Kurhaus Warnemünde
The Kurhaus Warnemünde is an event building in the Baltic Sea resort of Warnemünde in the Hanseatic city of Rostock . It was designed in the style of New Building with elements of Art Deco and opened on May 24, 1928. The plans for the construction go back to the year 1898.
Today the Kurhaus, including the spa garden and concert stage, is used as an event center. It contains an event hall, a bar, a café-restaurant, an Italian restaurant, a parking garage and a salt spa (as of January 2014).
planning
As early as the end of the 19th century, due to the strongly flourishing spa tourism on the Baltic Sea around Warnemünde, the idea of building a representative spa house was born. The former fishing village of Warnemünde had developed into a glamorous bathing and health resort in the 19th century after the first German seaside resort was opened in Heiligendamm in 1793. The number of bathing tourists rose by leaps and bounds with the opening of the railway line to Warnemünde.
In many places there were new buildings and extensions to existing spa facilities. In order to liven up social life in Warnemünde, a commission formed in the 1890s called for a spa center as the center. This should be suitable for theater performances, concerts and balls. The first known sketch is from 1898 by the then City Planning Director Dehn. In order to be able to compete with other seaside resorts, the city fathers finally approved the necessary financial means and in the development plan drawn up for the town of Warnemünde in 1906, Rostock's city architect at the time, the architect Paul Ehmig , had already determined the location for a spa, where it was later built . In 1909, a Germany-wide ideas competition was launched, which already contained very detailed specifications on the spatial plan and construction costs. The construction cost was set at 550,000 marks. Architecture principles were defined as follows:
“Elegant simplicity and the avoidance of unnecessary luxury are desired for the architecture, but the choice of the design is left to the editors. A simple plastered building is to be provided and the overall effect to be achieved through silhouette. "
Of the 52 designs submitted, those by the architects Wilhelm Kamper , Paul Korff as well as Ernst Müller and Richard Brodersen were awarded, and two more were purchased. Since the funds for the construction were only available for the financial year 1914, the then responsible city planning director Gustav Wilhelm Berringer had developed his own draft by March 1, 1914. This envisaged buildings with high hipped roofs, but some of the ideas of the competition were also taken up, such as Korff's semicircular porches or the H-shaped floor plan by Müller and Brodersen.
construction
Construction began in April 1914. By the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the foundations and the ground floor could be completed. After that, a construction freeze was imposed, as all funds and materials were blocked for such buildings due to the war. The situation did not change after the end of the war, so that further construction was not started until 1920. In order to raise money for refinancing the building, the operation of a casino was planned, but this failed due to the rejection of a concession by the state government. First, in 1922, the Kurhausgarten was laid out according to the plans of the city gardening director Schomburg and the music pavilion, the foyer and the reading hall were built. The resumption of construction work on the Kurhaus did not take place until 1926. Berringer redesigned the existing foundations in order to reduce construction costs and take into account the changing tastes of the time.
architecture
Berringer's design was now influenced by the New Building and the Dutch architectural group De Stijl . Considerable changes were made compared to the first plans, which were still based on baroque palace complexes, by dispensing with hipped roofs and historicizing building décor as well as with the stage system. Clear geometric shapes should dominate. The H-shaped floor plan was retained. The open sides point north to the Baltic Sea and south to the Kurhausgarten. There were terraces on both sides . The main entrance with foyer was on Kurhausstrasse in the west. Inside is the large Kursaal with a gallery and to the east of it there was a small hall for club and family celebrations. The garden terraces connected to the south of the Kursaal. The day restaurant was on the lake side, all utility rooms and a wine bar were in the cellar. The construction was carried out in solid construction with reinforced concrete ceilings and terranova plaster. The horizontal accentuation of the architecture is caused by the wide central building and the flat roof end. This is underlined by clinker strips on the base, on the terrace parapets and as corner emphasis on the upper, protruding part of the Kursaal, as well as by the window and door design, which also has exclusively horizontal strips. Berringer himself described the architectural effect of the building:
“The horizontal, which is also expressed in the upper end of the whole building, returns in the similarly treated structure of the day restoration in front of the hall building and the terraces, both of which form the transition to the horizontalism, which is strongly emphasized by the beach, dune and promenade Landscape."
The interior design of the Warnemünder Kurhaus came from Walter Butzek . He commissioned the Rostock Bauhaus student Dörte Helm with the interior design . The murals she made there were destroyed after 1933.
Use and renovations
The Kurhaus opened on May 24, 1928. The ceremony took place in the presence of the Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Schwerin , Paul Schröder , and many representatives of the city and the associations, as well as the press from home and abroad, and the official use by the leaseholder Wulff began at Pentecost in 1928. Due to restrictive lease conditions, he soon complained about poor sales. He was only allowed to use the large hall on two evenings a week and even in bad weather the concerts had to take place in the spa garden. Due to poor sound insulation, no events could take place in the restaurant and in the hall at the same time.
From the very beginning, there were also major problems with various construction defects such as moisture damage caused by the use of cheap materials, short construction times and the use of the shell that had been lying idle for a long time.
In order to be able to use the terraces, Berringer designed a spiral staircase on the east side in 1931, which was built in 1933. Roofing of these terraces with a tent roof was rejected by the city administration on the grounds that this temporary solution “does not take sufficient account of the reputation of the house and its location”. The first tenant had refused the glazing of the garden terraces, as provided for in the construction planning, because he feared it would heat up in summer.
