House of Health

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House of Health (2009)

The Haus der Gesundheit, built in 1913 (formerly Haus am Zentrum ), is one of the first interdisciplinary medical centers in Berlin . The six-storey building, which has housed a health center since 1923, is one of the few buildings in the area around Alexanderplatz that was rebuilt after the destruction in World War II . The House of Health is a listed building .

Building history

In 1913, the Berlin building contractor Oscar Garbe commissioned the Charlottenburg architects Hans Liepe and Reinhard Gerres with the construction of the Haus am Zentrum building complex in Berlin-Königsstadt . At the beginning of the 20th century, the two architects designed numerous villas and apartment and commercial buildings, including a. House Brandt in Wannsee , the rental and commercial building Alt-Tegel 8 as well as the power station of the Southwest power station in Wilmersdorf .

The trapezoidal building complex near Alexanderplatz was delimited on all sides by streets during construction. The main facade of the building, clad with sandstone and facing southeast, with small lattice windows, is located on Landsberger Straße, one of the long-distance roads from the north of Berlin that used to run fan-shaped towards Alexanderplatz. The short sides were limited by Katharinenstrasse and Lietzmannstrasse. The rear building lines on Landwehrstrasse and Lietzmannstrasse were characterized by recessed facades. The resulting inner courtyard on Landwehrstrasse was used as a loading zone and equipped with a freight elevator . The front side of the building was designed as a stone-clad pillar facade with flat side projections and economical architectural decorations on the cornice and belt cornice . The architectural decoration in the form of oval and rectangular sandstone reliefs came from the workshop of the Berlin sculptors Zeyer & Böhme. Various shops were located on the ground floor of the building. Above that, three full storeys of the same type and a lower attic storey and a recessed attic storey were added, which could be reached via a central staircase. The mighty entrance portal was framed with an overhang and two pilasters decorated with stucco .

View from the Berlin TV tower towards Leninplatz (upper edge of the picture; today United Nations Square). The lane in the new residential development from Alexanderplatz to Leninplatz marks the former course of Landsberger Strasse with the House of Health on Karl-Marx-Allee (photo 1970)

In 1939/40 the building was converted by the architects Karl Reichle and Wilhelm Weygand on behalf of the Reichsbauverwaltung. In the last years of the Second World War , the area around Alexanderplatz was largely destroyed by air raids . Only a few houses were substantially preserved. The damaged building complex was quickly rebuilt and another attic floor was added, which was not clad with sandstone, but simply plastered. The original street plan and thus the streets delimiting the building block were abandoned and dismantled in the course of the rebuilding of the area around Alexanderplatz and the re-routing of the streets, especially Karl-Marx-Allee . The oldest building on Karl-Marx-Allee is therefore at an angle to the line of the other buildings.

Unless destroyed in the war, the original architectural decorations on the building and the portal were removed, the main entrance relocated and the small-scale lattice windows replaced with aluminum window frames. Between 1966 and 1970 the building was rebuilt and adapted to the neighboring new buildings.

The representative main staircase with brass-covered cheeks and handrails , forged railings and part of the door lintels made of multi-colored marble have been preserved from the original interior .

use

After the construction of the building block Landsberger Straße 43-47, it was initially used as an administration building. Up until the 1930s there were numerous retail stores on the ground floor, including a. a drugstore, a furniture store, a gift shop and a specialty shop for china and glass. The Eden cinema opened in the building in 1916 and operated as Kino Universum until 1952.

Since 1918 the guardianship office and the company health insurance fund for Greater Berlin as well as the city rescue service have been housed in the building. In the 1920s, the main welfare office for war victims and survivors as well as the institution of the Association of Health Insurance Companies in Greater Berlin for hydrotherapeutic and physical treatments opened in the building .

In 1923 the building became the property of the United Health Insurance Funds Berlin. In the same year, an interdisciplinary health center was set up in the house as one of the first medical centers in Berlin and the building was renamed the House of Health . In 1926 the Alfred Popper leather factory opened in the building next to the medical center, with a portfolio and furniture leather department. In 1938 the company of the Jewish manufacturer Alfred Popper was liquidated .

During the National Socialist era , the building was renamed the House of Public Health (1934) and part of the building was still used by the Association of Health Insurance Companies. The Central Diagnostic Institute has been located in another part since 1942 and the Diabetes Center of the Association of Berlin Local Health Insurance Funds since 1943 . The National Socialist Community, Kraft durch Freude , also temporarily occupied some rooms in the building.

After the renovation of the building after the end of the Second World War, the city of Berlin's magistrate used the house. In addition to various departments of the magistrate, some social and medical care facilities for social insurance were housed. In 1948 doctors of several medical specialties joined, u. a. General practitioners, internists , eye , skin and ENT doctors as well as gynecologists and paediatricians together and founded Berlin's first polyclinic to provide medical care in the densely populated districts of Mitte , Friedrichshain and Wedding . The building was renamed the House of Health again.

