Ernst Reuter House

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Ernst Reuter House
Ernst Reuter House, front view, January 2018.

The Ernst-Reuter-Haus is an administration building on Straße des 17. Juni in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district with around 30,000 m² of usable space. It was built between 1938 and 1942 according to plans by the Berlin architect Walter Schlempp as a building for the German Community Congress . Today the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning is located in the Ernst Reuter House .

Building history

Ernst Reuter House at night, 2009
Ernst Reuter House, side view, January 2018

Adolf Hitler wanted to equip the German Community Day with a representative seat on the planned east-west axis in Berlin . For this purpose, he provided the property on this street between the Tiergarten S-Bahn station and the Charlottenburger Tor opposite the Tiergarten . The construction was part of the planning of General Building Inspector Albert Speer for the " World Capital Germania "; it is considered the only building on the east-west axis. The construction costs were estimated at around five million Reichsmarks , for which a surcharge was used for all German municipalities.

The foundation stone was laid on June 14, 1938. Construction management was carried out by Walter Schlempp , who also did the design planning. "With the consent of the Führer", Schlempp was supported by the Hanoverian architect and city planning officer Karl Elkart , to whom the facade design is largely attributed. In 1940 an assembly group moved into Speer's rooms in the east wing. The German Congregation Day could not move into the west wing until 1942. In the same year the construction work was stopped due to the war. The middle wing with the main entrance was still in the shell at that time. At the end of the Second World War , the structure was damaged, only 26 rooms were initially usable. The official map of the building damage in 1945 shows a rebuildable partial destruction in the rear area of ​​the central wing. The directory of war-damaged buildings and war fates of German architecture. The house of the German Municipal Assembly does not mention losses, damage or reconstruction .

The house was owned by the Allies between May 1945 and 1951 before it was awarded to the German Association of Cities , whose Presidium met there for the first time on October 19, 1951. In the same year, the German Association of Cities and the Berlin Senate founded the “Association for the Maintenance of Communal Scientific Tasks e. V. Berlin ”, to which the management of the building was entrusted and who also became the owner of the building from July 1952. Between 1952 and 1956 the building was rebuilt and completed by the architect Erich Böckler. Many member cities of the German Association of Cities contributed to the costs with a donation.

On October 3, 1953, the Presidium of the German Association of Cities decided on the funeral of Ernst Reuter , its former President and Governing Mayor of Berlin , the home of the German community day in Ernst-Reuter-Haus rename. In the years after 1960, conversions were made for the Technical University of Berlin , which used parts of the building. In 1985, on the initiative of the German Association of Cities, the central wing was extensively redesigned according to plans by the architects Winnetou Kampmann and Ute Westström to create space for a modern seminar and conference center, office space and a cafeteria . Between 1996 and 2003, numerous other renovations took place inside, the extension of the attic, modernization of the technical systems and renovation of the facade.

After the German Association of Cities had sold the Ernst-Reuter-Haus as the owner to a 90 percent subsidiary of the Rockpoint Group in 2008, it was extensively modernized by the new owner according to plans by the architecture firm nps tchoban voss and carefully modernized in coordination with the Berlin Monument Preservation refurbished.

In 2011 the Ernst-Reuter-Haus was sold to R + V Versicherung .

Uses today

The building wing with a floor area of ​​around 21,000 m² has housed the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning since the end of 2012 . Former tenants were the German Institute for Urban Studies , the Berlin Senate Library and the Berlin seat of the German Association of Cities .

literature

  • Matthias Donath : Architecture in Berlin 1933–1945. A city guide. 2nd revised edition. Published by the Berlin State Monument Authority. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-936872-26-2 , p. 112 f.

Web links

Commons : Ernst-Reuter-Haus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Monthly booklets for architecture and urban development, 9, 1940, p. 227
  2. ^ Map of the building damage 1945. Senate Department for Urban Development Berlin; to be reached via "Start" and "Historical Maps / Damage to Buildings 1945"
  3. ^ Hartwig Beseler , Niels Gutschow (ed.): War fates of German architecture. Loss, damage, rebuilding. Documentation for the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany. Volume I. North . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1988, ISBN 3-529-02685-9 , zu Berlin-Charlottenburg, pp. 138–152.
  4. ↑ Hans J. Reichhardt (Ed.): Berlin. Chronicle of the years 1951–1954. Published on behalf of the Berlin Senate. Edited by Hans J. Reichhardt, Joachim Drogman (1951/52) and Hanns U. Treutler (1953/54). Heinz Spitzing, Berlin 1968, p. 828 (8 c)
  5. ↑ immobilien-zeitung.de
  6. ↑ Difu reports 3/2009, p. 2 (PDF)

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 51 ″  N , 13 ° 19 ′ 59 ″  E