Service building of the Royal Railway Directorate Berlin
The former service building of the Royal Railway Directorate Berlin at Schöneberger Ufer 1–3 in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district was built from 1892 to 1895 as the seat of the Royal Railway Directorate Berlin , which was subordinate to the Prussian Ministry of Public Works. The historicist administrative building in the form of the German Neo-Renaissance , built according to plans by the architect Armin Wegner , was rather reserved for cost reasons and served as the seat of the Reich Railway Directorate in Berlin on April 1, 1920 , after the transition from the Prussian State Railways to the Reichseisenbahn, which later became the Deutsche Reichsbahn . Today the building is owned by the real estate company Vivico .
The extraterritorial situation in West Berlin led to various incidents between the Soviet and American occupying powers and the West Berlin police in the post-war period, until the Deutsche Reichsbahn found a less conflict-prone use in 1958 when it was used as a polyclinic for West Berlin Reichsbahn employees. After the general renovation from 1991 to 1995, an intermezzo as the headquarters of the Berlin branch of Deutsche Bahn until 2002 and a longer vacancy, the former office building served as the headquarters of Bombardier Transportation since the beginning of 2006 . Since 2017 the building has been the location of the Federal Police Directorate 11 . In addition to the GSG 9 also includes Federal Police Flugdienst and the departments police protection tasks abroad of the Federal Police , Special protective duties air transport of the federal police and the use and investigation support the federal police to the operating units of the authority.
The Royal Railway Directorate Berlin - the client
The administration of the Prussian State Railways, subordinate to the Ministry of Public Works, was divided into eleven railway directorates until 1895 , to which 75 company offices were subordinate. The head office based in Berlin was the one with the smallest share of the route network at 587 kilometers, but had a considerable volume of traffic with the Berlin rail hub. It emerged in 1880 from the Lower Silesian-Märkische Eisenbahn , which had been bought up in 1852 . With the nationalization of the Berlin railways, such as the Berlin-Potsdam-Magdeburg Railway or the Berlin-Anhalt Railway in the years 1878 to 1887, it grew into a large authority with numerous officials. The Stadtbahn , the Ringbahn , all Berlin train stations and the suburban traffic such as the Berlin-Dresden Railway to Zossen were their responsibility . The accommodation in numerous rented private buildings in the Leipziger Platz area , at Koppenstrasse 88-89 and in the former administrative premises of the nationalized railways such as the freight yard of the Anhalter Bahnhof and the Görlitzer Bahnhof made administrative processes more difficult and made no economic sense. A new administration building was to bring together the various departments in one house and offered the welcome opportunity to make the importance of the Berlin Railway Directorate appear dignified.
The construction and occupation of the service building was also the reason for a profound redesign of the Prussian state railways. In February 1895, shortly before moving into the new building, Karl von Thielen , Minister of Public Works, with the approval of Kaiser Wilhelm II on December 15, 1894, reorganized the administration of the Prussian State Railways into 20 directorates from April 1, 1895. The Berlin Railway Directorate was now divided into 9 operational inspections, 3 machine inspections, 13 workshop inspections, a telegraph inspection and 4 traffic inspections. The administrative staff of the Berlin Directorate consisted of a president, 15 members of the board of directors, 10 unskilled workers, an accounting director, a main cashier rendanten (accounting officer) and 580 office workers. The new building had to be geared towards around 600 civil servants and employees.
Location, planning and construction phase
The construction site on the Schöneberger Ufer on the Landwehr Canal opposite the Schöneberg harbor was on an area that shaped the tracks of the Anhalter and Potsdam train stations . The property was already in the possession of the state railway administration. The location was not attractive for private clients because of the numerous track systems and railway operations buildings with their immissions, so that the administration could not speculate on a profitable sale. In addition to the cost savings due to the low property costs, the state also had the opportunity to architecturally encompass the Schöneberg harbor, which has existed since 1852, through the new service building on the opposite bank. The location of the building plot, which is free on all sides, enabled a free-standing, more representative building as a further advantage.