After the outbreak of the Second World War , the spa was closed. The house was used by the naval administration and since 1941 by the Ernst Heinkel Flugzeugwerke . Ammunition parts were manufactured in the basement. The house was hidden by a camouflage net so that it was not hit by bombs. The furniture was deposited in the storage rooms of a furniture factory and destroyed in the air raids in April 1942. Except for a few doors, nothing of the entire interior has been preserved due to the war and subsequent renovations.
After the end of the war, the Kurhaus was used for various events, such as meetings and theater performances. The structural condition of the Kursaal was so bad that it had to be closed in 1960 and the first major renovation began in the years that followed. The roof construction was renewed and changed, the attic on the east and west side was increased, new windows with bars were installed. The entire house was a uniform white now, including the tile bands. The coloring and the lattice windows destroyed the horizontal effect of the building. The renovation did not include rectifying the construction defects, so that in 1980 it was necessary to close again. A second renovation began in 1983 and lasted until 1986. The lattice windows were removed, but the dark coloring of the frames accentuated the individual geometric shapes.
During the GDR era, the Kurhaus was the cultural center of Warnemünde. There were cultural and concert events, but also party meetings and congresses in the hall. Concerts, cinema screenings and sporting events were held in the Kurhausgarten.
With the fall of 1989, the ownership changed, the Hanseatic City of Rostock acquired the Kurhaus, and the restaurant and café operations continued. In 1996 the city sold the house to Kurhaus Warnemünde KG . The demand for the terraces to be used regardless of the season and weather was again relevant. A solution was to be found through an architecture competition, which was to "enclose the upper lake terrace in a transparent and lightweight design with the aim of year-round restaurant use [...] using glass and metal". The Rostock architect Achim Mansfeld won this competition. The jury praised his design as "... sensitive, but clearly readable." To make the modern extension clear, Mansfeld chose a wave shape for the roof, deliberately avoiding Berringer's clear lines. However, these considerable structural changes to an outstanding monument of the New Building are often criticized. The stair tower, which is much more powerful than its predecessor on the east side due to the installation of a lift, is perceived as too dominant. The construction work lasted from the beginning of 1996 to August 1998. The Kursaal and foyer were also renovated according to historical models. The hall was equipped with modern technology. A casino was built in and a discotheque and dance bar were built in the basement. An extension of the kitchen area for the restaurant was built on the east side. The upper horizontal clinker strips on the west and east sides were restored.
On September 29, 1999, the reconstruction of the historic spa garden began. A two-story underground car park for 542 cars was built under the spa garden. The arcades facing the garden were rebuilt, putti and water basins were set up. The 200 square meter stage with side rooms and modern sound and lighting technology in the concert shell is new . The underground car park was opened on December 23, 2000 and on April 27, 2001 the opening of the Kurhaus garden with concert shell, small pavilion and garden catering took place. At the end of 2002, the extensive renovation of the entire spa complex was finally completed.
At the end of February 2010 the restaurant was closed. Renovation work has been going on since November 2010 and a new operator will reopen the restaurant and a café from Easter 2011.
Literature and Sources
- Elke Onnen: The Kurhaus in Warnemünde. Usage requirements change a monument. In: Monument protection and preservation in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Issue 8, 2001, pp. 11-19.
- Alexander Schacht: The construction of the Kurhaus in Warnemünde as a mirror image of architectural history. In: Brigitte Hartel, Bernfried Lichtnau (ed.): Architecture in Pomerania and Mecklenburg from 1850 to 1900. (= Art in the Baltic Sea Region / Greifswald art-historical studies. Volume 4). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2004, pp. 177–192.
- Alexander Schacht: A Kurhaus for Warnemünde. In: Rostocker Zorenappels. Special volume leisure history (s). Rostock 2009, pp. 99-104.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gastronomy in the Kurhaus Warnemünde , accessed on January 7, 2014.
- ^ Paul Ehmig: Development plan for Warnemünde. In: Der Städtebau , 4th year 1907, pp. 4–8.
- ^ Archives of the Hanseatic City of Rostock, inventory 1.1.12.2 (Gewett Warnemünde), file 373 and German competitions , [...], p. 4.
- ^ Gerhard Lau: The building history of the Kurhaus in Warnemünde - A house through the ages.
- ↑ Cristian Meyer: The Kurhaus in Warnemünde. In: Tidingsbringer. A Warnemünder spa journal. 1st year. 1996/1897, pp. 54-55.
- ↑ Rostock City Archives, File 373, Sheet 64. Gustav Wilhelm Berringer: The new Kurhaus building in Warnemünde. In: Mecklenburgische Monatshefte. 3rd year. Issue 7, July 1927, p. 348f.
- ^ Rostock City Archives, File 375, Sheet 175
- ^ Realization competition Kurhaus Warnemünde June 7, 1996, Rostock Monument Preservation Office
- ↑ Minutes of the jury proceedings for the architectural competition - Kurhaus Warnemünde, July 31, 1996, Rostock Monument Preservation Office
- ↑ www.kurhaus-warnemuende.de
Web links
Coordinates: 54 ° 10 ′ 45 ″ N , 12 ° 4 ′ 46 ″ E