House of Atlantis

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The Atlantis house on Bremer Böttcherstraße was built in 1930/31 based on designs by Bernhard Hoetger . It is one of the most interesting examples of German architecture from the interwar period and has been a listed building since 1973. The stairwell and the heavenly hall are largely preserved in their original form.

House Atlantis (gable front on Martinistraße )
The “Himmelssaal” in the Atlantis house with seating in 2013
The Art Deco style staircase

history

To the newest building in the ensemble Böttcherstrasse to let Ludwig Roselius  the - ethnically -nordischen ideas related parties - from the controversial nationalist-racist Atlantis theory of mythologist Herman Wirth encourage that in his book in 1928 rising of humanity had published. Roselius was enthusiastic and decided to let Wirth's speculations take shape in a building under Hoetger's direction.

construction

In contrast to the other buildings on Böttcherstrasse, Hoetger built the Atlantis house as a steel and glass structure. The load-bearing structure of the building is made up of steel girders that bend barrel-shaped in the roof to give the shape of the heavenly hall. At regular intervals, Hoetger placed standardized teak windows, elements made of glass blocks and wooden panels between the beams.

House Atlantis, probably the most spectacular building on Böttcherstrasse, was inaugurated on June 23, 1931.

facade

The soaring entrance area stood in contrast to the rest of the building in geometrically modern forms. It was given a pictorial facade made of wood, clinker brick and glass blocks as a background for the strange tree of life, which contemporaries mostly perceived as ugly. This large-format wooden sculpture with depictions of the Germanic powers of fate and the figure of the “Atlantic savior” - a peculiar idol in which the crucified Christ mixed with the pagan Odin .

Staircase and Heavenly Hall

The famous staircase with its elegant spiral staircase - a key work of Art Déco in Northern Germany  - leads to the Heavenly Hall. Set in the 89 steps, which circle around a central axis made up of three pillars reaching up towards the sky, are eight round panes of white glass the size of a beer cover. The railing is cast from concrete, broken through by glass lenses. Cold light falls through white and blue glass blocks into this stair tower.

The Himmelssaal, a parabolic dome made of blue and white glass blocks, has a special light and spatial effect and should be a mystical place. The symbols of the main portal are repeated on the front and the tree of life appears everywhere in blue glass blocks on the sides of the parabolic roof.

The staircase and the heavenly hall, which are among the most interesting examples of German architecture from the interwar period, have largely been preserved in their original form.

Use and effect until 1945

In the first two years after completion of the Heavenly Hall, young women and men practiced expressive dance there. In 1933 the Museum Väterkunde moved there , and in 1927 Roselius had commissioned Hans Müller-Brauel to build it up. The controversial museum, in which Ludwig Roselius housed his extensive prehistoric collections, wanted to derive the Nordic as well as the American culture from the lost Atlantis.

The premises of the Club in Bremen and a branch of the Berlin Foreign Office, which was supposed to take care of economic development in the region and broker international business relationships, were also housed in the Atlantis building. The Bremen-Amerika-Bank had its seat next door ( Haus des Glockenspiels ).

In 1933 the attacks against Hoetger's architecture increased. The conformist Nazi press called for a restructuring of Hoetger creations, especially the tree of life aroused anger. Roselius wanted to remove it, other construction details were also up for grabs when Albert Speer of all people anticipated all measures by placing Böttcherstrasse under monument protection - as a teaching example for “ degenerate art ”. Until the war, the street was successful despite all the attacks and had increasingly become an international landmark for Bremen.

War damage

In October 1944, British incendiary bombs destroyed almost the entire Böttcherstrasse. In the Atlantis house, the first and second floors burned out. The wooden sculpture of the Tree of Life was largely charred and destroyed and was not restored in 1945 - Hoetger's highly problematic depiction of an “Aryan Christ” was all too displeasing. The rooms behind the facade were expanded into a theater and a cinema, and the window openings facing the street were completely walled up in order to gain the necessary darkness for the interior. In 1954 the facade was decorated with a starry sky with a zodiac clock, which soon proved to be very maintenance-intensive. In 1962, considerations followed to completely redesign the facade of the house in order to remove any remaining war damage and temporary arrangements.