The plans were made in the internal construction department of the Royal Railway Directorate in Berlin. The railway construction inspector for building construction Armin Wegner and his employees B. Schwarz and government builder W. Kern were responsible for the plans. The construction program required business premises for approximately 600 civil servants, including 35 offices for senior civil servants. With the exception of official apartments for two sub-civil servants and the porter on the basement floor, the client waived the usual official apartments for senior civil servants at the time. The original plans were constantly being changed while the construction was being carried out, which was directed by the government master builder W. Kern, who was already involved in the planning.
In the autumn of 1891, after clearing the parts of the parcel that had previously been rented out as storage spaces, construction work began with the establishment of the future headquarters of the railway administration. As expected, the marshy building site, criss-crossed by former watercourses, turned out to be difficult. The base of the cement concrete reached an average of 2.5 meters, in some places also 4.0 meters below the very high water table due to the nearby Landwehr Canal. The cost of 200,000 marks for the foundation caused one eighth of the total construction costs of 1.6 million marks. The shell was built from autumn of the following year until 1894, so that the interior work was completed in 1895 and the building could be occupied in February 1895.
The "lock" of the railway directorate
When it was built, the original castle-like building referred to the basin of the former Schöneberg harbor, which was filled in in 1959/1960 and which is now the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Park . Above the trapezoidal floor plan, which resulted from the alignment of the Schöneberger Ufer and Schöneberger Straße as well as the desire for a symmetrical building shape, the 97.30 meter long main front rises in the north and the 53.91 meter long side fronts in the east and in the West. Two corner towers with conical roofs cleverly conceal the non-rectangular corners between the main and side facades. The poorly structured building mass encloses two green courtyards of 550 square meters each. The central building protruding on the main front connects the front wing of the building on Schöneberger Ufer with the rear wing and at the same time separates the two inner courtyards.
Three floors rise above the basement level at street level, with a fourth floor in the central building and in the rear wing. A basement was dispensed with because there was no need and the high groundwater level would have required complex seals. An originally with brown interlocking tiles is INDOOR high gable roof with an inserted by colored brick pattern below the ridge includes the construction upwards. The expansion of the attic from 1992 to 1995 doubled the number of dormers that were originally available and numerous skylights changed the roof landscape.
Business premises
In 1895, in addition to a few offices and the sub-civil servants' apartments, only subordinate facilities of the management were located in the less representative and rather gloomy basement. These included the ticket printing facility in the two administrative districts of Berlin and Stettin , the railway administration's warehouse for printed matter and the central heating in the central building. On the three upper floors, office after office was lined up in the main wing and the two side wings on the outer and courtyard facades on both sides of a circumferential corridor. In the narrower rear wing, Wegner did without the offices facing the courtyard due to the poor lighting conditions. The rooms with one or two windows served one to three officials, depending on the size of the room and the position of the owner. Only the cash register and the registries in the central structure had larger joint offices for several officials. The partitions of the offices made of cement boards appear remarkably modern in order to be able to meet the needs of expanding individual rooms as far as possible.
The most prestigious business premises were on the first floor, the piano nobile , which was also distinguished by its height of 4.3 meters . The storey heights of 4.0 meters on the ground floor and 3.8 meters on the second floor were felt by colleagues at the time to be too low. In its report on the tour of the members of the Architects' Association in Berlin in the new building on May 20, 1895, the Deutsche Bauzeitung criticized the storey height, which is otherwise not usual in public buildings , and which made the interior rooms appear somewhat squeezed , for reasons of economy . In the middle of the central building, well shielded inside the building complex, was the main office of the management with its two safes . In line with its importance, Wegner designed the over-high conference room in the central axis and the adjoining presidential room on the first floor with lavish plaster ceilings and wall designs in the neo-Renaissance style. Two consultation rooms in the towers were available for consultations with the department heads , whose offices were in the adjoining rooms. The well-lit drawing room on the third floor above the meeting room belonged to the construction department of the management, Wegner's service area.
