Main Post Office (Leipzig)

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Building of the former main post office after the reconstruction (2019)

The main post office in Leipzig is the 110-meter-long building on Augustusplatz (corner of Grimmaischer Steinweg ) and on the inner city ring, built between 1961 and 1964 . Earlier historical names for the house and its predecessor buildings were the main post office C 1, post office no. 1 and the Leipzig post office . The new building of the Deutsche Post from 1964 stands as a monument of modernism under monument protection . After a vacancy from 2011, the reconstruction and expansion of the building began in 2016 by a new owner with the aim of a multifunctional use under the name The Living House .

Function and architecture

View into the mail counter hall (1964)
The parcel counter hall with the Thälmann picture (1964)

During the times of the GDR, the house simultaneously served as a centrally located post office and as a telecommunications and telegraph office (in the outbuildings) and also housed the post office of the Leipzig district until the fall of the Berlin Wall . The building of the Oberpostdirektion in Südstraße (today " Lipsius -Bau" of the HTWK , Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 145), built in 1926 for the purpose of the postal administration, was in 1952 with the dissolution of the state of Saxony and the reorganization of the GDR into districts for the council of the Leipzig district has been rededicated. There was therefore an urgent need for a new building, especially since the old main post office had been destroyed in the Second World War .

Project planning started in 1959. The design of the 110-meter-long reinforced concrete structure , erected from 1961 to 1964, came from Kurt Nowotny (1908–1984), the chief architect at the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications . Due to the long construction time of 43 months, the construction costs reached the then considerable sum of around 15.5 million GDR marks . The fact that the budget was significantly exceeded was also due to the high-quality technical equipment and interior design by GDR standards.

In terms of design and functionality, the Hauptpost was internationally state-of-the-art at the time of its creation. The rectangular, seven-storey steel frame building with a six-storey facade section in front is made of exposed concrete , glass and aluminum ( curtain wall ). This also includes a short side wing on the Grimmaischer Steinweg , which closed the gap to the telecommunications office. At the top right of the facade there was a long-range clock in the style of the time, which was dismantled in the 1990s. The base of the main front facing Augustusplatz and the front on the Grimmaischer Steinweg is clad with gray natural stone in the shape of a brick. The interior of the counter halls had natural stone slabs for floors, switches and furniture made of cherry-colored woods and ceilings made of sound-absorbing elements. The small parcel counter hall was adorned with a mural created by Bert Heller (1912–1970), which Ernst Thälmann (1886–1944) showed during his speech on Augustusplatz in 1930. This picture was later painted over.

Overall, the structure and facade give the impression of a clear and moderate architecture, which still fits in well with the development of the square.

history

precursor

The "Posthörnchen" (Poststall) at the "Platz vor dem Grimmaischer Thore", corner of Grimmaischer Steinweg (1785)

As early as 1700, the "Poststall", also known as the "Posthörnchen", had existed in the immediate vicinity of the later post office building on the "Platz vor dem Grimmaischer Thore " - namely on the south instead of the north side of the Grimmaischer Steinweg . Not to be confused with the “Das Goldene Posthorn” inn on the former Königsplatz (today Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz ), which was often referred to as the Posthorn. The post stable was a post station for changing horses for the traveling and riding post, in later times also with an inn. Here was the starting and ending point of the post roads to Dresden , Grimma and Wurzen . The post to Freiberg via Colditz and Nossen was also sent from this point . The longest postal route led in 1694 via the cities of Großenhain and Königsbrück to Breslau . The buildings for handling letters and parcels were initially located in Leipzig's old town: first from 1590 as Leipzig Council Post and from 1661 to 1712 as the Saxon post office in the Alte Waage am Markt , later from 1712 to 1839 in the office building on the corner of Thomaskirchhof / Klostergasse opposite the Thomaskirche .

New post office from 1838

Albert Geutebrück's New Post Office (around 1840)
Ground floor plan (1892)

From 1836 to 1838 the new post office building designed by Albert Geutebrück (1801–1868) was built on today's Augustusplatz on the northern corner of the Grimmaischer Steinweg . The first drafts came from the Dresden architect Woldemar Hermann (1807–1878), who created them free of charge in 1835 for the Leipzig bookseller Wilhelm Ambrosius Barth (1790–1851). This in turn submitted it to the ministry and left it to the Geutebrück City Planning Director for implementation without consulting Hermann.

Before that, until 1835 the inn "Zum Weisse Schwan" was located here. This and some smaller houses were demolished during the construction of the 87-meter-long classical building of the Leipzig Oberpostdirektion, the main front of which was oriented towards Augustusplatz. The three-story building with a mezzanine above the ground floor had two side wings of different lengths of around 28 meters on Grimmaischer Steinweg and 54 meters on the former Poststrasse, which was later built over when the new GDR building was built in 1964. Until 1867 the post office was the seat of the most important post office of the Kingdom of Saxony .

After losing the Austro-Prussian war as an ally of Austria , Saxony's most important postal authority became, under pressure from Prussia, a subordinate Oberpostdirektion of the North German Confederation and, after the establishment of the Empire in 1871, the Imperial German Post (→ Reichspost ). The building was rebuilt in the years 1881 to 1884 by Paul Richter (1859-1944) in the style of historicism ( neo-renaissance ) according to designs by the building department, August Kind in the Reich Post Office . It underwent changes to the cornice and a contemporary highlighting of the main portal in the form of attached columns , triangular gable and tympanum . The originally simple attic was converted into a representative attic .

