 / Jerusalem (oldest member of the Mossehauses )
1910–1911 extended along Schützenstrasse, 1921–1923 rebuilt and enlarged by Erich Mendelsohn , reconstructed in 1992/1993 after war damage

Web links

Commons : Cremer & Wolffenstein  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Erich Stübinger: Liegnitz then and now. (PDF file; 4.34 MB), accessed December 30, 2012
  2. Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung , No. 26 (from June 28, 1884) ( online )
  3. ^ Claudia Molnar: The Berlin Villa d'Este. Bürgerpalais · dance hall · NS art gallery . BOD, Norderstedt 2020, ISBN 978-3-7519-2190-9 .
  4. ^ Hd .: Residential and commercial building of the Berlin Electricity Works and the General Electricity Society in Berlin . In: Zeitschrift für Bauwesen , Volume 42, 1892, Col. 145–148, Plate 30–31. ( Digital copy in the holdings of the Central and State Library Berlin )
  5. Deutsche Bauzeitung , Volume 28, 1894, No. 50 (from June 23, 1894), p. 312.
  6. Evelyn Wöldicke: The Villa Gontard. A house in the Tiergarten district . 2013, ISBN 978-3-422-07256-5 .
  7. ^ Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin (ed.): Berlin and its buildings , Part VIII, Buildings for trade and commerce, Volume A: Trade. Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1978, ISBN 3-433-00824-8 , p. 108 and p. 136.