Stairwells, entrance hall and corridors
Four staircases in the middle of each wing connect the floors with each other. The main staircase, which takes up about half the area of the central building in the main wing, is the most elaborately designed. From the ground floor to the second floor, it consists of a hall 6 meters wide and 16 meters long, with two 3.2 meters wide staircases with quarter landings made of granite on each side. The first quarter landing of the stairs on the ground floor allows access to the hallway. Flat barrel vaults with stitch caps arch over the halls on the ground floor and first floor, while cross vaults with flat stucco ornaments cover the flights of stairs. Strong pillars made of Udelfanger sandstone support the basket arches . Because of the lower storey height on the upper floors, the halls were given horizontal cast plaster ceilings clamped between iron girders. Two skylights in the ceiling of the second floor provided light on the two flights of stairs to the ground floor. Candelabra integrated into the wrought-iron banister with wooden handrails and iron ceiling lights, like the lighting in the whole house originally powered by gas , lit the main staircase in the dark. The second and third floors are only connected by a simpler iron staircase that illuminates a third skylight.
Access to the main staircase is provided by the entrance hall spanned by a basket-shaped barrel vault. A curved granite staircase with wrought iron railing, the terrazzo floor with inlaid patterns and the elaborate wrought iron ceiling lantern gave the visitor a sense of the lock in the headquarters of the railway management. The halls were also given a more elaborate design, where the corridors of the wings in the corners of the building meet the corridor of the main wing. Two granite pillars support the ceiling, which is composed of cross and barrel vaults, above the rooms in the form of irregular hexagons.
The corridor floors of the more representative and more frequented areas were given a terrazzo covering , while linoleum was laid on a plaster or cement screed in the other rooms . Due to the lack of a basement, the railway management only equipped a few rooms on the basement floor with wooden floors because of the cold , which prompted Berlin and its buildings to note in 1896 that wooden floors were excluded here to an extent that was unusual in state buildings .
Facades
With their volute gables , towers and wrought-iron wall anchors, the facades of the service building of the railway administration take up forms of the German Renaissance . The surfaces made of reddish, white grouted clinker bricks essentially determine the image and color of the building, as Wegner was only allowed to have the structures such as window frames, cornices and individual ornaments made in sandstone. Even there, however, he still had to pay close attention to the costs, so that sandstone from Silesia was only used for the sandstone work on the more preferred parts of the building, such as the central projecting Heuscheuer . The remaining sandstone parts were made of cheaper Warthauer sandstone from Silesia, and the use of house stone on the back is limited to the most necessary . Probably slightly resigned, Wegner wrote in 1896 in the Centralblatt of the building administration on the structural equipment of the building that it meets all the requirements for durability of a building of this importance and achieves monumental character within the limits required for cost considerations for state buildings .
Main facade on Schöneberger Ufer
The main facade on Schöneberger Ufer is dominated by the central building, which protrudes around three meters, and the two corner towers, which were originally crowned with weather vanes. The wall surfaces in between, each with seven window axes, show the same structure as the two side facades, but the details of which are simpler. The simple, barred segmented arched windows of the basement with a keystone made of ashlar just below the cornice, which separates the basement from the ground floor, follow a granite plinth. The windows on the ground floor are already more elaborately designed with framing, parapet and window sill made of sandstone. The windows of the first floor with the wider, slightly protruding window sill supported by consoles, the additional roof and the more richly hewn keystones show the richest design. By eliminating the roof and the window parapet, the decoration on the windows of the second floor is reduced again. Above this is the simple sandstone cornice supported by consoles.
In the protruding central building, a three-axis risalit that protrudes about a meter and is crowned by a volute gable emphasizes the central axis. The main entrance, adorned with elaborate wrought iron bars, is framed by a grooved border that widens at the top to accommodate a cartridge with the impeller as a symbol of railroad traffic. Two consoles to the left and right of the portal carry the plate of a balcony, on whose railing, which has now disappeared, an iron shield in gold-plated letters with Königl. Railway directorate called purpose and master of the house. The splendor continues in the two accompanying segmental arched windows, also with elaborate grilles, keystones and projecting window sills. The entire zone around the portal and the two windows are clad with sandstone blocks and each have a square pilaster against the surrounding clinker facing.
