Ernst Ziesel

AEG factory building by Ernst Ziesel, Gustav-Meyer-Allee 25, Official Gate at Volkspark Humboldthain , Berlin

Ernst Ziesel (born April 20, 1880 in Wesel , † 1946 in Berlin ) was a German architect who was able to erect countless industrial buildings in the Berlin area in the 1920s. Most of the factory hall designs were created in collaboration with the civil engineer Gerhard Mensch and are good examples of constructivism . The buildings still preserved are under monument protection . Along with Peter Behrens , Paul Tropp , Gottfried Klemm and Paul Sellmann, Ziesel was one of AEG's in- house architects .

Buildings based on designs by Ernst Ziesel

The first building complex completed by Ernst Ziesel in 1913 is a residential and commercial building in the then independent town of Spandau (Moritzstraße 2, Kurbad Spandau).

Ziesel received an order from the non-profit housing association (Gebag) in Berlin-Oberschöneweide to expand a workers' terraced housing estate ( Gebag settlement ) built by Jean Krämer in 1924–1925 in the area of ​​Zeppelinstraße 73-87 / An der Wuhlheide 26-40 / Fontanestraße 3 –7 / Triniusstrasse 10–11A. The existing buildings were designed according to the then current reform principles for workers' housing. In 1928/1929 Ziesel carefully added the two- and three-storey terraced houses in the adapted architectural style. The brick buildings are finished with ocher-colored plaster, red clinker bricks , three-winged windows and beaver-tail- covered hipped roofs form an economical building equipment. The additional development led to a spacious inner courtyard with a green area. The entire residential complex consisting of seven apartment buildings was repaired between 2000 and 2002 with funding from the Senate. The buildings on the street side offer a good quality of living thanks to additional noise protection measures in compliance with the preservation order. The owner, a private housing association, received the “Builders Prize Treptow-Köpenick 2001” for the work carried out.

The up-and-coming company AEG began at the end of the 19th century with the production of electrical systems and accessories in new factory buildings on a site in what was then the Berlin suburb of Gesundbrunnen (Hussitenstrasse 26–31). Between 1906 and 1913, additional buildings were added based on designs by the architects Franz Schwechten , Johannes Kraaz , Peter Behrens and Karl Bernhard . A second expansion phase took place between 1928 and 1941. Ernst Ziesel, in cooperation with the civil engineer Gerhard Mensch, provided the plans for a converter station, a warehouse ("Güterboden") and an assembly hall on the corner plot of Hussitenstrasse / Gustav-Meyer-Allee, which were completed in 1928. A steel skeleton was chosen as the supporting structure of the hall with the dimensions 137 meters long, 33 meters wide and 24 meters high . The basic structure is filled in with brick and glass and is closed off by a glass roof. Three tiered crane systems and two overhead traveling cranes made it easier to transport and assemble large machines and machine parts. Laboratory buildings, also planned by Ziesel in 1940/1941, formed the end of the development. The assembly hall was lengthened to 180 meters in 1966, widened to 45 meters and raised to 26 meters. This renovation work was completed in July 2003 and is practically a new building.

When AEG stopped production here in the mid-1980s, the buildings that remained on the site were empty. From the 1990s onwards, under the responsibility of the Gewerbesiedlungs-Gesellschaft Berlin (GSG) , they were redesigned as the “ Technologie- und Innovationspark Berlin ” (TIB) and gradually renovated. The expansion and renovation was carried out by the architectural association Fehr + Partner under the direction of the architect Hans-Joachim Tunnat and was completed in 2003. The "Berlin Innovation and Start-up Center" (BIG) with numerous companies or start-ups as well as institutes of the TU Berlin and the Fraunhofer Society (FhG) settled here. The above-mentioned large assembly hall was named "Peter-Behrens-Halle" when it was reopened. It is used by Faculty VI (Institute for Civil Engineering) of the TU Berlin as a test field for strength and deformation behavior of components on a scale of 1: 1.

