Reich debt administration building

Building of the former Reich debt management, corner of Oranienstrasse (right) and Alte Jakobstrasse

The Reich debt management building is a listed building in Berlin-Kreuzberg . It bears the house numbers Oranienstraße 106-109, Alte Jakobstraße 117-120 and Feilnerstraße 5-6 and takes up more than a third of the block between these three streets and Lindenstraße . The Reich Debt Administration was built between 1919 and 1924 as the first large government building in the Weimar Republic based on a design by the architect German Bestelmeyer .

Function of the building

The Prussian "Main Administration of State Debt" founded in 1820 took over the same tasks for the German Empire as the "Reich Debt Administration" from 1871 , but remained an independent authority of the State of Prussia . With the inauguration on April 1, 1924, at the same time as it moved into the Bestelmeyer building, it became a subordinate authority of the German Reich as part of the Reich Finance Administration. Its tasks in the Federal Republic of Germany were taken over from 1949 by the Federal Debt Administration, which has been called the Federal Securities Administration since 2002. In 2006 this was merged with the German Finance Agency .

After the Berlin blockade , the building was used as a warehouse for the Senate Reserve from 1958 to 1990 . Bicycles were stored here, among other things.

Restored again from 1995–1999, the building now houses the Berlin Senate Administrations for Integration, Labor and Social Affairs, as well as for Health, Care and Equality .

From 2002 to 2004 parts of the Berlin State Institute for Forensic and Social Medicine were in this building.

architecture

Rounded facade on the street corner

The six-storey building is rounded off at the acute-angled corner of Oranienstrasse and Alte Jakobsstrasse. The street facades are faced with clinker bricks, the facades on the four inner courtyards are plastered . The street façades are structured by means of pillar templates that are stepped in depth and run from the narrow base made of shell limestone below the ground floor to the main cornice above the 4th floor. The tall rectangular windows on these five floors appear to be the same size and are equally divided into sixteen tall rectangular fields by sashes and bars. The parapet areas on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors are decorated in the same way with ornamental relief terracotta elements that hardly stand out from the brick in color. The pointed triangles of the roofing windows on the ground floor protrude into the parapet fields on the 1st floor , with the "gable fields" being fitted with terracotta rosettes . Of derogation, likewise by the cornice reaching from the base uniaxial are risalits designed to divide the extra-long facades at the Orange Street and the Old Jakobstraße and rhythmiisieren. Here every window has a roof like on the ground floor and is flanked by pairs of sculptures made of terracotta: Maria and Caritas as well as allegorical sculptures that stand for trade ( Hermes head ), agriculture (bundles of ears), shipping (sailing ship) and science (owl) Koren should remember. The terracotta architectural decorations were made based on models by the sculptors Hugo Lederer and Albert Kraemer (1889–1953). The “seemingly endless facade of the complex” meant that the people compared the building with a “lying skyscraper ”.

The Reich debt administration used the building until almost the end of World War II. Bombing and artillery fire damaged the structure badly; Part of the rounded facade on the corner of Alte Jakobstrasse / Oranienstrasse and the floor slabs behind it collapsed. The building was restored until 1958 and subsequently served as a warehouse. The destroyed sculptures by Hugo Lederer were replaced by replicas .

In the course of the International Building Exhibition in 1984 , the area surrounding the Reich Debt Administration was rebuilt from 1982 to 1983 and 1986 to 1988. The aim was to come closer to the traditional perimeter block development in the west of Luisenstadt , which was largely destroyed in the war , after the block structure in the district was to be overcome with the modern buildings of the 1950s and 1960s. The responsible architects under the urban development management of Rob Krier integrated the Reich Debt Administration into the new residential complex Ritterstrasse Nord in the double block between Ritterstrasse, Alter Jakobstrasse, Lindenstrasse and Oranienstrasse. Some of the new buildings were optically adapted to the Bestelmeyer building by using clinker facades. The building was placed under monument protection on September 24, 1984 by the Berlin State Conservator .

literature

Fritz Stahl: New building of the Reich debt administration. Architect: German Bestelmeyer . In: Wasmuthsmonthshefte für Baukunst und Städtebau, vol. 9, 1925, pp. 43–48 ( digitized version ).
Kathrin Chod, Herbert Schwenk and Hainer Weißpflug: Berlin district lexicon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg . Haude & Spener, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-7759-0474-3 , p. 312 (“Reich debt management”) and p. 401 (“Ritterstraße Nord residential complex”).

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Notice on the history of the building in the BIM foyer . Accessed February 13, 2011.

52.505871 13.400324Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 21.1 ″ N , 13 ° 24 ′ 1.2 ″ E

[Aushang-1] Notice on the history of the building in the BIM foyer . Accessed February 13, 2011.