  • The statue of the telegraph

  • The statue of the post office , both around 1900

The New Post Office after the renovation by Paul Richter in 1884 (around 1900)

Among the six allegorical figures by Joseph Kaffsack (1850–1890) on the attic above the central risalit was one with wings, which was the most modern form of communication at the time, telegraphy . Opposite her was the second figure, also winged, who embodied the letter post . The other four (wingless) figures in between symbolized trade, art, science and commerce. With this arrangement of figures, the role of fast communication should be made clear.

The ruins of the main post office (post office C 1) - view from Karl-Marx-Platz (1948)

After the fall of the German Empire , the Leipzig Oberpostdirektion of the Reichspost of the Weimar Republic had been located here since 1919 , and moved to the new building in Südstrasse in 1926 . After that, the post office building on Augustusplatz increasingly assumed the function of a main post office until it was completely destroyed in the air raid on December 4, 1943 . Until the end of the war, their functions were temporarily relocated to other post offices or emergency measures were taken to keep the mail flowing. For example, a letter distribution center was installed in the Reichsgericht and in 1944 an alternative quarter was created as the main post office in the so-called Kosmos-Messehaus in Gottschedstrasse . In 1950/1951 the telecommunications office was rebuilt behind the main post office.

Main Post Office from 1964

Main Post Office on Karl-Marx-Platz (1964)

The successor to the historical building by Albert Geutebrück was not built until 1964 in the form of today's main post office. As in all larger post offices in the GDR, there were separate rooms in the department “M” (postal control) of the Ministry for State Security (“Stasi”) to monitor the Letter and parcel post. The MfS also had wiretapping systems installed in the connected telecommunications office.

Since 1990 the main post office gradually lost its former importance. The reason for this was the privatization and splitting of the state-owned company Deutsche Bundespost into three parts in the first half of the 1990s : Deutsche Post AG , Deutsche Telekom AG and Postbank . In 1992, Telekom built a new administration building for its Leipzig branch not far from the main post office on Grimmaischer Steinweg (corner of Querstraße). In 1996, a new mail distribution center for the Deutsche Post was built in Radefeld , in the northern Saxony district , and Postbank took up quarters in a new building on Rohrteichstrasse. This meant that the main post office building had become largely inoperative. Until July 2011, operations in the large ticket hall were maintained.

"Felix" restaurant on the 7th floor of the former main post office

Conversion after the closure in 2011

Since the closure, the vacant house had meanwhile become a location and backdrop for TV productions and all kinds of spectacles such as Halloween parties. At the end of 2015, the demolition of the neighboring former telegraph office (not listed) began. In the course of the reconstruction work started in 2016, the Thälmann picture was uncovered in the small parcel counter hall. It is being restored and should, in consultation with the monument protection authorities, be seen in the building again.

The listed reconstruction of the house with multiple uses planned until mid-2018 has been delayed and should now be completed in September 2019. In November and December 2018, an Edeka store and the Hotel Motel One Leipzig-Post with 300 rooms opened in the southern wing .

When the renovation is complete, the house will include under the name “Living House”: 480 service apartments , a conference center, restaurants, a nursing home, a music fitness club, a branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers , offices, a supermarket, a car rental company and an underground car park 366 parking spaces.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Monument protection object ID 09292750
  2. ^ Jens Rometsch: Alte Hauptpost in Leipzig - new owner explains his plans. In: LVZ -Online. May 7, 2016, Retrieved May 8, 2016 .
  3. ^ Wolfgang Hocquél : Leipzig. Architecture from the Romanesque to the present. Passage-Verlag, Leipzig 2004, ISBN 3-932900-54-5 , p. 117
  4. ↑ a b Jens Rometsch: Thälmann picture exposed in the main post . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung . No. 286 , December 8, 2016, p. 14 .
  5. ↑ Leipzig city map from 1740. In: Deutsche Fotothek . Retrieved May 9, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Woldemar Hermann; Eckhart Schleinitz (ed.); Michael Schleinitz (Ed.): Diary of my sphere of activity in architecture. Hermann's construction diary from 1826 to 1847. Notschriften Verlag, Radebeul 2006, ISBN 978-3-933753-88-5 , pp. 46–50.
  7. ↑ Conversion of length data from yards to meters; a Saxon cubit = 0.62 meters. See Birgit Hartung: Albert Geutebrück. Builder of Classicism in Leipzig . Lehmstedt-Verlag, Leipzig 2003, ISBN 3-937146-05-9 , p. 101
  8. ↑ Leipzig and its buildings . Gebhardt, Leipzig 1892, pp. 143 and 145 ( digitized version )
  9. ^ Wolfram Sturm: History of the Leipziger Post from the beginnings to the present . Edited by PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-936508-28-4 , p. 157 ff.
  10. ↑ New opening - Motel One in a listed post office building. In: tophotel.de. December 19, 2018, accessed August 30, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Jens Rometsch: No Tesla - but now Pflegewohnen is moving into the Living House . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung . June 15, 2019, p. 18 . (on-line)

literature

  • The post office . In: Birgit Hartung, Albert Geutebrück. Builder of Classicism in Leipzig . Lehmstedt-Verlag, Leipzig 2003, ISBN 3-937146-05-9 , pp. 98-106
  • Horst Riedel (Red .: Thomas Nabert ): Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z. PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2012, ISBN 978-3-936508-82-6 , p. 224
  • Wolfram Sturm: History of the Leipziger Post from the beginning to the present . Edited by PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-936508-28-4

Web links

Commons : Main Post Office Leipzig  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
  • Main post. In: Leipzig Lexicon. Retrieved March 31, 2015 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 20.7 "  N , 12 ° 22 ′ 57.7"  E