Hotel Koenigshof (Bonn)

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Hotel Königshof, aerial photo (2017)
Hotel Königshof (2014)

The Hotel Königshof is a hotel founded in the 19th century on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn , which during the time of the German Empire was mainly visited by the sons of German princes and royalty who were studying. In the 1950s to 1970s it was a social center of the political capital Bonn.

location

The hotel is located on Adenauerallee 9 ( Bundesstrasse 9 ) on the banks of the Rhine and in the immediate vicinity of the Hofgarten at the Alter Zoll .

history

Rhine front of the Grand Hotel Royal (end of the 19th century)

After 1815, the electorate of Cologne became a royal Prussian province. The vacant Bonn residence palaces of "Elector Clemens-August zu Cöln" were taken over by the newly founded university. Soon the new “enlightened” university in Bonn was the preferred university in Germany. Here studied Friedrich Nietzsche , Karl Marx , Heinrich Heine , Emanuel Geibel , Hoffmann von Fallersleben , Max Bruch and Konrad Adenauer , but above all the high nobility: Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (later Prince Consort of Queen Victoria), Prince Friedrich-Wilhelm of Prussia (who later became King Friedrich III ) and the young prince and later Kaiser Wilhelm II studied in Bonn.

The hotel, then still known as the “Grandhotel Royal” with its panoramic terrace on the banks of the Rhine, was initially located in the hall building of the innkeeper Ermekeil, which dates back to the first half of the 19th century. The first owner and director of the hotel, Andreas Ermekeil (1826–1895), came from this family. It developed into a meeting place for the ruling houses in Germany - mostly to visit their sons who were studying. In 1872 a new hotel was built. Around 1900 the Hotel-Actien-Gesellschaft merged with the Cologne Cathedral Hotel and changed to the “German” name: Königshof . With the First World War and the end of the German Empire (1918), most of the foreign guests and the nobility stayed away. The period of hyperinflation (until 1923), in which the demand for luxury hotels fell, brought the hotel into financial difficulties. After the beginning of the Second World War , the hotel served as a military hospital ; on October 18, 1944, it was severely destroyed in the Allied air war in the most devastating bombing raid on Bonn . After the end of the war, the hotel therefore only existed with a significantly reduced capacity, but was still considered the most renowned establishment in the city. For several years, the Villa Koblenzer Strasse 7 was used in addition to the main building .

On the occasion of the first meeting of the Parliamentary Council in Bonn on September 1, 1948, which drafted the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany , the Hotel Königshof was completely vacated to accommodate and board the Prime Ministers of the German states . For this purpose, it received special food allocations from the Nutrition Office. For Konrad Adenauer , the President of the Council and later first Federal Chancellor, a room was always available in the royal court. In the course of the founding of the Federal Republic, celebrations for the constitution of the Bundestag and Bundesrat on September 7, 1949, as well as lunch of the first state visit to the federal government by the US Secretary of State Dean Acheson on November 13, 1949, took place in the hotel. From June 1950 to the beginning of 1951 it was the official and residence of the head of the Austrian liaison office ( Josef Schöner ) and in 1952/53 of the ambassador of Panama in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Reception for the Foreign Minister of Gabon at the Hotel Königshof (1962)

After Bonn was designated the seat of government of the Federal Republic, the city needed a place to accommodate state guests. In 1954, work began on a simple new building based on a design by the architect Rudolf Wolters on the site of the war-torn Villa Blume / Obernier on the site of the war-torn Villa Blume / Obernier , which continued until the hotel was reopened on the occasion of the visit of Italian Prime Minister Antonio Segni from 6 . was completed by February 9, 1956. The construction was co-financed by the Federal Republic of Germany, which approved a guarantee for the overall financing, since the representative tasks of the federal government could not be carried out in the long run without a hotel of international standing. The new hotel was now a preferred hostel for state guests, alongside the Petersberg guest house . They stayed in the royal court of the Shah of Persia , Queen Elizabeth II as well as the US Presidents Kennedy , Nixon and Reagan . The royal court was also used for receptions, ceremonies and conferences of the federal government. In March 1957, following the establishment of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and the Federal Republic of Germany, the Saudi Arabian envoy began his official business in the Hotel Königshof, which was the residence of the Ambassador of Peru in the early 1960s . Until 1971 it hosted the state dinners and events of the Federal Chancellery .

