Fürstenhof (Bad Kissingen)

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Fürstenhof and Villa Gordon (left) in 2007

The Fürstenhof (Bismarckstraße 6), directly on the western shore of the Franconian Saale in the Bavarian Staatsbad Bad Kissingen located, was since 1856, first a hotel, in 1880 it became a private sanatorium expanded, most recently to 2004 as diabetes - rehab operated -Zentrum. The main house and the Villa Gordon on the property , the private home of the previous owners, are listed as individual monuments in the Bavarian list of monuments.

history

New hotel building

The much smaller building originally called Kurhotel Bellevue , today's main wing on Bad Kissinger Bismarckstraße , dates back to 1856. For almost 25 years it served as a befitting hostel for Kissingen's guests from the European aristocracy and upper class .

German War 1866

In the battle of Kissingen between Bavarian and Prussian troops on July 10, 1866, a decisive event in the German War , private houses were spared. However, this did not apply to the spa hotel Bellevue , which had recently been renamed Hotel de Bavière and belonged to restaurateur H. Bernhard around 1865.

A Russian spa guest who had witnessed the fighting wrote in his letter: “The“ Hotel de Bavière ”was an exception, which was completely destroyed; all glass, all mirrors broken, all supplies destroyed, household utensils demolished, laundry and clothes carried away and spoiled. The cause of this devastation, which was wrought on the morning after the battle, is given as the fact that while Prussian soldiers were billeted in the house, three shots were fired at the Prussians by the landlord and his staff (Bavaria) . ”Another eyewitness reported:“ The accesses to the bridge were so exposed to enemy fire that the Prussians could not advance without being shot down immediately. Their skirmishers were therefore forced to seek shelter in the houses on the western bank, and we saw from our window the lightning from the windows of the "Hotel de Bavière", from which the Prussians returned the Bavarian fire from the bridge. "Also The injured were cared for here: On August 15, according to the Bavarian War Ministry , Kaspar Schording from Morlautern from the Bavarian Rhine Palatinate was still staying in the house, a soldier in the 14th Infantry Regiment. He was shot in the left thigh.

Expansion to a sanatorium

The Fürstenhof sanatorium around 1890/1900;
only in 1909 were the roof structures added.
(In the foreground the Franconian Saale flows)

After the war, the hotel was restored. In 1880 Anna Gordon bought the Hotel de Bavière and had it expanded in the contemporary neo-renaissance style by adding the south wing to today's three-storey prince's court with a hooked floor plan. Anna Gordon (1813–1894), née Dürig, widow of the hotel owner Georg Adam Hailmann (1818–1868), acquired the Hotel de Bavière in addition to the city-central Grand Hotel Hailmann (now Haus Collard ) at the spa garden, which she has owned since her husband's death led and continued to operate. In 1870 she had the Scots Thomas Dempster Gordon married (1811-1894), who as a privateer since 1849 almost every year to Bad Kissingen summer had come. Behind the Fürstenhof , the couple left Gordon in 1884 from the Bad Kissinger architect Andreas Lohrey from sandstone , the Villa Gordon (Marbachweg 1) with projections and polygonal also built corner tower Neo-Renaissance; the gable of the house still shows the Gordon coat of arms . The cast iron balcony architecture was added in 1895. Since their two marriages had remained childless, Anna Gordon bequeathed the royal court to her nephew Franz Dürig. His daughter Anna (1885–1958) married the doctor Dr. Paul Sotier (1876–1950), who since then has run the Fürstenhof as a private sanatorium and upscale hotel. He had the house embellished in 1909 by the Bad Kissingen architect Carl Krampf with additional roof structures.

During the second Morocco crisis in 1911, great politics were made in Sotier's hotel: The German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter , Head of the Foreign Office, received the French Ambassador Pierre Paul Cambon and other European ambassadors at the Hotel Fürstenhof political conversation.

The Fürstenhof and the Hohenzollern

Villa Gordon (left) behind the Fürstenhof

Sotier's prominent patients in 1927 included Princess Hermione . He was also the personal physician of her husband, the last German Emperor Wilhelm II , in his exile in the Dutch house of Doorn . Due to an amicable close to the doctor's family Sotier the Hohenzollern family - already the emperor's first wife, Empress Augusta Victoria , visit Kissingen had 1,889 Sotiers father at their Alfred entrusted - lived Emperor grandson Louis Ferdinand and his wife Kira , children and his mother Crown Princess Cecilie by the escape from Berlin from 1945 to 1946 in the Fürstenhof . Since countless refugees were already housed there, only two attic chambers could be cleared for the family. Louis Ferdinand and Kira's fifth child, Prince Christian-Sigismund , was born here on March 14, 1946. Crown Princess Cecilie even stayed in the Villa Gordon , the Sotiers' private home, until 1952 , after which she came to visit several times and died there on May 6, 1954 during her vacation stay.

