House of Fatherland (Berlin)

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1932: Nocturnal view from Potsdamer Platz to the southeast into Stresemannstrasse with the Vaterland house. In the dark, left front, the Hotel Fürstenhof , later the recently completed European House with Allianz - neon sign

The Haus Vaterland was from 1928 to 1943, a large restaurant operations and pleasure palace at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin with around one million visitors a year, the predecessor of today's gastronomic experience may be considered. After a major fire caused by the war in 1943, a limited restaurant was continued in parts of the building with several interruptions after the end of the war and was finally closed in June 1953.

description

In the guest rooms at Potsdamer Platz there were a number of different themed restaurants, which were served by a central kitchen: Rheinterrasse , Löwenbräu ( Bavarian beer restaurant), Grinzing ( Viennese café and wine tavern), Turkish café , Spanish bodega , Czardas , Japanese tea room , Bremer Galley , Wild West Bar ( Arizona bar ; later referred to as the colonial room ) with the waiter Bayume Mohamed Husen , Osteria (Italian specialties), Teltower Rübchen and the Palmensaal (dance hall, design: Ernst Stern and Josef Thorak ). In addition to traditional food and drinks, there were also various musical and artistic events, demonstrations and variety programs .

The weather simulations in the Rhine terrace were famous . Under the motto "In Haus Vaterland you eat thoroughly, here every hour of thunderstorms", the hall lighting was dimmed every hour and thunder, lightning and cloudbursts were simulated in a replica of the Rhine valley landscape near St. Goar (with a view of Rheinfels Castle and the Loreley rock) . To protect the guests from the downpours, the rows of tables were separated from the backdrop by glass panes. Model railways ran in the replicated Rhine Valley, and model ships also moved on the watercourse. In cooperation with Lufthansa, aircraft models were even moved on thin threads through the scenery.

history

The Potsdam house shortly after completion, 1913

The six-storey building right next to Potsdamer Bahnhof on the western side of Köthener Strasse was built from February 1911 to February 1912 according to plans by the architect Franz Schwechten, initially as the Potsdam House . Otto Leitholf was a structural engineer . Originally it housed office space and a UFA movie theater , which owned the property, as well as the 2500-seat Piccadilly café on the ground floor. This was in 1914 during the First World War in coffee Fatherland renamed.

The conversion to a large restaurant by Carl Stahl-Urach was named Haus Vaterland - Betrieb Kempinski in 1929 . Haus Vaterland was now operated by OHG M. Kempinski & Co. ( Haus Vaterland Gaststätten GmbH ). She had leased the house for ten years from the Bank for Commerce and Real Estate, which in turn had taken it over from UFA in 1926. The building, including the cinema, offered space for around 8,000 guests and was equipped with the latest technology when it was renovated in 1928. Since that year it has housed several differently oriented restaurants (see section The restaurants of the fatherland house 1928 ).

The building negotiating with its external view, especially with the stone arches over the arched windows, the impression of a massive stone structure, but in fact it was a steel skeleton with a superimposed stone facade. The full width of the large cinema hall was spanned by five strong steel girders .

House of Fatherland with severe war damage, October 1947

The representative building burned down after the Allied air raids in 1943 (especially in the area of ​​the central building). In 1944, the coffee Vaterland , which was still usable, was available as a Wehrmacht home for soldiers passing through, where entertainment events took place every night. Celebrated enthusiastically by the soldiers, popular dance orchestras such as Kurt Widmann's performed there , who also played forbidden swing titles, which was tacitly tolerated. However, dancing was partially restricted in the war years. After further air raids and the fighting at the end of the war in 1945, the house burned again.

