German-Dutch Actien-Bauverein
The Deutsch-Holländische Actien-Bauverein was a construction and terracing company in Berlin in the southern part of what would later become the Prenzlauer Berg district between Schönhauser and Prenzlauer Allee in the 1870s, on the one hand, converting farmland into building land, and on the other, converting a large number of apartment buildings into a streamlined process and was the first company to use a kind of industrial production in building houses.
history
founding
The Actien-Bauverein was founded in 1872 by the manor owner Klau, the company Wertheim & Gompertz from Amsterdam as well as in the final phase of the founding period , when Berlin as the capital of the newly founded German Empire, stimulated by the French reparations after the won Franco-German War , experienced rapid growth seven other people founded as a stock corporation . With the capital obtained from the share issue, the site was bought up, which was then to be built on - the focus was on the area around what is now Kollwitzplatz . The seller was the co-owner of the manor Klau. Since the original capital was largely used up with this purchase, according to Otto Glagau , the chronicler of Berlin building speculation, turbulent arguments broke out at the company's first general meeting. According to reports from Glagau in the gazebo , the founders are said to have earned more than 3½ million thalers from the initial business alone .
Construction activity
While the land companies usually bought up the land alone, prepared it for construction in cooperation with the municipal supervisory and planning authority, and finally sold it to individual contractors and builders, the German-Dutch Actien-Bauverein went a step further. He built himself using a rationalized production method that was previously unknown in Berlin. On the site between Dunckerstraße and Prenzlauer Allee, a large factory building, "the Spider", was erected in which all wood and iron elements for the buildings were prefabricated (e.g. parquet elements). On the site of today's Helmholtzplatz own was brick built, the processed the collected locally, but better with Foreign tone quality adulterated clay. According to a contemporary architectural excursion, the brickyard's capacity is said to have been 60,000 to 80,000 bricks per day.
By combining all trades in one production process, the German-Dutch Actien-Bauverein was the first attempt to industrialize house construction.
The construction projects tackled between 1873 and 1876 included the area of the central and northern Weißenburger Strasse (today: Kollwitzstrasse), Treskowstrasse, Franseckystrasse ( Sredzkistrasse ) and Hochmeisterstrasse (Husemannstrasse). In order to make the parcels on the land of the Actien-Bauverein cheaper, the original development plan was changed on the intervention of the association. This is how the Wörther Platz (today: Kollwitzplatz) was created. There is no clear information about the exact number of completed houses. It is certain that 34 houses could be completed around what is now Kollwitzplatz. After the collapse of society, Wörther Platz itself was "a sandy desert with an oasis of miserable trees in the middle for ten years until around 1885." (Berlin local historians Otto Behrendt and Karl Malbranc)
collapse
After the great start-up crash shook the European economy in 1873, parallel to the beginning of the first construction activities , the company was able to maintain its activity until 1875, but then had to file for bankruptcy in 1875 in the "big crash" (Behrendt / Malbranc) like several other construction companies . Many people who had bought shares in the building association lost their capital.
literature
- JF Geist, K. Kürvers: The Berlin tenement house 1862-1945. Munich 1984, pp. 318-321.
Web links
- Illustration of a share of the building association
- History of one of the first houses built by the Bauverein, u. a. with blueprints
Individual evidence
- ^ Otto Glagau: The stock exchange and start-up fraud in Berlin, 7th Berlin building stories . In: The Gazebo . Issue 26, 1875, pp. 438-440 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).