The bridge (Braunschweig)

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Steintorwall 3: Former building of the bridge (2011).

The bridge was a cultural center in Braunschweig that existed under this name from 1949 until its dissolution and the subsequent sale of the building in 2007.

building

Back (2011)

The two-storey classicist building of the "Brücke" was built in 1866 as a villa for Helene Vieweg, nee. Brockhaus, the wife of the Braunschweig publisher Heinrich Vieweg . It stands on the Steintorwall 3 property and borders the Oker on the garden side . In 1914 the house was renovated by K. Munte and JM Kerlé, with minor changes being made.

The piano nobile on the west side is emphasized by a massive "temple facade". Four pilasters adorn the central risalit and connect the ground floor, the first floor and a mezzanine in the middle of the roof . In 1949, a single-storey extension was built to the south-east of the building, which was initially used as a cinema , later as a theater , in which, among other things, the Niederdeutsche Theater Braunschweig had its home. The building is now a listed building .

use

1866 to 1945

Heinrich Vieweg lived in the villa together with his wife Helene until his death in 1890. After that, his widow lived in the building until her death. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Brunswick industrialist Friedrich Franz Seele bought the property and lived there with his wife until she died in 1942.

1945 until today

At the end of the war, Braunschweig was occupied by US units on April 12, 1945, the day the city of Braunschweig was surrendered . This handed over the command on June 5th to the British armed forces. Braunschweig had thus become part of the British zone of occupation . The military headquarters for the state of Braunschweig was in Veltheim's house on Burgplatz , while that for the city of Braunschweig was initially on Gaußstrasse . The British moved the seat of the city ​​commandant to the undamaged Steintorwall 3 villa on October 3, 1945.

Since British Information Centers were to be set up in all cities in the British occupation zone with more than 50,000 inhabitants , this was also done in Braunschweig. The nickname of these centers as well as the name of a magazine that is available free of charge in their reading room was “Die Brücke”.

The original location of the BIC in Braunschweig was a small makeshift building in the destroyed city center on the corner of Bohlweg and Langer Hof. The name of the facility at that time was "Information Room, Information Bureaus and Inquiry Offices".

On December 15, 1949, we moved into the premises in Villa Steintorwall 3 and the "British Information Center Die Brücke" was inaugurated. The first head of the BIC was John Ryder. "The Bridge" was equipped with an extensive library (12,000 volumes in English), which was supplied by the British Council between 1958 and 1979 . There were concerts, language courses (later also in French, Italian and Spanish) and courses in democracy . English language films were shown and there were reading rooms with English language newspapers and magazines. The British city commander kept his seat in the villa until the end of the occupation.

The collaboration between the British and the city of Braunschweig began in 1953, and the city's cultural office moved into some of the rooms in the villa. The originally British cultural institution gradually transformed into an international meeting place, with the city increasingly taking the lead. In 1958 the city of Braunschweig rented the villa. In 1974 the Braunschweig Public Library took over the management of the foreign-language book inventory, which was integrated into the city library in 1985 after the villa had been bought by the city of Braunschweig in 1984. Even after the British withdrew completely from responsibility for the legacy of the BIC, the villa retained the name “the bridge”.

While the BIC era came to an end without consequences in neighboring Hanover on September 30, 1959, the services offered by the Braunschweig “Brücke” met with great popularity well into the 1980s, also because their use remained free of charge. Up to 120 cultural events such as exhibitions, music events, readings and theater performances took place in the "Brücke" during the BIC period. From 1968 to 1977 the number of events quintupled and the number of visitors increased sevenfold. From 2002 the offer of the "Brücke" was expanded to include the "filmfest in der BRÜCKE", an event of the Braunschweig International Film Festival .

The name “the bridge” stayed alive as long as the villa on the Steintorwall functioned as a cultural center. In the course of the new construction of the Braunschweig Castle , which lasted from 2005 to 2007 , the city council decided in February 2007 to sell the villa. The background was the amalgamation of all the city's cultural institutions such as the cultural institute, city ​​library , city ​​archive, etc. in the new premises. The move took place in July 2007. There was fierce opposition from politicians to plans to “take” the name “Brücke” (as happened in Oldenburg in 1991) into the new quarter.

Since the city of Braunschweig no longer had any use for the old villa at Steintorwall 3, it was sold to a Braunschweig entrepreneur who had it extensively restored and rented it to Credit Suisse . After Credit Suisse had to close almost all branches in Germany, the bridge stood empty for some time before a management consultancy moved there in March 2016.

literature

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Wolfgang Kimpflinger: Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany. Monuments in Lower Saxony , Volume 1.1 .: City of Braunschweig , Part 1, p. 220
  2. ↑ a b Eckbert Buchholz: Die Brücke , in: Deine Stadt - Art, Culture and Life in Braunschweig , Issue 1, Braunschweig 1979, p. 23
  3. ^ Chronicle of the city of Braunschweig: October 3, 1945
  4. ^ Gabriele Clemens: British cultural policy in Germany 1945-1949: literature, film, music and theater . Stuttgart. Steiner 1997, p. 206
  5. ↑ a b Renate Feldmeyer: Die Brücke , In: Camerer, Garzmann, Schuegraf, Pingel: Braunschweiger Stadtlexikon , p. 46
  6. ^ Jürgen Hodemacher: Braunschweigs Straßen - their names and their stories, Volume 1: Innenstadt , Cremlingen 1995, p. 305, ISBN 3-92706-011-9
  7. ^ Chronicle of the city of Braunschweig: December 15, 1949
  8. ↑ Eckbert Buchholz: Die Brücke , in: Your City - Art, Culture and Life in Braunschweig , Issue 1, Braunschweig 1979, p. 22 f
  9. ↑ Klaus Winter: The idea of ​​the "bridge" cannot be transferred to the Schloss-Arkaden ( memento of the original from July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . February 21, 2007 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / spd-ratsfraktion-braunschweig.de
  10. ↑ White Villa was considered a "window to the west"

Web links

Coordinates: 52 ° 15 '43.4 "  N , 10 ° 32' 0.8"  E