After the end of the Second World War , the building was in the Soviet-occupied sector of Berlin. The rooms of the Kaffee Vaterland were refurbished with simple means and simple furniture and continued to operate under the name Haus Vaterland as an HO restaurant until June 1953. After arson during the popular uprising in the GDR on June 17, 1953, the building finally burned down completely. The escalation of the political situation in Berlin and the situation in the border area meant that Haus Vaterland was not rehabilitated and also no longer put into operation. The windows were bricked up and further security measures were taken in the course of fortifying the border, especially after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, as the building was directly adjacent to Köthener Straße, which was part of the western part of Berlin .

Ruin (back right) shortly before demolition, 1975

Initially located in the area of East Berlin in the border strip, the large ruin came to West Berlin on July 21, 1972 through an area swap together with the site of the Potsdam train station, which was finally closed in 1952. It was one of the few remaining buildings that stood out from the urban wasteland at Potsdamer Platz. At the time, construction experts had determined that reconstruction of the building would have been possible in principle, as the load-bearing structure had still been preserved. Due to its location in the border area, however, there was no need for a new use here before the fall of the wall. For traffic safety reasons, the ruin was finally removed in 1976.

After 1990, an office and commercial building was built on this site, which belongs to the Park Kolonnaden ensemble , the head building of which is remotely linked to the external shape of the Vaterland house through the curved facade. The adjacent areas of the former Potsdam train station were not built on, but designed as a green area ( Tilla-Durieux-Park ).

The restaurants of the House of Fatherland in 1928

Section through the ruins of the Vaterland house with the location of the restaurants, 1976

Artistic arrangement of the restaurants

With one exception, the ballroom ( palm room ), the Viennese artist Carl Benesch designed all guest rooms. The ballroom (palm room) was furnished by Ernst Stern using sculptures by Josef Thorak . The cinema ( Kammerlichtspiele ) was designed by Carl Stahl-Urach , also in terms of interior design.

Coffee Fatherland

The location of the space has never changed. From 1912 to 1914, the "coffee" was called Café Piccadilly , this name changed with the beginning of the First World War, as did the names of many other institutions in Berlin, in Deutsches Kaffeehaus Vaterland , or Kaffee Vaterland for short . The design of the Kaffee Vaterland did not undergo any changes until the late 1920s. It was only when the "Haus Potsdam" was converted into the "Haus Vaterland" that the paintings on the ceiling were removed through the necessary interventions in the building structure. The wall paintings were also removed. The coffee was taken over by the M. Kempinski company as early as 1926. The previous owner was Heinrich Braun.

Others

The writer Inge von Wangenheim used the name of the establishment in the title of her autobiography Mein Haus Vaterland . Her mother was a seamstress and in 1929 had secured the general contract for the clothes for the actors in the Vaterland house. The job in which von Wangenheim supported her mother as much as possible was at the time of the global economic crisis a reasonably secure livelihood, but nonetheless more merciless self-exploitation than a lucrative job.

The plot of the crime novel The Fatherland Files   by Volker Kutscher takes place in Haus Vaterland . The book is part of the Gereon Rath series, the template for the TV series Babylon Berlin .

literature

Web links

Commons : House Fatherland  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. The new building 'Haus Potsdam' in Berlin. Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung (Volume 5, pp. 254 ff), May 18, 1912, accessed on January 30, 2020 .
  2. Documentation on the renovation (text, lists and photos) of Haus Vaterland (PDF; 1.3 MB), In: Stadtbaukunst , November 20, 1928 (digitized), p. 129 ff.
  3. ^ Agreement of July 21, 1972 in Documents on the Berlin Question, 1967–1986
  4. "[...] Because one day my mother had the bold idea of ​​going to the great Kempinski personally and introducing him to the fact that he would get away much cheaper if he had his animation revues done by a little honest seamstress instead of these orders from a larger company to give that would just rip him off. And indeed she managed to convince the businessman. She got the orders. "(Wangenheim: Mein Haus Vaterland , Halle 1962, p. 321)
  5. That was the wild east . In: faz.net , September 14, 2012, accessed June 1, 2018.

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 29 ″  N , 13 ° 22 ′ 38 ″  E