In September 1948, the Berlin Insurance Company set up a counseling center for women and girls in marriage and sexual matters and in questions of birth control. One year later, one of the first psychosocial counseling centers in Berlin opened on the fifth floor. In 1956, the Berlin magistrate took over the House of Health from the social security system and in 1958 it was organizationally subordinate to the council of the Berlin-Mitte district. As a result of the merger of the psychotherapeutic department with other facilities in Berlin, the Institute for Psychotherapy and Neurosis Research (IfPN) was created at the house in January 1980 , which has significantly coordinated the development of outpatient psychiatry and psychotherapy in East Berlin.

After the German reunification , the psychotherapeutic department at the House of Health lost its leading position in the therapeutic care of the Berlin population. Research at the institute was stopped in 1992 and the department was finally privatized four years later .

The House of Health was taken over by AOK Berlin. The interdisciplinary outpatient clinic with an attached pharmacy was one of the few such facilities in Berlin that was not closed after the political change. The AOK also used the house as an office and administration building. Up to 70,000 patients were treated annually in over 20 medical practices.

In 2016, the building with a usable area of ​​5000 square meters was sold by the AOK Nordost, accompanied by numerous public protests, to the Munich investor group Augustus Capital Management GmbH , which terminated all rental contracts as of June 2020. A new usage concept for the building has not yet been presented to the public.

literature

  • Wolfgang Kruska: History of the psychotherapeutic department of the house of health . In: Psychotherapy reports, Berlin 1979
  • Helga Hess: Psychotherapeutic research in the house of health . In: Michael Geyer (Ed.): Psychotherapy in East Germany - History and Stories 1945–1995 . Göttingen 2011

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Landesdenkmalamt Berlin: House of Health, object no. 09080428. Retrieved March 18, 2020 .
  2. ^ Oscar Garbe: Frankfurter Allee construction business . Balczus, Berlin 1930, p. 9 .
  3. ^ Landesdenkmalamt Berlin: Haus Brandt. Retrieved March 19, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b house at the center . In: Berliner Architekturwelt . tape 17 . Berlin 1915, p. 18-21 .
  5. ↑ Joachim Schulz; Werner Graebner: Berlin. Architecture from Pankow to Köpenick . 1st edition. Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-345-00145-4 , p. 58 .
  6. ↑ Cinemas in Berlin. Retrieved March 19, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Handbook of Public Life: State, Politics, Economy, Transport, Church, Press: Main welfare office for survivors of the war . Ed .: Maximilian Müller-Jabusch. KF Koehler, Berlin 1925, p. 158 .
  8. ^ Susanne Müller & Bernd Köppl: From the Polyclinic to the Medical Care Center . In: Federal Association of Medical Care Centers (Ed.): BMVZ booklet . No. 1 . Berlin, S. 5 .
  9. ^ Database of Jewish businesses in Berlin 1930-1945. Retrieved March 19, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Urte Verlohren: Hospitals in Greater Berlin: The development of the Berlin hospital landscape 1920-1939 . be.bra Wissenschaft Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-947686-26-1 , p. 246 .
  11. ↑ Rebecca Schwoch: Jewish Doctors as Medical Practitioners in Berlin between 1938 and 1945 . Mabuse-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2018, ISBN 978-3-86321-472-2 , p. 152 .
  12. ^ A b Claudia Abu Zahra: The outpatient psychiatric-psychotherapeutic care in the GDR using the example of the capital East Berlin. Effects of the 1960s Psychiatry Reform . In: Dissertation Medical Faculty of the Charité . Berlin 2015, p. 52 .
  13. ^ Claudia Abu Zahra: The outpatient psychiatric-psychotherapeutic care in the GDR using the example of the capital East Berlin. Effects of the 1960s Psychiatry Reform . In: Dissertation Medical Faculty of the Charité . Berlin 2015, p. 69 .
  14. ^ A b Claudia Abu Zahra: The outpatient psychiatric-psychotherapeutic care in the GDR using the example of the capital East Berlin. Effects of the 1960s Psychiatry Reform . In: Dissertation Medical Faculty of the Charité . Berlin 2015, p. 70 .
  15. ^ Controversy over the "House of Health". Retrieved March 19, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Berliner Zeitung: House of Health in Berlin-Mitte is to be sold for 20 million euros. Retrieved on March 19, 2020 (German).
  17. ↑ Penthouse instead of medical center ?: Samwer brothers quit practices in the House of Health. Retrieved March 19, 2020 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 20.2 "  N , 13 ° 25 ′ 8"  E