1987: VEB Elektro-Apparate-Werke Berlin-Treptow on Elsenstrasse
(today: An den Treptowers)

Historic buildings and the new 125 meter high office tower of the Treptowers , 2005

The largest building by Ernst Ziesel is the complex of the Elektro-Apparate-Werke Berlin-Treptow . It was commissioned by AEG in 1928 for the production of electrical devices. Ziesel was able to realize a monumental industrial building with administration building on a large site in Alt-Treptow , bounded by the banks of the Spree in the north, the S-Bahn station Treptow in the east, Hoffmannstrasse in the south and Zobelstrasse in the west. The street front is emphasized like a tower at the corner of Elsenstrasse and Hoffmannstrasse by a raised storey. The 6- or 8-storey clinker-clad 14-axis structures form an inner courtyard. In 1939, according to plans by Ziesel, a renovation and an extension was carried out by the construction company Richter und Skull. The political developments after the Second World War led to the expropriation of all AEG plants located in the eastern sector of Berlin, the production facility became VEB Elektro-Apparate-Werke Berlin-Treptow (EAW), which manufactured various electrical devices until the GDR was dissolved . After the end of production, the insurance company Allianz acquired the building complex. The historic buildings were renovated, and in the immediate vicinity the company had a 122-meter-high tower made of concrete and glass and three other modern individual buildings erected in the immediate vicinity, which are known as TrepTowers (derived from the Treptow district and the English word for towers). The execution of the work was in the hands of the architectural association ASP Schweger & Partner from Hamburg. The address of the entire facility is now An den Treptowers 3 , it is the Berlin headquarters of the insurance company.

The numerous companies founded or relocated in the former outskirts of Oberschöneweide from Berlin led to corresponding building contracts from architects who had already completed their first industrial buildings. For the new cable production at Wilhelminenhofstrasse 76-77 in 1928, AEG again commissioned Ernst Ziesel, among others, with designs for a boiler house and a rubber hose factory ( Hall block IX ; now known as the Oberschöneweide telecommunications cable factory ). Together with the experienced civil engineer Gerhard Mensch, Ziesel built one of the first storey factories in steel frame construction . After the continuation of cable production in the GDR era, activities on the site ended in 1992. The Ziesel / Mensch buildings fell victim to the wrecking ball on behalf of the Berlin Senate in 2006, although there had been widespread protest against this measure. However, buildings by other architects on the site have been preserved and have been gradually converted into a new campus for the FHTW .

The now well-known duo Ziesel / Mensch was able to build a hall for the production of large transformers for the AEG transformer factory Oberspree (TRO) in 1928/29 . A special feature is the steel three-joint frame construction chosen by Gerhard Mensch for the building (Wilhelminenhofstrasse 83–85 / Edisonstrasse 1–8). The company was converted into the VEB Transformatorenwerk Oberspree in 1949.

After the reunification in the GDR, AEG bought the site back, but gave it up again in 1996. A private investor (Peter Barg) founded the Rathenau Culture and Technology Center in 1997 - a project that shows the industrial development in Oberschöneweide on the preserved buildings and organizes exhibitions, concerts and other cultural events in the large halls. The extensively renovated large transformer hall is the landmark of the center, which is also known as Rathenauhallen for short .

The oxygen works Borsigwalde - Gesellschaft für Lindes Eismaschinen AG (Jacobsenweg 41/61 in the Reinickendorf district, Berlin-Wittenau district ) entrusted the industrial construction specialist Ernst Ziesel with the task of planning and building a filling building for oxygen bottles . The hall was completed in 1938.

