Walter-Benjamin-Platz
| Walter-Benjamin-Platz Leibniz Colonnades |
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|---|---|
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 East side of Walter-Benjamin-Platz, 2019 |
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| Basic data | |
| place | Berlin |
| District | Charlottenburg |
| Created | 1999-2000 |
| Confluent streets |
Leibnizstrasse, Wielandstrasse |
| Buildings | Leibniz Colonnades |
| use | |
| User groups | pedestrian |
| Space design | Water fountain by Hans Kollhoff and Helga Timmermann, sales kiosk |
| Technical specifications | |
| Square area | 3456 m² |
| building-costs | 170 million marks |
The Walter-Benjamin-Platz is a square in Berlin district of Charlottenburg north of Kurfürstendamm at the southern end of Leibnizstraße between Leibniz and Wielandstraße. The 108 m × 32 m square is built on on the sides with the Leibniz colonnades , two eight-story buildings by the architects Hans Kollhoff and Helga Timmermann, which were controversial at the time of their construction .
Building history
When the area was built around 1880, the area was left out by the town planners. A public playground was built here in 1910 and shelters for forced laborers were built here during the war years . Later it was used as a coal store and as an ice skating rink, from 1962 as a parking lot.
In 1984 an architecture competition for the area was held, which the architects Hans Kollhoff & Helga Timmermann won with a design for a covered urban park. The district then drew up a development plan drawing up resolution and the plans were further revised. Originally the buildings were planned according to the conditions of social housing. Due to the political change of 1989 , the possibilities of the district had changed, so that the design from 1992 had little to do with the original design of a covered park, but showed a town square with five-storey perimeter buildings and two-storey arcades came very close to the final development.
After the draft for the development had been submitted, there were massive protests by residents in 1995, which were resolved in court. As a counter-proposal to the long-controversial project, the opponents of the project also brought a counter-design by the architect Hinrich Baller into play. The decision was withdrawn from the Charlottenburg district office , which is actually responsible for it, by the Berlin Senator for Construction Jürgen Klemann ( CDU ). The building permit was only available in 1997. The topping-out ceremony took place on June 26, 1998; it was completed in 2000. The two buildings are each 100 meters long and 26 meters high. The nomination took place on April 25, 2000 on the initiative of the members of the SPD parliamentary group of the district assembly of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf Marc Schulte (later for city councilor for urban development and regulatory affairs) and Gisela Meunier.
architecture
The two U-shaped neoclassical blocks of houses are divided into the one and a half story high colonnades , a seven or eight story central section and the crowning balustrade . The building height is 26 m, so that the adjoining buildings with the Berlin eaves height of 22 m are towered over by 4 m. The complex consists of ten independent units with their own entrances, some of which can be recognized by the differentiated facade, and which are reflected in the height of the floors and the different distances between the windows. The facade is clad with green-gray Italian sandstone (Pietra Serena) and provided with French balconies in a strict grid through the standing windows .
The approximately 3.5 m wide colonnades extend on both sides of the 108 m long square and continue at the head of Leibnizstrasse. In the mezzanine -Geschoss the colonnade are offices.
The colonnades are home to various restaurants and shops. The columns are made of artificial stone and provide a grid that is continued in the shops and the building. The floor is covered with light and dark gray, antrhracite-colored and royal red marble slabs, which are divided into 28 units according to the columns. The ceiling is plastered white and takes up the column structure, which is emphasized by struts made from the sandstone of the facade. In each of the 28 units there is an Art Deco lamp , so that the visual impression of the colonnade is enhanced.
There are two floors of underground parking under the square, a kindergarten on the top floor and a playground on the roof garden. The rear courtyards are designed more simply with yellow plaster facades and lawns. Conventional children's playgrounds can be found here.
The dominant feature of the square is the unusually large open space of the square, which is covered with granite slabs perpendicular to the direction of travel. On the west side of Leibnizstraße is a fountain from which computer-controlled 115 nozzles shoot 840 m³ of water per hour. On the east side of Wielandstrasse there is a hexagonal sales pavilion, which is managed by the adjacent restaurant. There is a chestnut in front of the restaurant , which has access to the groundwater through a plant trough that penetrates the two garage floors .
Installation summer 2019
Colonnades with Art Deco lights
North side
Looking east
Access to Leibnizstrasse
East side with kiosk and chestnut
reception
The architecture was compared in the Berliner Zeitung with that of neoclassicism of the Nazi era . The architecture critic of the Stuttgarter Zeitung called the bars “bare, cold and naked” and “felt reminded of Nazi architecture”. Wolfgang Kil noted that “only 'slab' emerged from living stone with great effort”.
Controversy over quote from Ezra Pound
In the architecture magazine Arch + (No. 235 of May 25, 2019) the architecture theorist Verena Hartbaum published her accusation that the architect Hans Kollhoff had "an anti-Semitic message in a bottle from the time of Italian fascism through a plate with the quotation of the American writer Ezra Pound smuggled into the German present ”. The inconspicuous slab, which fits seamlessly into the paving, bears the inscription:
“Nobody at Usura has a house made of good stone.
