House on glue
The house on Leims is a villa in Remagen , a town in the Rhineland-Palatinate district of Ahrweiler , which was built in 1929. From 1954 to 1956 it was the seat of the commercial agency of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) in the Federal Republic of Germany.
location
The villa (address: Wässigertal 16) is a solitary building on a hillside above and south of the city center at an altitude of almost 95 m above sea level. NHN . It is accessible from the Wäßertal via a private , 80 m long driveway.
history
The villa was built to a design by the Bad Godesberg architect Willy Maß for the client Lore Kollbach, wife of the publisher and chemist Dr. phil. Karl Kollbach (* 1895 in Remagen), the son of the educator and travel writer Karl Kollbach . It got its name after the local parcel "Im Leims". After the Kollbach family moved out of the house temporarily in autumn 1944 due to work, illness and war, it was managed by the former head of the police in Bad Neuenahr on behalf of the owner . On December 27, 1944, the property was damaged by a bombing raid in the Allied air war , which was not followed by any further war-related damage. On December 31, 1944, the city of Remagen forced the previous property manager to hand over the keys and took over management of the property. At the time, units of the Wehrmacht were in the house in the quarter. The building then stood empty and was subject to general decay and looting.
After the war ended, the house on Leims was occupied by several tenants. The city of Remagen refused to allow the Kollbach family to return to the property, even when most of the rooms were unoccupied, and now considered themselves to be its owners. From September 1945 it was under the control of the “Office for Property Control” of the Ahrweiler district . In October 1946, the former Mayor of Remagen (who was in office until April 1945), Hans Kemming, was assigned to the house. Until 1949, the Kollbach family won the legal dispute over the property issue. A few days after the property was vacated in November 1949 , however, the French occupying power confiscated the villa in order to use it as the residence of the wing adjutant of the French High Commissioner, who resided at Ernich Castle near Remagen, at the Bonn government seat . The building was repaired by the end of 1949.
South Korean Consulate General
After the end of the Korean War in 1953, the South Korean government decided to deepen its relations with the Federal Republic of Germany. Therefore, in 1954, she sent a consul general to the seat of government in Bonn. The choice fell on Hanho Rhi , who had previously worked as an entrepreneur in Appenzell , Switzerland . The Foreign Office advised him on the proposal of the Federal Ministry of Housing on the search for a suitable property for the newly to be opened Consulate General, the then ten-room hotel on the glue, for which Rhi decided quickly. He rented it for a period of ten years - subject to a relocation of the seat of government - from the owner Kollbach. Seven rooms of the villa were used as service rooms for the consulate general. Rhi achieved - without the knowledge of his government - that it was recognized by the Federal Republic as a commercial agency of the Republic of Korea and thus received diplomatic status. After the Korean government objected to Rhis's management team because of questionable financial transactions, the latter illegally terminated the rental agreement for the villa and returned to Switzerland in July 1956.
Rhi's successor was Vice Consul Dai Young Park, under whose direction the Consulate General resided in the house on Leims for several weeks. It was then moved to Cologne so that the villa could be returned to the owner two months later. This was followed by a vacancy of several months and a renovation of the property, which became necessary due to Korean use, until it found another tenant for a year at the beginning of 1957. The unlawful termination by the Consul General Rhi led to a legal dispute between the owner family and the couple Rhi as well as the Republic of Korea, which also reached the top of the German Bundestag . The Foreign Office took the position that the villa had been used by the Consulate General on the basis of a private rental agreement between Rhi and the owner. During the ongoing legal dispute, the property had to be placed under compulsory administration by the Kreissparkasse Bonn in 1957 due to a financial bottleneck of the owner family, not least due to the loss of rent . In mid-1962, the Bonn Regional Court designated the Republic of Korea as the owner's contractual partner. Kollbach's demand on the state amounted to 200,000 marks. During a state visit by the South Korean President Park Chung-hee in December 1964, the legal dispute was the subject of negotiations with the then Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder , which also included increasing German development aid to the country. On December 15, 1964, the villa was foreclosed .
literature
- Karl Kollbach: "File number 475/39". Own documentary factual report of "then" and "now". A contribution to German self-reflection , book and newspaper printing company H. Köllen, Bonn 1949, 2 volumes.
Web links
References and comments
- ↑ formerly Wäßertal 10
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Karl Kollbach: "Aktenzeichen 475/39". Own documentary factual report of "then" and "now". A contribution to German self-reflection , Volume 1
- ^ A b c Karl Kollbach: "Aktenzeichen 475/39". Own documentary factual report of "then" and "now". A contribution to German self-reflection , Volume 2
- ↑ a b Der Bonner Ton , Der Spiegel , April 30, 1958
- ↑ a b Korean Cramp , Der Spiegel , December 9, 1964
- ↑ Who should pay for that? Trouble with foreign diplomats in Bonn , Die Zeit , issue No. 26/1964, June 26, 1964
Coordinates: 50 ° 34 ′ 19.5 ″ N , 7 ° 14 ′ 0.8 ″ E