Four slightly protruding wall pillars combine the first and second floors. The three segmented arched windows in between of the tall meeting room manifest the importance of the meeting room on the facade through the sandstone parapet and the roofing supported by consoles - a segmented arched gable in the central axis and triangular gable on the outside with a shell in the gable field. Two high rectangular sandstone slabs reaching almost as far as the lintel of the window, each with a strap made of ribbons, a caduceus , impeller and telegraph poles on the left and crossed laurel branches, ribbons, cogwheel and centrifugal governor on the right, symbolize the service departments of the railway administration . The gear wheel stands for the workshops, the centrifugal governor for the machine inspection, the telegraph pole for the telegraph inspection, the impeller for the factory inspection and the Hermes staff for the traffic inspection. Three segment arches connect the pillars on the next floor. Three three-winged windows with stone crosses follow the arching of the arches and light up the drawing room, which is above the level of the second floor because of the over-high meeting room below. Three smaller rectangular windows, lined up closely next to each other, follow a sandstone band and an oval gable window above. At the top of the gable, a plaque shows the year 1894.
Corner towers and side facades
On the corner towers, slightly protruding pillars brace the second and third floors. Brick segment arches with starting and end stones made of ashlar connect the pillars under the eaves. The wall surfaces at the corners of the building and the connections to the façades are lined and decorated in the middle with wrought iron wall anchors without a static function. The other two intermediate areas are dissolved in windows, similar in shape to those of the main facade, but somewhat more elaborate in detail, such as the shells in the gable of the roof on the first floor. On the third floor above the cornice of the main facade, six wall pillars continue those of the lower floors and support the eaves of the stone towers. All intermediate surfaces are currently filling suspicious windows.
The thirteen-axis side facades show the same structure as the main facade. On the basement floor, in the middle seventh axis, a richly designed portal leads to the side staircase, which - unlike the three pompous ground floor windows suspected of having triangular gables - is located on the courtyard side. Wagner had the courtyard facades veneered with lighter, yellowish clinker bricks, which absorb less light - he only used red molded bricks and clinker bricks as a contrast for the cornices and the inlaid patterns.
Headquarters of the Reichsbahndirektion Berlin and expansion in the 1930s
As a result of the November Revolution, insurgents occupied the railway management on January 7, 1919. The authority itself, as the Royal Railway Directorate, was also affected by the upheavals after the fall of the monarchy. The Prussian state railways went on 1 April 1920 in the imperial railway over, the later German National Railroad , and the building is now used as headquarters of the Reichsbahn Berlin . The building achieved a certain level of fame in 1928 when the Sass brothers tried to break in , who wanted to steal the wages and salaries stored there from the vault. The railway management is also mentioned several times in Hans Fallada's novel "A man wants to go up". From 1929 to 1938 the Reichsbahndirektion built an extension on the rear facade facing the Gleisdreieck . Like the original building, the extension by the architect Richard Brademann , clad in travertine on the top floor, was veneered with red clinker bricks and extended the complex along Schöneberger Straße and along the tracks to include two new inner courtyards in the architectural forms of the late 1920s. The rounded, "dynamic" corner building, crowned by a wing wheel, at the southern end of the extension at the entrance to the Gleisdreieck underground station is striking . In the old building, the architect placed an additional storey on the middle and rear wings.
