Single home Berlin-Wedding

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Single home in Schönstedtstrasse 2016

The single home Berlin-Wedding ( listen ? / I ) for men in the former Wedding district (today Mitte district, Gesundbrunnen district ) was the largest residential home to alleviate the housing shortage after the industrialization of north Berlin. Audio file / audio sample

Origin and location

Among the projects of a philanthropic or cooperative housing reform around 1900, the men's dormitory, which began in 1914 and opened in 1917, was the most important foundation for the north of Berlin. Its location was on Brunnenplatz next to the new Wedding District Court , with the main entrance on Schönstedtstrasse. It is a large rectangular building that has been preserved to this day, the northern side of which is slightly sloping in Orthstrasse, following the course of the Panke . A central wing of the building separates two inner courtyards.

The establishment of the home goes back to a competition announced in 1912 by the “Association for the Improvement of Small Apartments”, which was founded in 1889. The association was a corporation that was satisfied with a limited return for the public benefit, but retained control of its buildings. However, this basis was so economically unsustainable that the city of Berlin took over the home as early as 1920.

Plant and original function

Here, as elsewhere in Berlin and in other German industrial areas, the new facility of the single home became popularly known as the “bull monastery”. The classically designed building on Brunnenplatz offered living space for 500 men, from a total of 1,800 single and multi-bed rooms for single people in the four comparable single houses in Berlin in the early 20th century. Among them, the facility on Brunnenplatz was considered the most modern. Her initial task was to find a socially hygienic and morally sensible alternative to the common sleeping place system among the working men pouring into the city. However, since 1920, as the owner of the home, the city administration decreed that half of the living space should be reserved for students. From 1921, Georg Benjamin belonged to this group , who as a participating observer devoted his dissertation to the topic of single homes. Even among the other tenants, the social composition in the single home did not meet the original expectations. Skilled and unskilled workers were in the minority as tenants compared to white-collar workers, technicians and engineers.

On the ground floor of the house were the administration rooms of the home, shops for daily needs as well as bathtubs and showers. The rooms on the four floors above, almost exclusively single rooms, were around eight square meters and were easily ventilated. One toilet was available for every nine rooms, as well as three tiled washrooms on each floor. The modern infrastructures included electric lighting, a steam heating system and a garbage chute, even a roof garden and some common rooms. Each floor also had a single cooking area, which was hardly sufficient for 120 rooms. Georg Benjamin describes the simple furnishing of the single rooms in his dissertation “Iron bedsteads with seagrass mattresses, cupboard, table; one or two chairs and a simple washing stand make up the furniture. ”Initially the rooms were cleaned daily, but soon afterwards weekly.

The development of the home up to the Second World War

Soon after opening, the single home ran into ever greater financial difficulties. The gap between rental income and necessary expenses widened in the period of inflation and soon led to increasingly severe restrictions on services by the administration. Benjamin's dissertation named the deficits for the period of his tenancy in the home:

"Already in the first five months of the new accounting year there was an overrun of the budget by 11/2 million marks, caused mainly by the high heating costs."

The rental prices rose steadily and excluded more and more apartment hunters as tenants. In the global economic crisis from 1929 onwards, increasing payment problems and rent arrears led to a high profile tenants' strike the following year. This at a time when there were no alternatives, in which the Wedding District Office declared: “The housing shortage has grown steadily over the last few years.” The strike was particularly supported by the numerous politically organized residents, especially in the left-wing parties, among the residents. So was u. a. According to contemporary witnesses, the single home is a regular meeting place for the Young Socialists. This prompted the National Socialist administration after 1933, because of the feared communist infiltration of the single home, to gradually de-rent it and to reallocate many rooms for office and administrative functions. Nevertheless, the designation of the building as a single home was retained on city maps until 1945.

Post-history

After 1945, the form of living in the Weddinger single home was completely abandoned, as in all Berlin locations where it was not converted into a student residence. The building became the property of the West Berlin district administration. It served various administrative functions for decades, including a. as a police station and as a closet for the neighboring district court of Wedding. In between, after 1970, the building's residential facilities were used for two purposes: as an asylum seeker building for the German Red Cross and for resettlers from the GDR . After 1990, however, such residential functions were ended in favor of various judicial areas, which are now divided into the use of the building on the individual floors. They include a registry office, social services such as court and probation assistance, the pledge chamber of bailiffs and, above all, the financial jurisdiction of regional and European dunning proceedings. The building has been completely preserved in its original external form and has only been subjected to an internal renovation and renovation several times.

literature

  • Georg Benjamin: About single homes. (1923) In: Irina Winter: Georg Benjamin, doctor and communist. Volk und Gesundheit, Berlin 1962, pp. 29–56.
  • Markus Eisen: From single home to boarding house. Building typology and social theory until the end of the Weimar Republic. Gebr. Mann, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-7861-2664-5 , pp. 70-134.
  • Bernhard Müller (Ed.): Bull monastery. In: Wedding. Paths to the history and everyday life of a Berlin workers' district. Stattbuch, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-922778-24-0 , pp. 53-55.
  • Bernd Schimmler: Wedding in the Third Reich 1933–1945. 2nd Edition. Self-published , Berlin 1983.
  • Klaus Novy : The everyday utopia directions of cooperative forms of living in Berlin before 1914. In: Technische Universität Berlin (Ed.): The future of the metropolises. Paris, London, New York, Berlin. Volume I, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-7983-1016-5 , pp. 385-394.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Novy: The veralltäglichte utopia directions of cooperative forms of living in Berlin before 1914 . In: TU Berlin (ed.): The future of the metropolises: Paris-London-New York-Berlin, 3 vol. Volume I . TU Berlin, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-7983-1016-5 , p. 385-394 .
  2. ↑ Bull Monastery . In: Bernhard Müller (Ed.): Wedding. Paths to the history and everyday life of a Berlin workers' district . Stattbuch Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-922778-24-0 , p. 53-55 .
  3. ↑ Georg Benjamin: About single homes . In: Irina Winter (ed.): Georg Benjamin, doctor and communist . People and Health, Berlin 1962, p. 49 .
  4. ↑ Georg Benjamin: About single homes . In: Irina Winter (ed.): Georg Benjamin, doctor and communist . People and Health, Berlin 1962, p. 36 .
  5. ↑ Georg Benjamin: About single homes . In: Irina Winter (ed.): Georg Benjamin, doctor and communist . People and Health, Berlin 1962, p. 46 .
  6. ^ Hans-Rainer Sandvoss: Resistance in Wedding and Gesundbrunnen . Ed .: German Resistance Memorial Center. Berlin 2003, p. 44 .
  7. ↑ Bernd Schimmler: Wedding in the Third Reich 1933–1945 . 2nd Edition. Eigendruck, Berlin 1983, p. 15 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 32 ′ 59.9 ″  N , 13 ° 22 ′ 28.3 ″  E