In 2002 the Cologne hotel company Althoff Hotels took over the “Königshof” and renovated the house for three million euros. For this purpose, the Althoff Group signed a 20-year contract with the owner, the German Savings Banks and Giro Association . The house is run by the Ameron Group .

architecture

The unadorned, elongated building with a flat hipped roof was built in the typical style of the 1950s. The rooms are spread over the four floors. On the ground floor there is a large terrace facing the Rhine, the building is completely glazed on this side. In the basement, which runs at ground level towards the Rhine, a garden terrace was built that belongs to the Oliveto restaurant and a café. The 16 window axes at the rear of the building are separated by narrow pilaster strips . The front window axes with square windows are interrupted by a massive extension. The ground floor has been pulled back slightly here, so that the upper floors look like grafted on. The entrance is protected from the weather by an expansive canopy.

Sculpture guests in the hotel (2007)
Sculpture guests in the hotel (2019)

In front of the hotel entrance is the sculpture Guests in the Hotel (Encounter) , created in 1982/83 by the sculptor Richard Heß and erected on May 25, 1983 , which is supposed to represent a hotel room. A larger than life unclothed female figure in bronze and a relief plate reflecting this figure as well as a male figure without a head are placed on a two-part square concrete base , which are framed by a square frame. The painting of the base was changed several times in line with the entrance area of ​​the hotel, most recently in 2011.

Web links

Commons : Hotel Königshof (Bonn)  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
  2. ↑ Olga Sonntag: Villas on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn: 1819–1914 , Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-416-02618-7 , Volume 1, p. 27. (also dissertation University of Bonn, 1994)
  3. ↑ a b Olga Sonntag : Villas on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn: 1819–1914 , Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-416-02618-7 , Volume 2, Catalog (1), p. 73. (also dissertation University of Bonn, 1994)
  4. ↑ The history of the Ermekeil barracks
  5. ^ Josef Niesen : Bonner Personenlexikon. 3rd, improved and enlarged edition. Bouvier, Bonn 2011, ISBN 978-3-416-03352-7 , p. 134.
  6. ^ A b Helmut Vogt: “I need quarters for me, driver and car”. The working environment of the Parliamentary Council in Bonn 1948/49 . In: Bonner Geschichtsblätter. Yearbook of the Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein , Volume 57/58, 2008, ISSN  0068-0052 , pp. 442-470 (here: p. 444).
  7. ^ Dietrich Höroldt: 25 Years Federal Capital Bonn: A Documentation . In: Publications of the Bonn City Archives , Volume 14, Ludwig Röhrscheid Verlag, 1974, ISBN 978-3-7928-0374-5 , p. 28.
  8. ↑ a b City of Bonn, City Archives (ed.); Helmut Vogt : "The Minister lives in a company car on platform 4". The beginnings of the federal government in Bonn 1949/50 , Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-922832-21-0 .
  9. ↑ a b Helmut Vogt: Guardian of the Bonn Republic. The Allied High Commissioners 1949–1955 , Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2004, ISBN 3-506-70139-8 .
  10. ^ Rudolf Agstner : Representation - Embassy - Branch Office: an obituary for Austria's diplomatic mission in Bonn from 1950 to 2006 . In: Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein , Stadtarchiv Bonn (ed.): Bonner Geschichtsblätter. Yearbook of the Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein , Volume 55/56, Bonn 2006, ISSN  0068-0052 , pp. 293–326 (here: p. 300).
  11. ^ Official Journal for Schleswig-Holstein , State Administration Schleswig-Holstein, Office for the Interior, 1952, p. 455.
  12. ^ Paperback of public life , Festland Verlag GmbH, 1953, p. 124.
  13. ↑ a b Ameron Hotel Königshof Bonn - History ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hotel-koenigshof-bonn.de
  14. ^ Wilhelm Cornides (Ed.): Europa-Archiv , Volume 11, Part 1, Verlag für Internationale Politik, 1956, p. 8660.
  15. ↑ Hartmut Weber: The Cabinet Protocols of the Federal Government: 1954-1955 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich, 2000, p. 273, footnote 27
  16. ^ Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, Marianne Schmidt-Dumont (eds.); Helmut Mejcher: Time horizons in the Middle East: Studies and mishaps on history in the 20th century . In: Periplus Studies , Volume 16, LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-11514-0 , p. 252.
  17. ↑ Foreign Office (ed.): List of the diplomatic corps in Bonn (as of March 1962)
  18. ^ The Bonn royal court is being modernized for three million euros , General-Anzeiger Bonn, December 1, 2002
  19. ^ Gabriele Zabel-Zottmann: Sculptures and objects in the public space of the federal capital Bonn - installed from 1970 to 1991 . Dissertation, Bonn 2012, part 2, p. 76 f. ( online PDF ; 5.8 MB)

Coordinates: 50 ° 44 ′ 0.8 ″  N , 7 ° 6 ′ 29.5 ″  E