Imperial courts

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View of today's imperial courts

The Kaiserhöfe are a historical ensemble of buildings on the boulevard Unter den Linden 26–30 in Berlin . They emerged from two commercial buildings built one after the other and by different architects (1912 and 1914). Heavily destroyed at the end of the Second World War , the building wing was used in a variety of ways after its reconstruction in the 1950s. After a thorough renovation at the beginning of the 21st century with the opening of a passage to Mittelstrasse, they now serve several medium-sized companies again. The name Kaiserhöfe is not the historical name, but comes from the marketing strategy of the new owner. The building complex is a listed building .

history

The original bank building and the Mercedes house around 1937 (left half of the picture)

The mortgage lender Prussian Central Bodenkredit-AG had acquired the property Unter den Linden 26 in 1913 and the architects Bielenberg & Moser commissioned to build a representative office building in central Berlin. With their five-story building, the builders used the late Wilhelmine architectural style. The five-axis building was clad with ashlar , the ground floor received arched openings and the other floors were designed with colossal pilasters and Corinthian capitals . The detached upper floor is designed as an attic . Below the windows and on the balcony parapets, reliefs with symbols for trade and commerce decorate the facade.

The structure Unter den Linden 28-30 was built in 1912/13. The builder and owner was Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft AG (later Daimler-Benz) , on whose behalf the architects Alfred Klingenberg & Fritz Beyer designed a neoclassical building. In the floor heights, they adapted it to the neighboring house, but chose Tuscan wall columns with Ionic capitals . An entablature with Egyptian friezes rests on it over the entire width of the building. Finally there was the attic floor with four standing figures that were destroyed in the Second World War. The reconstruction took place without the figures. The building, also known as the Mercedes house , was bought by the mortgage bank in 1926 and shared with it.

New uses after the war destruction

The two buildings, which were badly damaged by the war, were rebuilt in their old forms in the GDR era and used with the House of Switzerland . New users moved in: the “Vitrine” fabric shop, a specialist underwear store, the “Sibylle” boutique , the GDR's foreign trade bank, the British embassy (from the 1970s) , the Tunisian embassy and a branch of SAS Scandinavian Airlines . After the collapse of the GDR, all sales facilities were closed and most of the offices were empty.

Since 1990

In the courtyard with the historic fountain in 2010

The international real estate consortium Meermann-Chamartín finally acquired the complex and had it renovated and rebuilt with modern technology by the Berlin architects Rüthnick Architekten for around 23 million euros by 2008 . The usable area has been increased to around 13,500 square meters and is being gradually allocated to interested entrepreneurs. The redesigned passage about two courtyards linking Unter den Linden with the central road shows both wings historically preserved with white bricks blinded and a modern building, which replaces a cross building that was no longer available. Particularly noteworthy are a column fountain rebuilt according to historical models and a marble bust of Emperor Wilhelm II as the namesake of the courts. The original furnishings of the tobacco shop Cigarren Junghans from Chausseestrasse , which was well known in East Berlin, found a new location. A new rental agreement has already been signed with the company Berlin Story Verlag . From the period of use as a bank there is a historic vault on the first floor , which has been restored and can now be visited.

literature

Web links

Commons : Kaiserhöfe Berlin  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Monument bank building UdL 26
  2. ↑ The architectural and art monuments of the GDR , Berlin, I; Edited by the Institute for Monument Preservation at Henschelverlag, page 182f; Berlin 1984
  3. ↑ Monument UdL 28/30, formerly Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft
  4. ↑ Weekly magazine 'NBI' No. 40/4, page 39
  5. ^ Rüthnick Architects , Berlin
  6. ↑ Lothar Heinke : The emperor's new courts. Tagesspiegel, February 27, 2008, accessed on March 21, 2010 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '2.2 "  N , 13 ° 23' 16.8"  E