The Schwedenstraße equipment factory in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen (formerly Wedding district ), designed by Ernst Ziesel for Telefunken GmbH , was built between 1939 and 1941. On the right side of the complex, the Tromsöer Straße building created a connection to the AEG Hydrawerk (not visible here) . Photo: Sept. 2011

The AEG subsidiary Hydrawerk AG already owned a rubber factory (architect Richard Schirop , 1909) on Drontheimer Strasse (house numbers 30A – B, 34–34A, 36, 38) in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen . Ernst Ziesel and Gerhard Mensch built further factory buildings there in 1928–1929, which were provided with recessed upper floors taking into account the surrounding residential buildings.

In the immediate vicinity, on the area between Residenzstrasse and Tromsöer Strasse, the Schwedenstrasse equipment factory was built in 1939–1941 according to plans by Ernst Ziesel for the AEG subsidiary Telefunken . The massive five-storey commercial building was structurally connected across Tromsöer Strasse to the Hydrawerk and was used to manufacture radio equipment for the Wehrmacht until the end of the war in 1945 . Ziesel planned a production and storage building in Tromsöer Straße, which was built between 1938 and 1940. The Telefunken equipment factory later produced radio, cassette and tape recorders ( magnetophone ) as well as TED video recorders . After AEG's settlement procedure in 1982 and its takeover by Daimler-Benz , the entire location was given up. The administration of the GSG (Gewerbesiedlungsgesellschaft) initiated a comprehensive modernization and ensured that new companies from various industries moved into the industrial complex. The building complex has a variably divisible total usable area of around 21,000 square meters.

Outside of the industrial buildings, Ziesel was employed in 1930 to modernize spa facilities for Altheide AG for spa and bathing operations in the new Silesian spa town of Altheide Bad . He later published comments on this activity in Deutsche Bauzeituing .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bavarian War Tribe Roll, Bavarian Medical Vehicle Department 06, Volume 6., No. 1675
2. ↑ Residential and commercial building in Spandau, 1913
3. ↑ Gebag settlement at the Senate Department for Urban Development ( Memento from March 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ Fontanehof in Oberschöneweide
5. ↑ AEG-Fabriken Brunnenstrasse: plan from October 1912
6. ↑ AEG - tabular chronicle; 1966
7. ↑ Brunnenstrasse 111, AEG-Fabriken Brunnenstrasse
8. ↑ TU Berlin on the above-mentioned buildings. , accessed January 16, 2016.
9. ↑ Schweger & Partner about the Treptowers ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Retrieved January 16, 2016. 
10. ↑ AEG - EAW in Treptow
11. ↑ A detailed description of the construction process of the Treptowers as part of the dissertation of an architect from the Technical University of Darmstadt
12. ^ Letter from the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation on the demolition of the listed factory in 2006; (PDF) ( Memento from July 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
13. ↑ Monument remains of historical factories on today's "Spreepark"
14. ^ Sabine Flatau: The show hall project on the former AEG site . In: Die Welt , July 12, 2007
15. ↑ Anja Schlender: Cranes, Art and Children. Oberschöneweide is developing from a former industrial site into a residential and work area. In: Berliner Zeitung , December 20, 2007
16. ↑ Monument Preservation Day 2000 (PDF; 1.7 MB) at the Senate Department for Urban Development
17. ↑ eh. AEG transformer factory in Oberschöneweide
18. ↑ Filling hall for oxygen bottles, 1937/38 by Ernst Ziesel
19. ↑ Factory complex of the AEG hydra works by Ernst Ziesel
20. ↑ Fas converted equipment factory on www.luis.de ; accessed on January 16, 2016.
21. ↑ AEG Telefunken equipment factory in the Gesundbrunnen district.
22. ^ Henryk Grzybowski, Eberhard Scholz: Old news about Altheide Bad (PDF; 8.3 MB), in: "Ziemia Kłodzka / Glatzer Bergland", No. 217, lipiec / July 2012, pp. 22-23, ISSN  1234-9208 ; according to: Ernst Ziesel: Conversions and extensions of the Kurhaus in Bad Altheide , in: "Deutsche Bauzeitung", 65th year, № 77-78, 23 September 1931.