Commercial building for the civil departments of the Berlin I Regional Court and the Berlin I District Court
The business building for the civil departments of the Berlin Regional Court I and the district council in Berlin I is in the Littenstraße 12-17 (before 1945: New Friedrichstrasse ) corner Grunerstraße in Berlin district of Mitte situated judicial complex, which was built from 1896 to 1904 in several stages. The parts of the building that have been preserved are the seat of the Central District Court and the appeal chambers of the Berlin Regional Court .
history
The preliminary drafts for the building were made in the Prussian Ministry of Public Works with the significant participation of the high-ranking construction officials Paul Thoemer and Rudolf Mönnich , the execution was carried out under the direction of Otto Schmalz . In particular, Schmalz added two representative staircases and the central wing of the building on Littenstrasse to the original plans. He also changed the originally even more neo-baroque character of the architecture, which leaned heavily on the palaces of justice built earlier. It is therefore probably also thanks to Schmalz that the three-dimensional architectural decoration shows clear influences of Art Nouveau , which was rather unusual for buildings of the state building authorities. The models according to which the architectural decoration was made came from the sculptor Otto Richter .
During the Second World War , the structure suffered more severe damage, which led to a simplified restoration. The transverse wings, the architectural decorations and the roof area were not restored to their original condition.
The northern part of the district court Berlin I - about a quarter of the original complex - was demolished from 1968 to 1969 as part of the urban reorganization of the city center in order to widen Grunerstraße. In the 1990s, the remaining building complex was extensively renovated from a historical preservation point of view. The inner courtyards were also restored from the point of view of garden monument preservation.
Today it serves as one of three locations of the Berlin Regional Court as well as the seat of the Mitte District Court and is a listed building .
During the GDR era , the building complex housed the Supreme Court of the GDR , the Berlin City Court, the district courts of Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg and, until he moved out, Friedrichshain, the state notary's office and the prosecutor general's office, the military court and the military prosecutor .
Location and building description
The building was built to accommodate the entire civil departments of the Berlin I Regional Court and the Berlin I District Court . The entrance to the regional court was at Grunerstraße 8, the one to the district court at Neue Friedrichstraße 17. It was built on a plot of land that already belonged to the tax authorities , and on the southern part of which there was an older cadet house , which was already in place after the law on court constitution for the whole of Germany came into force 1879 was used as a courthouse in the course of the associated restructuring of the judiciary. The property is bordered by the east side of the route of the light rail (then New Friedrichstrasse), on the northern narrow side of the Grunerstraße, in the west of the Littenstraße. To the south, the rest of the street block up to Voltairestrasse was intended for possible future extensions. The structure of the building can be described as a perimeter block development with four internal transverse wings, with individual wings or connecting tracts arranged in such a way that a total of 12 larger and smaller inner courtyards were created. The new building was started on the northern part of the property in order to be able to use the old building until the completion of the first construction phase due to the severe lack of space in the judiciary.
architecture
Outdoor area
Today's representative main entrance of the four-storey plastered building is on Littenstrasse, in the original central section of the entire complex, which was only built as the second construction phase. In terms of construction, the building is a solid structure with solid ceilings throughout. The five-axis main facade on Littenstrasse is structured by colossal Ionic pilasters and forms a gable in the middle . The entire ground floor area is rusticated . When it was rebuilt after 1945, the double portal lost its ornamental decoration and the wrought iron portal wings.
Indoor
A high, vaulted hall, which extends over all floors, forms the vestibule , in which slim, profiled pillars and loft-like corridors with balconies offer a high quality of stay.
The large, representative main staircase emphasizes the dignity of the court. It extends all the way to the top floor, with the front sides being made of Cotta sandstone . The room is spanned by a cloverleaf-shaped vault that rests on pairs of pillars at the kinks. The span is 23 meters with a length of 35 meters, the vertex height above the floor of the hall is 28 meters. The room is bordered sideways by the double staircase. The main staircase is designed as a double spiral stone.
The ceiling over the corridors of the lower floors are arched solid floors, on the premises and the largest part of the top corridor they are as Koenen'sche Voute ndecken run - one of the Civil Mathias Koenen developed for this construction, and later further developed and wide spread construction . The corridors were given single-color, patterned linoleum floor coverings, and their walls were covered on both sides with 50 cm wide strips of full-colored red tiles. Together with the door frames made of red sandstone , this design should increase the monumental effect. The doors to the hallway were made of oak on both main floors.
Central elevation, entrance to the district court, approx. 1905
Main portal of the district court, around 1905
Wrought iron gate 4 by Eduard Puls
Session room for the administration of the regional court, ca.1905
Third floor of the stairwells, around 1905
View into the inner courtyards III (regional court) and VIII (district court), 1905
During construction work: The southern construction section in Neue Friedrichstrasse is not yet completed, around 1900
Today's building complex (without the original front along Grunerstrasse)
Entrance hall in Littenstrasse
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literature
- Wilhelm Kick (Ed.): Modern new buildings. ( Portfolio ) 4th year, Stuttgarter Architektur-Verlag Kick, Stuttgart 1902, panels 30 and 39.
- Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin (ed.): Buildings for government and administration. (= Berlin and its buildings , part III.) Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1966.
- Otto Schmalz: The new regional court and district court Berlin-Mitte. In: Zeitschrift für Bauwesen ( digital copies in the holdings of the Central and State Library Berlin ):
- Volume 55, 1905, col. 201-226, col. 467-500, plates 20-24 and 44-48.
- Volume 56, 1906, Col. 267-286, Col. 397-420.
- Martin Wörner, Paul Sigel (Red.): Architectural Guide Berlin. 6th edition, Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-496-01211-0 .
- Institute for Monument Preservation (Ed.): The architectural and art monuments of the GDR. Capital Berlin, Volume I. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, pp. 72–75.
Web links
- 360 ° panorama of the entrance hall
- The courthouse on Littenstrasse at www.berlin.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ "The plans of the extensive building are worked out by the current government and building officer Mönnich, as well as the agricultural inspector Schmalz, which the latter probably also gave the building its peculiar architectural character." In: Deutsche Bauzeitung , 34th year 1900, no. 81, p. 498.
- ↑ a b District Court I & District Court I in the Berlin State Monument List
- ↑ Restoration of the inner courtyards
- ↑ Berlin Regional Court
- ↑ Otto Leitholf : Amtsgericht Berlin-Mitte. Constructive from the main hall . In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung , Volume 44, 1924, No. 3, pp. 17-20 and No. 4, pp. 28-30 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '7.7 " N , 13 ° 24' 50.8" E