After the US troops moved in (1945), the royal court was confiscated. After the death of her father in 1950, the unmarried daughter Elisabeth Sotier (1913–2008) took over the hotel sanatorium. In the 1970s, she had the house expanded by two new buildings constructed in a contemporary style.

Rehabilitation center of the AWO

Sotier finally sold the Fürstenhof to the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO) in 1984 and moved into a new bungalow on a part of the property. The AWO operated the facility from 1988 to 2004 as a diabetes rehab center. As a result of several successive health structure reforms since 1996 , patient occupancy has continuously decreased. This prompted the AWO, which operated the Thea house on the opposite bank of the Franconian Saale as a second sanatorium, to close the Fürstenhof in April 2004 and to open it for sale. But it wasn't until March 2008 that the AWO and the Russian investor group SA Corona ( Switzerland ) succeeded in covering the entire facility ( usable area 6,120 square meters ) consisting of the main house (4,235), the extensions (845), the historic villa (1,040) and the neighboring one Café Schweizerhaus (1,070), which was bought in 1993, and the new Bungalow Sotier (1,185 square meters) found a buyer. The land area had meanwhile grown to over 15,000 square meters through acquisitions.

planning

In March 2008, a Russian investor group founded Fürstenhof SA , registered in Pully, Switzerland , in order to convert the property - after partial demolition and supplemented by new buildings - into a 5+ star hotel . A hotel with 220 to 240 beds was planned. The historic Fürstenhof and the associated Villa Gordon were to be renovated. A new glass hotel with 158 beds in 79 rooms was planned along the Ochsenweg street .

Three apartment houses with 35 apartments or holiday flats were also planned on the site . In addition, there should be a medical spa with a swimming pool and medical and therapeutic offers, restaurants, two underground garages, shops with a maximum of 300 square meters and businesses for high-quality goods and services. The neighboring Café Schweizerhaus with its apartments on the upper floor should be renovated. There were conference rooms provided. According to the company's own information, 80 million euros were recently mentioned as the investment sum .

Most recently, the architectural firmaur design in Flintbek was commissioned as project developer together with the Hamburg architectural firm Heitmann & Montufar to develop the building plans and the room concept. In March 2014, the owner company announced that the Accor brand MGallery (70 premium hotels worldwide) had signed the letter of intent as the planned operator of the future Fürstenhof hotel.

In October 2015 the headquarters of Fürstenhof SA were relocated to Gland (Switzerland). According to the building permit dated September 2, 2011, construction work had to start with an extension of one year until October 2015. Despite a notice of the start of construction, there was no construction work within the scope of the building permit until 2019.

The building permit has been forfeited, a building permit has never been granted. The property has been for sale in any way since April 2018.

Web links

Commons : Fürstenhof  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ingolstädter Tagblatt , July 27, 1866, p. 699 ( books.google.de )
  2. ^ FJ Reichardt: Kissingen address book , 1865, p. 19 ( books.google.de )
  3. ^ The Russians in Kissingen . ( Wikisource )
  4. ↑ A peacemaker's war adventure . ( Wikisource )
  5. ↑ Neue Didaskalia , supplement to the Palatinate , August 19, 1866, p. 132 ( books.google.de )
  6. ↑ Development plan, (PDF) City of Bad Kissingen, p. 5
  7. ↑ Louis Ferdinand Prince of Prussia : The story of my life . Göttinger Verlagsanstalt, 1968, p. 321 ( excerpt )
  8. ↑ Cecilie Princess of Prussia : Memories of the German Crown Prince , Verlag Koehler, 1952, p. 13 ( excerpt )
  9. ↑ Crown Princess Cecilie and the Fürstenhof ( Memento of the original from October 24, 2008 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.preussen.de
  10. ↑ Louis Ferdinand Prince of Prussia: In the stream of history . Verlag Ullstein, 1991, ISBN 3-548-34866-1 , p. 337 ( excerpt )
  11. ↑ It was part of Bad Kissingen . In: Main-Post , March 4, 2008.
  12. ↑ AWO sales exposure from September 2006 bavaria-realestate.de ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ; PDF) 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / bavaria-realestate.de
  13. ↑ A few days earlier, Elisabeth Sotier had died in her bungalow at the beginning of March at the age of 94.
  14. ^ Siegfried Farkas: Fürstenhof and Schweizerhaus have been sold . In: Main-Post , April 12, 2008
  15. ^ Siegfried Farkas: Fürstenhof: Operator has signed . In: Main-Post , March 15, 2014

Coordinates: 50 ° 11 '58.67 "  N , 10 ° 4' 18.01"  E