House of Crafts

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House of Crafts
Gareisstrasse 10 Front (Magdeburg) .jpg
2012

The Haus des Handwerks is a listed building in Magdeburg in Saxony-Anhalt . It is the seat of the Magdeburg Chamber of Crafts . In addition, the Selma & Rudolph restaurant existed in the building until 2018 .

location

The house is on the property at Gareisstrasse 10 on the west side of Gareisstrasse in Magdeburg's Alte Neustadt district . The Haydnplatz borders to the north.

Architecture and history

The representative three-storey villa was built in 1901 for Mathilde Selma Rudolph, nee. Budenberg (1853–1931) built and presents itself as an eclectic palace directly at the old northern entrance to Magdeburg's old town . Mathilde Selma Rudolph was the youngest daughter of the entrepreneur Christian Friedrich Budenberg , widow of the entrepreneur Ludwig Heinrich Carl Rudolph and owner of the machine works C. Rudolph & Co. She was considered the richest woman in Magdeburg. The name Rudolphsche Villa was common for the building .

The decision to build the villa was made on October 24, 1898, and Selma Rudolph bought the property for 64,139.50 marks . She had previously leased the site for several years and used it as a garden. Alfred Schellenberg from Wiesbaden was won as the architect . The building permit contained the representative design of the house, which should be presented as a continuation of the southern wide path. The foundation stone was laid on February 18, 1899, the approval by the building authorities on May 14, 1901.

The east facade facing Gareisstrasse has a medium risalit , it was originally flanked by two pompous gables in neo-baroque style decorated with figures . To the north to Haydnplatz there was initially an open loggia with Palladio motifs, flanked by turrets topped with tail helmets . The house has a round bay window to the west towards the garden . The building was covered with a sandstone facing . The building is covered by a flat roof that was crowned with an attic and sculptures.

Inside the building there were two apartments and rooms for social events. Selma Rudolph lived in the house with her daughter, her three sons and other family members. Often cultural events and festivals were held in the building.

The building is surrounded by a garden surrounded by a wrought iron fence, which however was reduced in size in the 1930s. Originally it consisted of a front, elegantly held, and a rear part, in which there were vegetable and herb beds, fruit trees and children's play equipment.

1930s

After Selma Rudolph's death in 1931, the family gave up their own use of the house for financial reasons. From 1934 onwards, the new tenants were the SA and the NSDAP . The villa served as the headquarters of the SA Group Elbe , later in the middle . The SA set up a wild concentration camp in the villa . Prisoners were tortured in the cellars of the house.

The building, which had already been structurally damaged by the use of the SA and NSDAP, suffered severe damage in the air raid on Magdeburg on January 16, 1945 . The villa burned down, but was the only building on the former Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße that still existed, at least in its basic substance. It took two weeks for the temperature in the house to cool down enough that it could be entered again. The interior was completely destroyed, apart from a large safe , which and its contents remained in the basement. About a year later, on January 23, 1946, the heirs and the former city building officer Julius Götsch inspected the property. The north facade and the attic were found to be the worst. A bomb hit several ceilings. Doors, windows and window frames were all destroyed. The heat had made the stone steps of the house crack and tumble. Overall, however, the building was not assessed as a total write-off. The massive construction and the forester's ceilings used in the building had prevented worse damage.

After 1945

However, the heirs were unable to raise the funds for a necessary temporary roof and taxes. On March 18, 1947, they sold the house for 125,000 Reichsmarks to the married couple Karl and Martha Ott. Karl Ott ran a fur house in Magdeburg and planned to use the villa to display his products. The furs should be preserved in the cellar . Ott began repairing the damage and employed up to 15 workers. Bricks were recovered from the bombed neighboring property, rubble was cleared away, ceilings were put in again and the roof covered. In addition, electrical work was carried out and the interiors were plastered. With the currency reform of 1948, however, Ott lost all funds and construction work was stopped. The building was half finished and empty. In 1952/1953, the city of Magdeburg stored furnishings from vacated apartments of people who had fled the GDR . On April 23, 1954, the Ott family then sold the property to the Magdeburg Chamber of Crafts.

The Chamber of Crafts began in September 1955 with the further repair of the house using the capacities of its member companies. The project also met with criticism internally because of the considerable costs. The new design of the house was carried out by the collective of architects from the Magdeburg School of Applied Arts . In 1956 , the teachers Wilhelm Paulke and Willi Winkler , who worked at the school, created a wall frieze that depicts human history in the context of handicrafts and, in particular, the trades organized in the chamber. In addition to the depiction of handicrafts in the Stone , Bronze and Iron Ages , the coats of arms of the districts and cities in the chamber district of that time can also be found. Donations and voluntary services within the framework of the project amounted to more than 300,000 marks. The project was part of the national structure . Due to the prevailing lack of materials and limited resources , the facade was made very simple, contrary to the original design. The north side facing Haydnplatz has been significantly changed. A balcony that originally existed there was converted into an extension, which severely impaired the historic building design.

