Entrance building of the Voss margarine factory

The entrance building 2017 with a new cow head

The entrance building of the Voss margarine factory is the remaining part of a margarine factory built in Hamburg from 1910 and is now part of the headquarters of the Techniker Krankenkasse .

history

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In 1904 Hinrich Voss founded a margarine factory in Hamburg's Humboldtstraße and in 1909/1910 set up a branch on Bramfelder Straße in Barmbek .

The factory building stretched east along today's Habichtstrasse. Even at that time, the entrance building was not laid out at right angles to Habichtstrasse, but aligned so that the front pointed towards the middle of the intersection of Habichtstrasse and Bramfelder Strasse.

The entrance building from 1910 consisted of a rectangular building in the factory style of the Hanover School of Architecture with a stepped gable and Wilhelminian style elements. A clock tower, adorned with a stone cow's head, rose centrally above the entrance.

The increasing sales of his margarine made Voss rich and in 1926 expanded the entrance building of his factory to the west. The architects were Henry Grell and Peter Pruter. The extension was built in the style of brick expressionism. Edged, often pointed elements and the use of the eponymous brick are typical of this variant of Expressionist architecture .

The words "Hinrich Voss" can be found above the main portal. The ornaments on the extension were made by the Hamburg sculptor Richard Kuöhl , who presumably also designed the clock face. To the right and left of the entrance are two sculptures of a worker and an employee. These may also come from Kuöhl, but are each marked with "EB 1926".

The more visible parts of the facade of the original building from 1910 remained unchanged, only the tower was adapted to the style of the new part of the building.

Margarine-Voss ran into economic difficulties in the 1970s. In 1976 the company merged with the Bavarian Margarine Works from Munich and the Holsteinische Margarinewerke Wagner & Co to form "Elite Margarine und Feinkost GmbH". In 1978 production had to be stopped. The company was known for the Margarine Voss art pictures that were attached to the product and stuck into scrapbooks.

On August 11, 1981, the entrance building was added to the list of Hamburg's cultural monuments .

The actual factory was demolished in 1984, the laying of the foundation stone for the new headquarters of the Techniker Krankenkasse was on September 17, 1986. The architect here was Peter P. Schweger . From 1989 to 2006 the old entrance building housed the Hamburg Architecture Archive . The former entrance building of the margarine factory and the administration building behind are now connected via a skyway at the level of the upper floor.

Employee figure
Worker figure

inner space

Behind the main entrance there is an entrance in the Art Deco style . The floor is tiled in a checkerboard pattern, the walls are clad with marble and the radiators are covered by brass frames.

The entrance area opens up two side rooms and the stairwell. To reach the rear areas on the ground floor, you first have to go up 14 steps. From the following landing you can go down the same number of steps on the left to reach the rooms on the ground floor, or you can use a staircase leading up to reach the upper floor and access to the tower. The tower itself is largely unused cavity, only in the front area there is a small office and above that a room with access to the clock mechanism, which is now controlled by radio. In the rear part of the building there is the customer service and a small gym on the ground floor, while the upper floor is used by the library of the Techniker Krankenkasse.

Entrance hall looking towards the stairwell
Stairwell with tower
TK customer service
gym
Library

Cow head

Cow head 2012

At no time was milk processed in the margarine factory. The head symbolized the "artificial cow" which, after the invention of margarine by Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès, provided inexpensive spreadable fat. The cow head was designed by Richard Kuöhl, is made of ceramic, is hollow on the inside and weighs about 70 kg. Since a cow's head was already hanging over the portal of the first part of the building from 1910, there were either two different heads or the sculpture by Kuöhl was made before 1926 and was reattached to the new entrance after the renovation in 1926. On April 22, 2013, the head came off the facade and fell onto the canopy below. The broken head was subsequently restored and will be seen in the future, protected from the weather, in the customer service of the Techniker Krankenkasse. A copy of the original head was made from artificial stone. This has a weight of 300 kg and was firmly anchored in the facade with a tenon on September 30, 2014 .