German colonial house
The German Colonial House was a German company owned by the Berlin businessman Bruno Antelmann for products from the German colonies . It had its headquarters at Jerusalemer Strasse 28, but in 1903 it moved into a representative building on Lützowstrasse ( Berlin-Tiergarten ).
history
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Bruno Antelmann had opened a grocery store at Jerusalemer Strasse 28 in Berlin in the 1880s. Soon after the establishment of the first German colonies, Antelmann specialized in goods from " German cultivation ". In 1896 Bruno Antelmann was a leader in the field of colonial goods in Germany and so he ran his own stall at the 1st German Colonial Exhibition in Treptow .
In 1900 the German Colonial House had branches in Dresden , Frankfurt am Main , Leipzig , Kassel , Munich and Wiesbaden in addition to Berlin , and there were more than 400 sales outlets in other German cities.
In 1903 the large and magnificent German Colonial House was built at Lützowstrasse 89-90. The architecture was based on colonial motifs: the oriental-looking front with a towering dome was adorned with statues of mounted elephants, lions, African warriors and the names of the German colonies. The execution goes back to Rudolf Hellgrewe , who also enriched the interior with colonial-inspired ceiling paintings. The new building complex accommodated business and storage rooms in the front building and the rear building, which can be reached via an inner courtyard, but also an enormous administrative apparatus, which in turn is part of the board of directors, the so-called " expedition department " (organization of packaging and shipping), as well as the marketing - Department for nationwide advertising.
The German Colonial House endeavored “to bring the products of the German protected areas closer to the German public under reliable control of their authenticity and in this way gradually make the German market more and more independent of the import of foreign colonial products. ". The operation was under the technical supervision of the German Colonial Society . The product range ranged from " Usambara coffee", " Samoa cocoa", " Cameroon chocolate", coconut macaroons, colonial pastries, raw tobacco and "New Guinea cigars" to " Kiautschou cigarettes", Kola liqueur and peanut oil . Oriental goods from the allied Ottoman Empire completed the offer.
But not only food, ethnographics (carvings and jewelery from Africa), home accessories (e.g. palm tree mats, furs, stuffed African game) and colonial literature were available.
The employees of the German Colonial House often came from the German colonies themselves and were supposed to complete the exotic flair in the sales rooms. “ They are the sons of respected, indigenous families who were mostly recommended by the Herrns governors of the individual protected areas to the head of the German Colonial House Antelmann for education and professional training. "
Kaiser Wilhelm II and Grand Duke Friedrich Franz IV of Mecklenburg-Schwerin were also infected by the exoticism of the German Colonial House and Bruno Antelmann was appointed purveyor to the court .
In 1914 Bruno Antelmann sold the German Colonial House to the Woermann company , which used the building as a warehouse until around 1935. In the Second World War it was destroyed to the ground, and today it is home to modern office buildings. The monumental portal lion figures are now in the Kunsthof of the Heimatmuseum Reinickendorf .
literature
- Opprower, Rolf: "On lion hunt in the stone desert. Stone menagerie of the desert kings - As gatekeepers and on monument bases", in: Der Tagesspiegel , Berlin, April 16, 1961.
- Zeller, Joachim : "The German Colonial House in Lützowstrasse", in: Ulrich van der Heyden / Joachim Zeller (ed.): Colonial metropolis Berlin - A search for traces , Berlin 2002, pp. 84–93.
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 11.1 ″ N , 13 ° 21 ′ 53.5 ″ E