Mercure Potsdam

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Hotel Mercure Potsdam
View from the west

View from the west

Data
place Potsdam
architect Architect collective
Construction year 1969; 1991 renovation
height 60 m
Floor space 4400 m²
Coordinates 52 ° 23 '37.8 "  N , 13 ° 3' 35.8"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 23 '37.8 "  N , 13 ° 3' 35.8"  E

The Mercure Hotel Potsdam (formerly: Interhotel Potsdam ) is a hotel from the GDR era that was completed in 1969 and operated by the Interhotel chain. After the fall of the Wall , it became the property of the Mercure chain, which renovated the prefabricated building and had it converted to the now usual standard of equipment.

The hotel is located on the Long Bridge on part of the baroque pleasure garden opposite the Potsdam City Palace . With its angular shape and height of 60 meters, the high-rise stands in contrast to the nearby church tower of St. Nikolai's Church .

The demolition of the Hotel Mercure has remained a redevelopment goal for the Lustgarten since a resolution in 2016.

History and conception

Interhotel Potsdam and the preserved part of the Wrestler Colonnade , 1969.

In 1967, the chairman of the GDR State Council, Walter Ulbricht , gave the order to build a “socialist city crown” in Potsdam. The hotel building was realized as a prestigious building by an architects' collective under the direction of Sepp Weber and should meet the highest international standards. Some construction equipment from capitalist foreign countries was used for the completion . The house offers over 420 guest rooms on 17 floors and was the first hotel in the GDR to be equipped with 20  televisions . Celebrities like Karlheinz Böhm , Audrey Landers and Zsa Zsa Gabor were guests here. For special visitors, the hotel made its own motor yacht available on request . The menu of the hotel restaurant included not only regional dishes, but also Russian and Yugoslav specialties.

Until the end of the GDR, the FDGB was the main user and mainly accommodated holidaymakers here. After German reunification and the dissolution of the central trade union organization, the newly founded Interhotel AG acquired the building complex. In 1992, the hotel was leased to the Mercure chain for twenty years and, when it reopened, after the renovation work, it was renamed the Mercure Hotel Berlin Potsdam . The property has been owned by the US investment company Blackstone Group , from which hotel operator Accor, has leased it since the beginning of the 21st century .

Perspectives

View of the hotel from the south-east bank of the Havel Bay,
right side shows the tip of the Friendship Island
View from the tower of St. Nikolai Church over the City Palace to the Mercure.

The hotel was operated by the Accor Group itself until the end of 2012, which, before the lease agreement expired at the end of 2012, declared early on that it did not want to continue the hotel itself. In the course of the new building of the Potsdam State Parliament in the immediate vicinity of the hotel in the outer shape of the former city palace, the war ruins of which were blown up by the GDR leadership in 1959/1960, various parties called for the demolition of the high-rise slab building. The software billionaire Hasso Plattner initially wanted to build a low-floor art hall at the location of the hotel tower, but then withdrew after his plans were not only approved in Potsdam. The exhibition is now shown in the reconstructed Barberini Museum on the Alter Markt .

At the end of 2012, the owner Blackstone decided to operate the hotel as an Accor franchisee for the next 10 years. However, in mid-2013 it became known that Blackstone intends to sell the Mercure shortly and that the hotel's operating company is bankrupt. After the Lord Mayor of Potsdam had already expressed the intention to include the pleasure garden in the redevelopment area on the Alter Markt, the city administration planned the purchase and demolition of the high-rise in order to reconnect the resulting open space to the pleasure garden and thus the historical surroundings of the externally reconstructed city palace ( Parliament building) with the old visual relationships. However, this is controversial in the Potsdam citizenship, which became particularly clear in the vote on the participatory budget 2015/16: No purchase and demolition of the Hotel Mercure came in second place.

At the end of May 2016 it became known that the hotel, together with eight other former GDR Interhotels and some hotels in France, had been sold to FDM Management, a joint venture of a subsidiary of the French real estate company " Reits Foncière des Régions " and various French insurance companies. What this transaction will mean for the future of the "Mercure" hotel is currently not foreseeable.

literature

  • Jörg Fröhlich: A hotel in the pleasure garden of Potsdam: The Interhotel Potsdam in historical surroundings from 1967 to today . 3. Edition. BoD - Books on Demand, 2015, ISBN 978-3-8482-2854-6 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  • Atreju Allahverdy / Christian Klusemann: Interhotel Potsdam (Hotel Mercure), in: Christian Klusemann (ed.): The other Potsdam. GDR architecture guide. 26 buildings and ensembles from the years 1949 - 1990, Berlin 2016, pp. 129–139.

Web links

Commons : Hotel Mercure, Potsdam  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marco Zschieck: "Meadow of the People" remains the goal. Potsdam Latest News , August 23, 2019, accessed July 9, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Demolition of the “Mercure” remains the goal in the center of Potsdam. Märkische Allgemeine , November 12, 2019, accessed on July 9, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Source: Federal Archives. Original caption from the GDR era: The colonnades created by GW Knobelsdorff - formerly adornment of the Potsdam City Palace - remnants of Prussian “glory”, form an interesting contrast to the modern Interhotel Potsdam, testimony to the building work of the GDR residents .
  4. ^ Sabine Schicketanz : Plattner's retreat into the countryside. In: Der Tagesspiegel , June 6, 2012
  5. ↑ Hella Kaiser: We also had a flower fairy. In: Der Tagesspiegel , November 8, 2009
  6. ↑ Bettina Seipp: What became of the hotels of socialism , In: Die Welt , October 26, 2009
  7. ↑ Brief information on the supply situation on ddr-wissen.de
  8. ↑ a b Katrin Starke: Potsdam's hands are tied in the "Hotel Mercure" case In: Berliner Morgenpost , May 12, 2012
  9. ↑ Guido Berg: Removing 17 floors . In Potsdam's Latest News , January 10, 2009
  10. ↑ Kathrin Bischoff: A competitor for the former Interhotel . In Berliner Zeitung , April 14, 2012
  11. ↑ Guido Berg: GDR architecture. Accor is negotiating the Mercure Hotel . In Potsdam's latest news , March 29, 2012
  12. ↑ Guido Berg: Ten-year contract. “Mercure” stops . In: Potsdam Latest News , September 13, 2012
  13. ↑ Inventory instead of demolition ( Memento of the original from April 19, 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. (PDF; 11.8 MB); Letter from the reader in the Preußen Spiegel Potsdam dated December 12, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / epaper.media-guides.de
  14. ^ Voting participatory budget 2015/16 ; Retrieved on Nov. 19, 2014
  15. ↑ http://www.pnn.de/potsdam/1079235/ BACKGROUND Monopoly ums Mercure; Retrieved June 20, 2016
  16. ↑ FDM Management: € 936 million in new hotel investments PRESS RELEASE 20 May 2016