House of the People (Probstzella)
The social reform industrialist Franz Itting had Alfred Arndt and Ernst Gebhardt built the House of the People in Probstzella ( Thuringia ) as a hotel and cultural center from 1925 to 1927 . The entire interior is designed by artists from the Bauhaus Dessau ; it is the largest Bauhaus ensemble ever realized in Thuringia .
After Itting was expropriated in 1950, the municipality and the GDR customs used the building, and various kinds of performances and celebrations took place in the red hall. In 1970/1971 the inside of the building was rebuilt and another restaurant was added. The now run-down house and the hotel park received monument status in 1995. Both were bought by private individuals in 2003. They renovated the building and used it again in the original sense. In 2005, the clients received the German Facade Prize for renovation work on part of the building . The restaurant opened the Bauhaus Hotel at the end of 2005 and 2008. Since 2016, the history of the house can be explored in the in-house digital tour using a smartphone or tablet.
Building
Structure
The house of the people dominates the townscape of Probstzella by its size. It is located opposite the train station and is set back behind a row of houses. This row of houses was already there back then. The entrance to the building, where the main entrance to the hotel was located, went through the “Meininger Hof” (inn). On the other side of the building, facing the park, was the second entrance to the hall.
In terms of its cubature, it is a multi-storey building set back into the slope, varying in storey due to the hillside location, six storeys towards the street, two or three storeys towards the garden, the exterior of compact monumentality, closed cubic outline and largely adhered to Center axis symmetry. A slate hipped roof on reinforced concrete trusses with a massive roof tower and small triangular dormers is located above the heavy end cornice, pierced by the parapet windows.
Inside the building there is a construction period equipment: floors, doors, massive stairs with handrails, the large hall with surrounding gallery and visible concrete roof trusses, to name just a few.
Exterior architecture and environment
The facades are sparingly structured by a few details, on the middle section there are several outwardly visible, slender concrete struts that run uninterrupted through the storeys (serve to design the building and probably also for roof drainage). The structure is repeated similarly for the roof tower.
In the left part of the street facade a semicircular swinging bay is visible from the third floor on. The facades are otherwise only divided by the multi-rung casement windows.
A three-story, simply plastered connecting structure (reinforced concrete skeleton) leads to the former hotel on the street.
The outside staircase consists of granite on the north-west side and there is natural stone paving in the courtyard. A flat hall terrace is connected to the north-east side of the building, which is connected to the outside building via the spiral staircase, further east via a covered corridor with the hall stairs.
The pavilion is a two-storey, stepped low-rise building on a reinforced concrete skeleton, with its walls being largely dissolved into large glass surfaces due to the skeleton construction. The flat roof is accessible as a terrace from the upper floor.
Layout
The floor plans of the individual floors (6 floors) are clearly structured. They adapt to the different surroundings on the slope. They have been changed or used over the course of time.
Components
It is a reinforced concrete frame structure, with the walls between the columns made of masonry. The reinforced concrete columns that were used to ventilate the building are hollow. The building is plastered outside and inside. The windows are wooden box windows, which are divided by several rows of bars. The roof drainage runs along the building's wide parapet, with the downpipes located in the reinforced concrete struts on the outside. The hipped roof is slated and the roof structure consists of reinforced concrete beams.
The roof tower in turn consists of reinforced concrete columns (this is where the ventilation ends) and is lined with brick.
Building materials and paints
The People's House is made of reinforced concrete and masonry, with the walls plastered. The roofing is made of slate.
The color is dominated by a light rust-red, which is almost pink, and the shimmering black-blue of the slate on the roof. The outer visible concrete struts are gray. The frames of the wooden windows, including those of the triangular windows on the roof, are painted white. Some components, such as B. the semicircular, spiral staircase and the semicircular bay stand out in light gray.
Noticeable changes and current state
1970/71 conversion and extension work, whereby much of the actual interior design was changed (stage, orchestra pit, suspended ceiling).
Today the building has been renovated in accordance with a listed building.
Overall system
The House of the People includes larger gardens up the slope, which are bordered by terraced slopes in the north and east. The kiosk, sound hall, garages and fountains also belong to the building complex and are also under monument protection.
History of the building
Prehistory and conception
The House of the People in Probstzella is one of the few examples of Bauhaus architecture in Thuringia. The exterior of the building is a hybrid of a traditional structure with a gable roof, which nevertheless still has a modern appearance. Inside, the design is free, making it one of the few examples of complete interior fittings in the Bauhaus workshops that have been realized.