The cuboids are well carved, with the joints, so
that the front surface is structured into a pattern. "
The author of the enigmatic quote is not given, it comes from the collection of poems The Cantos , composed between 1915 and 1962 , the main work of Ezra Pound. The term 'Usura' means ' usury ' in Italian and was used by Pound for 'interest-raising Judaism '. Kollhoff's criticism of capitalism, which has clearly anti-Semitic connotations, is therefore to be understood in such a way that the usury of interest prevents structural work.
Hartbaum already expressed this allegation in her book published in 2013 on Walter-Benjamin-Platz. Kollhoff was puzzling about this at the time:
"That is the nice thing about the confrontation between Walter Benjamin and Ezra Pound, which did not take place personally, that you can make hypothetical claims that often throw a glaring light on the fatal history of the last century."
In an interview with Tagesspiegel in June 2019, Kollhoff justified Ezra Pound's quote with:
“Of course, one wonders what have Ezra Pound and Walter Benjamin got to do with each other? As contemporaries you probably never met in person, although that would have been possible in Paris. But both rubbed against their time; After the experiences of the First World War and then the Great Depression, both believed that they were on the trail of answers - one in the sense of revolutionary socialism, the other under the influence of Mussolini's fascism. Both failed hopes have to be understood from their time. But we may ask ourselves what we can do with it today. "
Kollhoff said: "The accusation of anti-Semitism in view of the quote from Pound's 'Cantos' is nonsensical and completely unacceptable." He considers the new proposal to contrast Pound at least with a quote from Benjamin to be interesting, but it appears to him "as a relativization or corrective, and there is no reason for that. ”Kollhoff insists:“ Pound was not an anti-Semite ”because a few years before his death in a conversation with the (Jewish) poet Allen Ginsberg he called his anti-Semitism the“ worst mistake of my life ”.
The plate was removed on January 27, 2020.
literature
- Ingeborg Flagge, Wolfgang Voigt, Peter Cachola Schmal: Architecture in Germany , Prestel Verlag , 2002, pp. 118, 121 online
- Christina Haberlik, Gerwin Zohlen: A city guide to the architecture of the new Berlin: 60 buildings at a glance , Nicolai Verlag , 2002, ISBN 978-3-87584-275-3 , p. 70 f online
- Verena Hartbaum: The Walter-Benjamin-Platz . Materials for decoding. epubli GmbH, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8442-7853-8 ( docplayer.org ).
Web links
- Leibniz Colonnades near Emporis
- Niklas Maak: Anti-Semitic message in a bottle? In: FAZ.net . May 30, 2019, accessed June 5, 2019 .
- Susanne Beyer: Berlin architecture dispute: In the right place. In: Spiegel Online . June 7, 2019, accessed June 10, 2019 .
- Anh-Linh Ngo: ARCH +: News »Defamation? A reply. In: archplus.net. May 31, 2019, accessed June 5, 2019 .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Helmut Caspar: Berlin's architecture: The architects' quartet. In: tagesspiegel.de . May 30, 2001, accessed September 2, 2019 .
- ^ Leibniz-Kolonnaden Berlin, Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf from A to Z. In: luise-berlin.de. Retrieved December 14, 2017 .
- ↑ Stadtplatz made of stone - opening of the Leibniz Colonnades in Berlin. In: baunetz.de. May 14, 2001, accessed December 14, 2017 .
- ^ Walter-Benjamin-Platz, Leibniz Colonnades. In: berlin.de. April 25, 2000. Retrieved December 14, 2017 .
- ↑ Free travel for the Wieland project - Hans Kollhoff's residential development in Berlin may be built. In: baunetz.de. May 12, 1997. Retrieved December 14, 2017 .
- ^ Steinernes Berlin topping-out ceremony for the Kollhoff building on Wielandstrasse. In: baunetz.de. June 29, 1998. Retrieved December 14, 2017 .
- ↑ kaupert media gmbh: Walter-Benjamin-Platz. In: berlin.kauperts.de. Retrieved September 2, 2019 .
- ↑ Hans Wolfgang Hoffmann: The heaviest residential building post-reunification Berlin: The Leibniz Colonnades by Hans Kollhoff: Ewigkeitspathos für Stadtfluchtige. In: Berliner Zeitung . April 6, 2001, accessed December 14, 2017 .
- ↑ Verena Hartbaum: Right in the middle - Hans Kollhoffs CasaPound. In: archplus.net. May 25, 2019, accessed June 22, 2019 .
- ↑ Peter von Becker: Berlin architectural dispute: play with the provocation. In: tagesspiegel.de . June 4, 2019, accessed June 22, 2019 .
- ^ Controversial anti-Semitic quote on Berliner Platz has been removed
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 6.7 ″ N , 13 ° 18 ′ 48.8 ″ E