Post-war and present
After the Second World War , which the building survived almost unscathed, the Reichsbahn, now under the control of the Soviet military administration in Germany , continued to use the building. Red Army soldiers guarded the exterritorial headquarters of the Soviet transport department, now housed in the service building . In April 1948, the American military police, on whose sector the railroad management was in the divided city, forced the withdrawal of the Soviet soldiers and occupied the building. The incident led to disruption of the S-Bahn traffic in West Berlin , so that the Americans withdrew again to avoid further disruptions. It was replaced by the transport police , which was responsible for the safety and monitoring of traffic on the Deutsche Reichsbahn, including the control of the S-Bahn traffic. During the railroad strike , around 200 striking railroad workers, who demanded that their wages be paid in Westmark instead of Ostmark , stormed the house on the night of June 8th to 9th, 1949. The Reichsbahndirektion Berlin took this incident as an opportunity to move its headquarters to East Berlin in the metal trade union building at Elsasser Straße 85/85 (renamed in 1951 and renumbered Wilhelm-Pieck-Straße 140/142), from 1994 again referred to as Torstraße as before 1873 , relocate. In another incident in January 1950, the Berlin police disarmed the transport police stationed in the building. The American and Soviet city commanders agreed to clear the building and return it to the Reichsbahn. In 1958, she set up a polyclinic for her employees in West Berlin. Other rooms were used by the company school, the railway archive and a telephone switchboard.
At the end of the 1980s, the West Berlin Senate bought the railway directorate, but gave it back to the Reichsbahn after the German reunification . In 1990, on January 1, 1994, the Deutsche Reichsbahn merged with the Deutsche Bundesbahn in the Deutsche Bahn AG . Between 1991 and 1995, the new owner renovated the railway management for around 70 million DM. In addition to the renovation of the existing rooms on the lower floors, the construction program also included the extension of the attic. The floor plan was based on the concept of the existing floors with the service rooms lined up along the corridors. The new third and fourth floors could be easily accessed through the additional staircases and a new staircase above the right flight of the main staircase. The roof landscape of the service building on the street fronts changed during the expansion with additional dormers and roof windows. In the courtyard area, the exterior walls, which have been raised by two storeys, replace the previous roof structure. After the general renovation, the headquarters of the Berlin branch of Deutsche Bahn moved into the building until 2002. From the beginning of 2006 to 2017, the former service building of the railway administration served as the global headquarters of Bombardier Transportation after a long period of vacancy . In the second component, Axxonis Pharma AG (formerly NeuroBiotec Pharma AG), the cultural events of the federal government in Berlin GmbH (KBB), which also organizes the Berlinale , the architectural office GAP mbH, the lawyers, notaries and tax consultants Bartelt, Elsbernd, Engel, Osvatic and Silz as well as Vivico Berlin.
Since August 2017, the administration of Federal Police Directorate 11 has resided in the service building of the railway directorate. The five special forces units and the responsibility for the defusing services of the Federal Police were bundled under a central management and operational structure in this department, known for short as “Directorate 11”. These include u. a. the GSG 9 and the Federal Police Fliegergruppe.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Royal Prussian Minister of Public Works (Ed.): Berlin and his railways 1846–1896. Vol. 1. Julius Springer, Berlin 1896, p. 375.
- ↑ Architects Association of Berlin and Association of Berlin Architects (ed.): Berlin and its buildings. Vol. 1. Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1896, p. 5.
- ^ A b Architects' Association in Berlin and Association of Berlin Architects (ed.): Berlin and its buildings. Vol. 2. Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1896, pp. 112–114.
- ↑ a b c d Armin Wegner: The business building of the Royal Railway Directorate Berlin. In: Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung . Berlin 16.1896, pp. 338-340. ISSN 0372-8021
- ↑ German construction newspaper. Berlin 44.1895, p. 279.
- ↑ Jörn Hasselmann: Federal police moves into the old railway management: GSG 9 is now fighting terror from Kreuzberg. Der Tagesspiegel, August 8, 2017, accessed on August 8, 2017 .
literature
- Royal Prussian Minister of Public Works (Ed.): Berlin and his railways 1846–1896. Vol. 1. Julius Springer, Berlin 1896, p. 375.
- Architects Association of Berlin and Association of Berlin Architects (ed.): Berlin and its buildings. Vol. 2. Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1896, pp. 112–114.
Web links
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
- Interior and exterior views of the Royal Railway Directorate in the Architecture Museum of the TU Berlin
- The world on the history and the reconstruction of the Royal Directorate
- The Royal Railway Directorate in the Berlin district lexicon
- Background information from Bombardier on the new headquarters of Bombardier Transportation (PDF; 23 kB)
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 7 ″ N , 13 ° 22 ′ 30 ″ E