When Arndt moved to Dessau with the Bauhaus in 1925, he made friends with Gotthardt Itting, the son of the Thuringian entrepreneur and leading SPD member Franz Itting .
During this time Itting built a hotel with a large hall in Probstzella, located on the southern slopes of the Thuringian Forest and with an express train station on the Nuremberg – Berlin route, which was intended to have the character of a people's house and at the same time to stimulate tourism in this region. Arndt saw the very conservative plans of the Saalfeld architect Klapproth and was able to convince the client that a more modern building would be better for his purposes.
After visiting the construction site, which had already been set up and where the first rock blasts (the building is right next to a rock face), Arndt took over the design management of the building. Klapproth continued to be involved in the construction process, significantly in the transverse construction (Meininger Hof) and also gave a speech at the opening of the house on April 30, 1927. From April 1926, Arndt was almost exclusively in Probstzella, even though he was still enrolled at the Bauhaus. His colleague was his old friend Ernst Gebhardt.
From the beginning, the House of the People was planned for the general public. It should be used by everyone as its name suggests. There were events, and cinema screenings were also possible, whereby the chairs could be used variably. The slope could be removed again. The sophisticated ventilation and heating system was also interesting. The building was heated using waste heat from Franz Itting's power station. The ventilation took place via the reinforced concrete supports and led up into the tower, where the exhaust air escaped. It is reported that 300 people were able to smoke cigars in the Red Hall without being noticed. The disadvantage was the heating. When the power station was no longer in operation, it was very difficult to control the temperature of the hall.
Fabrics, furniture, lamps, door handles, everything was created in the Bauhaus workshops. The furniture comes from Arndt, Gebhardt and Breuer, the fabrics and curtains from Marlis Heumann, the lamps from the metal workshop, the upholstery fabrics from the Bauhaus weaving mill and the colored design from Alfred Arndt. Arndt had contributed to the design of all things. So was z. For example, the chairs on the gallery of the Red Hall are a modification of Breuer's support chair from the Dessau Bauhaus that he developed.
Commissioning and use
The building was inaugurated on May 1st, 1927. Arndt also designed all of the business papers for the House of the People, from invitations to the opening to menus and wine lists and invoices to posters for events.
Arndt could no longer fundamentally change the architecture of the building. Despite the cleaning up of the facade, the House of the People remained a representative building with a conspicuous emphasis on the center and some expressionistic details, as can be found in many buildings of this type and purpose throughout Germany. His revision of the plans certainly contributed to a modern appearance, but it shows that even where he had a free hand, such as in the restaurants, the demands of such a business in a strange way rub against the design principles of the new building . Its architecture is not grandiose, modern, rather reserved and determined by the structural conditions of the building, which are emphasized by the color design. The interior fittings deliberately dispense with the aesthetic exaggeration that can be found in Breuer's work at the same time.
As a hotel, the building was oversized for the place and the region. At that time, the house was only profitable in the 1920s and 1930s because Itting produced everything itself and thus supplied the house with food from its own gardens, electricity and heat.
In 1935, the House of the People was expanded to include small-caliber shooting ranges, which Arndt had already planned.
On December 31, 1936, at the insistence of the National Socialists , the words “Haus des Volkes” had to be removed from the building. Allegedly the name would have created a wrong impression among the “ national comrades ”.
After 1945
During the GDR era it was used intensively for events in the hall. The regional customs offices were housed in the former hotel rooms below . During the GDR, Probstzella was in the restricted area of its border , and many events were held here in order to make people more favorable to the restrictive conditions. The building was optimally used and also very well maintained. There were outdoor events, concerts and similar events in the park.
In 1970/71 a dining room with kitchen was added to the south side and the entire entrance area next to it was also redesigned. The ventilation system became ineffective as a result of further renovation work inside.
Since 1990
In 1995 the House of the People with its park and the outbuildings as well as garages was classified as a cultural monument. In 2003 the building complex came up for auction and after a renovation it is again one of the striking architectural monuments in Probstzella . On October 15, 2013, the building received its “House of the People” logo on the large street facade after 76 years.
literature
- Roman Grafe : More light. The life's work of "Roten Itting". Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle (Saale) 2012, ISBN 978-3-89812-941-1 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Brillux GmbH & Co. KG: German Facade Award 2005 . on www.fassadenpreis.de
Coordinates: 50 ° 31 '46.3 " N , 11 ° 22' 56.1" E