The new facade

Memorial plaque on the house of Atlantis
Facade of Mataré on Böttcherstraße

In the same year, an initial inquiry was sent to Ewald Mataré , who, as a designer, had proven that he could handle large areas. He had known Hoetger since 1919, but was not suspected of being part of the National Socialist followers.

Mataré found the task assigned to him to design such a large area in such a narrow street space to be difficult. By January 1963 his designs had developed so far that he formulated them in scaled-down plaster models. Instead of placing a sculpture by Bernhard Hoetger proposed by Böttcherstraße in the center of the facade as a reminiscence of the builder of the house, Mataré realized a gong at this point, which should be linked to the carillon. As a building material, he chose hand-formed Dutch, black-brown facing bricks in the monastery format.

Construction began on September 10, 1964. After a serious illness, Mataré visited the construction site for the last time on March 12, 1965 and found that his almost completed work was well executed. Ewald Mataré died at the age of 78 on March 28, 1965 in his hometown of Büderich - the day all construction work was finished. The final acceptance took place on March 7, 1966.

Hailed as a great success at its inauguration, at the end of the 1970s criticism of the “two-dimensional” solution increased - it only hinted at Hoetger's idea of ​​the house of Atlantis. On closer inspection, however, there are certainly references to Hoetger's facade idea. The brick patterns, which at first appear abstract, can be interpreted figuratively: around the gong as the center there is a concentric sun wheel made of darker bricks, starting from the gong even a cross. Rays emanate from this center and spread over the entire facade. In contrast to Hoetger's facade, which is specifically related to the Nordic world of legends and myths, Mataré's circles, which structure the facade concentrically, remain abstract and can at best be interpreted in the direction of a universal cosmic worldview.

Uses after 1945

From 1946 to 1949 the house housed the Kammerspiele Bremen , whose premises served as the venue for the Bremen Theater until 1984 . In 1979 Ludwig Roselius junior sold Kaffee Hag and Böttcherstrasse to the American company Kraft Foods . In 1988 the Atlantis house was separated from the entire Böttcherstraße ensemble and sold to a Swedish hotel group, which integrated the house into the newly built Scandic Crown Hotel next door and extensively renovated it. Today Haus Atlantis is part of the Radisson Blu Hotel Bremen.

See also

literature

  • Daniel Schreiber: Ewald Mataré and the House of Atlantis: An Art History between Hoetger and Beuys . Bremen 2005, ISBN 3-9810296-0-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Monument database of the LfD
  2. ↑ a b c www.radiobremen.de ( Memento of the original from August 18, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) 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. - House Atlantis (no longer available after relaunch) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.radiobremen.de
  3. ↑ a b c d e Nils Aschenbeck: Die Böttcherstraße - Memorial and advertising  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (published in: Archithese, Zurich)@1@ 2Template: dead link / die-admin3.net  
  4. ↑ Special edition of the “Bremer Tagebuch” ( memento of the original from February 21, 2014 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. the State Image Office (June 23, 2003) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www2.bremen.de
  5. ↑ F. Strube: Do you also think about your health? The Institute for Health and Performance. In: Yearbook of the Bremen Club 1931, pp. 85ff. (with fig.)
  6. ^ Günter Beyer: History of the Böttcherstraße in Bremen. Deutschlandradio ( Memento from March 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (Norddeutsche Rundfunk AG (Norag) in June 1932)
  7. ↑ a b c d Daniel Schreiber: Ewald Mataré and the House of Atlantis - An Art History between Hoetger and Beuys. Exhibition catalog ed. by Rainer Stamm, Bremen 2005, pp. 39–47.
  8. ↑ www.boettcherstrasse.de ( Memento of the original dated February 3, 2014 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. - House of Atlantis  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.boettcherstrasse.de

Coordinates: 53 ° 4 ′ 29.1 ″  N , 8 ° 48 ′ 19.7 ″  E