Imperial Hall in Post Office 1 (Bremen)
The Kaisersaal is a state hall in the Imperial Post Office, built in 1878 on the Domsheide in Bremen. The building has been a listed building since 1973 .
In what was later to be Post Office 1, the Kaisersaal originally belonged to the apartment of the Chief Postal Director. Since he was the highest Prussian official in Bremen, it was his responsibility to give a reception for the Emperor's birthday. That is why a room in the post office building, built in the rich north German renaissance style by Karl Schwatlo of OPD Berlin, was lavishly furnished.
The imperial coat of arms is found six times on the ceiling. It is the coat of arms of the province of Poznan with the white eagle on a red background. According to Gerhard Plöger, Langwedel, a former post office clerk at Post Office 1, a Polish company from Poznan carried out the stone carving work and their workers were allowed to leave their coat of arms on the ceiling because of their excellent work. The architrave of the central window is crowned on the outside with a coat of arms with the initials of Kaiser Wilhelm I and the German imperial crown.
Inside is the window front and the entrance wall with the busts of Emperor Wilhelm I and Empress Augusta , a Duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, the later 99-day Emperor Friedrich III. and the Crown Princess Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. They underline the imperial idea. There are five wall paintings in the style of historicism on the side walls . They are early works by Arthur Fitger , the Bremen painter prince at the end of the 19th century. He was the son of a postmaster from Delmenhorst.
The question of why there are only five paintings and not six can be answered in two ways. First: In the middle of the left side wall was the entrance to the chief post director's apartment, which was later walled up. Second, the five paintings symbolize the five continents that were already served by the imperial post at that time. According to tradition, the pictures show "the mail riding on centaurs and tritons, as well as nymphs as a symbol of the fast mail on water and on land." Since the centaurs consist of a horse's lower body like a human head and upper body, it makes sense to assign them to the continents that can be reached on horseback, besides Europe, Asia and Africa. The European Centaur can be identified by the post horn in his hand, the African - dark - continent by the two torches in the Centaur's hands and the Asiatic Centaur carries the whip, which is reminiscent of the cavalry hordes of Genghis Khan .
The Tritons are sea gods named after Triton , son of Neptune and Amphitrite . The tritons are hybrid creatures from the head and upper body of a human being like the abdomen of a fish. They symbolize the two continents that can only be reached by sea. The conch in the nymph's hand on the back of the left triton characterizes Australia and New Zealand. The snail horn is still used as a wind instrument by the Māoris in New Zealand today. They call it "putatara". The nymph on the back of the Triton on the right side of the right side wall indicates America. Your hand flutters around the " blue ribbon ". The "Atlantic Blue Ribbon" was probably introduced in the 1860s by transatlantic shipping companies for publicity purposes. It honored the fastest passenger steamer on the transatlantic route Europe – New York. It was also used to transport fast mail from Europe across the Atlantic.
In the 1970s, the Post considered removing the Kaisersaal. They were looking for powerful donors who were interested in individual Fitger paintings. After not enough interested parties were found, the hall was restored in 1974 under the supervision of the state monument conservator Hans-Christoph Hoffmann. The middle, Asiatic Centaur was destroyed because a breakthrough was made from the other side. The figure could be preserved because the restorer Georg Skrypzak swept the remains together and put them back together to form the finished centaur with small additions.
The hall is adorned with a Murano chandelier, which was not originally available here. It comes from the Bremen town hall .
The former post office building is now used by the St. John's School .
literature
- Theodor Windmann: The first imperial post house in Bremen. In: Postgeschichtliche Blätter Weser – Ems 11th 1965, pp. 297–305
- Hans-Christoph Hoffman: Research, Care, Protect, Preserve. A quarter of a century of monument preservation in the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. A review. Bremen 1998.
- The construction of the German Reich Post and Telegraph Administration. The post and telegraph building in Bremen. German construction management, 15th year 1881. S. 193 f., 197, 2002 ff
- Grubert: The post office. In: Bremen and its buildings. Bremen 1900, pp. 276-280
- Rolf Kirsch: Three historicist administrative buildings: post office, courthouse and police station - history, conversion and conservation measures. In: Preservation of monuments in Bremen, 14, Historicism and Wilhelminian Period II. Bremen 2017, pp. 22–29