Main Post Office (Nuremberg)

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The western, so-called "head building" of the main post office (view from the southwest, 2013)

The main post office in Nuremberg was a striking inner-city building. It was demolished in spring 2018. It was located next to the Nuremberg main station and was originally built as a post office directorate .

location

The building was to the east of the main train station , with tracks running to the south. A car park was built between the main post office and the tracks around the turn of the millennium. The conspicuous building of the parcel post office stood to the east until the 1990s, which was then torn down - today (2018) it is wasteland. In the north there are office buildings, including the Adcom Center with the Nuremberg bus station. The building had several addresses: Bahnhofstrasse 2 and 4 and Bahnhofsplatz 1.

history

The listed rotunda in May 2015

From the beginning to the Weimar Republic

The first post office building on the site was located on the site of the present-day property at Bahnhofsplatz 1. It was built in 1861 and, with its neo-Gothic style, took up the shape of the diagonally opposite station building . In 1914, the post architects Hans Weiß and Johann Kohl started an extension on Allersberger Strasse. Because of its street facade, which describes a quarter circle, the building is still popularly known today as the "rotunda". During the First World War, the construction work had to be suspended, so that the rotunda could not be completed until 1920 to 1924.

Construction of the front building and reconstruction

The west facade of the front building (2013)

Due to a lack of space, in 1931 the Reichspost also replaced the post office building at Bahnhofsplatz 1 with a new building, which is now known as the "head building". The planner was again chief post office building officer Johann Kohl. Unlike the rotunda, Kohl designed the building consistently in the New Objectivity style , as represented by the Munich Post Building School . The eight-story high-rise was to have a strictly cubic silhouette. The basic structure was a modern steel frame construction . According to the original planning, simple curtain walls with large rectangular windows were to be placed in front of this. A closed bridge was planned as a direct connection to the neighboring main station.

In the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, the steel skeleton of the wing building was largely completed. Since the building was in an important urban area - the Bahnhofsplatz - the newly appointed Gauleiter Julius Streicher , a declared enemy of the New Building , had Kohl's plans changed without further ado. Architect Max Kälberer added high arched arcades to the ground floor , provided the façades with cladding made of sandstone slabs that matched the surroundings and put a steep hipped roof on top of the building . Reliefs related to the history of the German post office and the sculpture of a seated imperial eagle on the corner of the house facing the station square completed the ideologically motivated revision of the original plan. In 1935 the construction work was completed. Until 1994 the mail for Nuremberg was sorted and then delivered here.

During the Second World War , the head building was damaged by bombs. Reconstruction under the direction of Anton Ebner began as early as 1947. The supporting steel structure was partially renewed. The external appearance of the front building was a connection between the original plan by Johann Kohl and the changes made by Max Kälberer in 1933: the arcades on the ground floor and the sandstone cladding of the façades were restored without reliefs or an eagle figure. The roof was rebuilt, but with a smaller slope. Ebner took over the window division from Johann Kohl's design from 1931. The head building of the Nuremberg main post office is an interesting example of how the reconstruction linked the architecture of National Socialism with the New Objectivity of the Weimar Republic . As a symbol of democracy, the latter was a style-defining element in post-war German architecture for decades .

Demolition (2018)

Abandonment of the location and search for a new use

In the course of the privatization and rationalization of the post office in the 1990s, the main post office was largely abandoned. In the period that followed, techno parties were held in the rotunda as temporary use. For static reasons there were concerns about further use. The branch in the head building in which Deutsche Post AG and Postbank offer their services, however, remained.

In 2013 the owner, Aurelis Real Estate, announced that new users were being sought for the largely vacant building. In 2014, the Munich investor Hubert Haupt Immobilien acquired the post office site. The company plans to renovate the listed rotunda. However, only the facades and the historic stairwells are to be preserved. The remaining rooms are to be gutted. The head building on Bahnhofsplatz, which defines the cityscape, is to be demolished and replaced by a new building. Against this resistance formed on the part of the old town friends of Nuremberg and other groups. In March 2015 , the Nuremberg Cityscape Initiative launched an online petition calling for the front building to be retained.

At the end of January 2018, the demolition of the head building began. The completion of the new ensemble, called Tafelhof Palais , is planned for 2021.

The building

The five-storey round building with a gable roof and a seven-storey, more modern extension with a flat roof, a total of 20,000 m² floor space, rises on an 8,000 m² site. The main building is a massive, quarter-circle-shaped building with a high roof and a "reduced historical design language". The roof, facade, stone staircase and ironwork are listed.

Web links

Commons : Hauptpost (Nuremberg)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.nordbayern.de/hotel-im-rundbau-1.1079602
  2. Hartmut Voigt: The circular building wakes up from a deep slumber after 18 years . In: Nürnberger Nachrichten . January 19, 2013, p. 9 ( nordbayern.de ).
  3. ^ Claudine Stauber: The tower should stay: Protest against the demolition of the post office. In: Nordbayern.de. January 6, 2015, accessed February 19, 2020.
  4. https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/rettet-die-hauptpost-fur-den-erhalt-eines-nurnberger-wahrzeichen
  5. ^ Nordbayern.de, Nuremberg, Germany: These new buildings will change Nuremberg's inner city . ( nordbayern.de [accessed September 30, 2018]).
  6. State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, quoted from: Hartmut Voigt: Rotunda awakens from slumber after 18 years . In: Nürnberger Nachrichten . January 19, 2013, p. 9 ( nordbayern.de ).

Coordinates: 49 ° 26 '48.7 "  N , 11 ° 4' 59.6"  E