Atlantic garden city

Garden city of Behmstrasse

The Atlantic Garden City is a 50-house housing estate in the Gesundbrunnen district of Berlin . It was built in the 1920s by the publisher Karl Wolffsohn in the immediate vicinity of the Berlin Gesundbrunnen train station (Behm-corner Bellermannstrasse) based on designs by the architect Rudolf Fränkel .

history

Front garden after the building renovation

Staircase after the modernization

With the estate, Fränkel created one of the most important examples of so-called “reform housing” in Berlin. In a transfer of the English garden city idea, bright apartments with large inner courtyards were to be built as a departure from the narrow tenements built at the end of the 19th century . Deviating from the original idea of the garden city, living in the green on the outskirts, a residential complex was built here in the middle of the originally industrial district, the green spaces are mainly in the courtyards between the houses.

The centerpiece of the facility was the Lichtburg on Behmstrasse , one of the best examples of classic modernism in the German capital and an important entertainment complex in Berlin in the 1920s. In addition to dance halls, a large cinema with 2000 seats was also housed here.

The geographical location on the edge of the French sector , close to the sector border with the Soviet sector, led to the district's slow decline after the end of World War II . After the Berlin Wall was built, the Lichtburg was closed in 1962 and used for a few years as a wheat and canned store for the Senate Department for Economics . The building was demolished in 1970.

The remaining building complex was placed under monument protection in 1995 and extensively renovated between 2001 and 2005 by the Berlin architectural office bfstudio-architekten on behalf of Michael Wolffsohn , who inherited the building with his family from his grandfather Karl Wolffsohn. Before the renovation, the vacancy rate was around 30 percent, after the renovation, for which loans of 25 million euros had to be taken out, there are waiting lists for the rental.

On June 23, 2016, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary, an information column was set up about Karl Wolffsohn and a big party was celebrated, at which 20 relatives from five generations of the Wolffsohn family were also present, including a. the 93-year-old mother of Michael Wolffsohn.

Lichtburg Foundation

With the Lichtburg Foundation, Michael Wolffsohn and his wife Rita have established an institution that integrates and promotes cultural and artistic facilities in the garden city in addition to the existing commercial operations and medical and medical-related service providers. Therefore, the following facilities are in the system:

Sounding Museum,
Lichtburgforum,
Young Lichtburg,
Learning workshop magical physics,
Literary workshop,
Theater workshop.

Awards

2004: Award in the competition "The best concept for inner-city living" of the Lebendige Stadt Foundation
2006–2009: Patronage of the German UNESCO Commission for the "World Day of Cultural Diversity"
2017 University professor of the year award to Michael Wolffsohn, professor emeritus for new history at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich , who “convinces with words and deeds as a scientist, publicist and lateral thinker and realizes a unique intercultural showcase project with the garden city Atlantic in the middle of Berlin Has".

Well-known former residents

literature

Gerwin Zohlen (Ed.): Rudolf Fränkel, the garden city Atlantic and Berlin , Sulgen / Zurich: Niggli 2006, ISBN 3-88506-572-X .
Rita and Michael Wolffsohn : Work in the microcosm of the Garden City Atlantic , in: Culture - Harmony and Conflict , ed. by Manfred Jochum, European Forum Alpach, StudienVerlag 2009, pp. 123–129, ISBN 3-7065-4781-3 .
Gerardo Brown-Manrique: Rudolf Fränkel and Neues Bauen: Work in Germany, Romania and the United Kingdom . Wasmuth, Tübingen, 2009. ISBN 978-3-8030-0695-0
Thomas Will (Hrsg.), Ralph Lindner (Hrsg.): Garden City - History and Future Viability of an Idea . Thelem-Verlag, Dresden 2012.