On August 16, 1957, the villa was opened as a cultural center for handicrafts . It was now a cultural center and center for further training for the employees of 22,000 craft businesses in the chamber district. A hotel and a restaurant were set up in the villa, which became the best establishments in the city of Magdeburg and in particular had an unusually good selection of wines and beers for GDR standards. The Gildestübchen existed in the basement , the garden was used for open-air catering .

After 1990

In 1991, the Saxony-Anhalt regional association of Bündnis 90 was founded in the Haus des Handwerks .

In 1992 the cultural center was closed and the inventory was auctioned. This was followed by the sale of the building by the Chamber of Crafts to an investor who wanted to set up a brewery in addition to a restaurant and hotel . Corresponding renovation work was also carried out. In 1995, however, the investor filed for bankruptcy . Various foreclosure auction dates followed, but they were unsuccessful. The villa stood empty and was falling into disrepair. In 2006 a working group was founded to enable the monument to be saved . A professor at the neighboring Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg developed a usage concept that once again included a restaurant. A student wrote a thesis on the villa.

A new sustainable use arose in autumn 2008 with the decision of the general assembly of the Magdeburg Chamber of Crafts to prepare the building as the administrative headquarters of the chamber. The renovation was decided by the general assembly on July 28, 2009, the house was acquired on September 29, 2009. On October 21, 2009 the symbolic first hammer blow took place. A board of trustees had also been established.

The design planning and cost estimate for the upcoming work was carried out by the Magdeburg architects Ribbert Saalmann . The building permit was issued in spring 2010. On October 25, 2010, clearing work began on the property, the symbolic laying of the foundation stone took place on November 10, 2010 in the presence of the State Minister of Economics Reiner Haseloff and the Mayor of Magdeburg Lutz Trümper . A total of € 10 million was invested, around a third of which was additional expenditure for monument protection. € 800,000 flowed into the project in funding. Ole Saalmann and Daniel Dehmel were involved as architects in the renovation . In order to create sufficient space for the required by the Chamber offices, the building was a decorated in a modern form language penthouse level increased. With the funds raised, the facade was again provided with more decorative elements, whereby a faithful reconstruction of the original facade design was dispensed with for reasons of cost. However, the balustrade was remade. The central projection on the east facade was also new, albeit in a somewhat simpler form. The renovations carried out in the 1950s on the north facade were dismantled and the original state restored. The foundation of the house was hidden and many statically significant parts were renewed. Additions from the 1980s were also removed.

There was also a considerable need for renovation inside the house. The stucco ceiling in the area of ​​the small entrance was preserved from the time the house was built. In addition, the craftsman's frieze created in the 1950s has been preserved. Mostly, however, a modern office building was created inside. The drywall added in the 1990s was dismantled. Electrical, heating, ventilation and sanitary systems had to be replaced, and windows and doors had to be newly installed. A glass roof was stretched over the inner courtyard. A total of 40 offices, three event rooms and four meeting rooms were created.

The topping-out ceremony was celebrated on June 27, 2011, the inauguration of the house took place on November 16, 2012.

In 2013, the basement was expanded with guest rooms, cold rooms and kitchens to create a restaurant, which opened on November 1, 2013. The name of the restaurant Selma & Rudolph referred to the owner of the house Selma Rudolph. The restaurant was closed on December 31, 2018.

In the local register of monuments , the villa is listed as a historical building under registration number 094 70033 .

The house is considered to be one of the most elaborate buildings of historicism in Magdeburg and an important architectural document of upper-class self-portrayal at the turn of the 20th century.

Personalities

Well-known personalities resided in the house when they were in Magdeburg. From August 10 to 11, 1957, and thus before the official opening of the hotel, the head of the party and government of the Soviet Union , Nikita Khrushchev, lived in the house. The GDR head of state Walter Ulbricht and the well-known cyclist Täve Schur were among the guests. The Austrian national water polo team lived in the building from June 3 to 7, 1959. From September 3rd to 4th, 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut German Stepanowitsch Titow and his wife stayed at the Haus des Handwerks.

It is reported about one of Khrushchev's stays that he suddenly disappeared and, after a long search, was found in the boiler room with a bottle of vodka with the Russian-born stoker of the house. Another story of the visit is that Khrushchev tried to unscrew a plastic faucet . He wanted to take it with him as a model for a production in the Soviet Union. The German side then legally procured a tap for him. In addition, it was reported that Khrushchev himself passed a bowl of boiled potatoes around to eat and asked those present to eat hard.

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Short question and answer Olaf Meister (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen), Prof. Dr. Claudia Dalbert (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen), Ministry of Culture March 19, 2015 Printed matter 6/3905 (KA 6/8670) List of monuments Saxony-Anhalt , Magdeburg.pdf, page 2549
  2. ↑ Karl-Heinz Kaiser: Do you remember? Volume 1. Herkules Verlag, Kassel 2014, ISBN 978-3-941499-87-4 , page 25

Coordinates: 52 ° 8 ′ 27.8 ″  N , 11 ° 38 ′ 22.5 ″  E