Media house of the Funke media group
The media house of the Funke media group is the headquarters of the Funke media group in the west quarter of the city of Essen . It was moved into January 2019.
prehistory
Theodor Reismann-Grone , the editor of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung (later also Lord Mayor of Essen), built a printing and publishing house on Sachsenstrasse in Essen in the 1920s. It was destroyed in World War II and then rebuilt. To this day, it forms the core of the resulting Essen newspaper district , which lies roughly in a triangle between Sachsenstrasse in the south, Friedrichstrasse in the west and the main railway line in the north.
The company of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) started in 1948 as a family business in equal parts by its founders Erich Brost and Jakob Funke . In 1953, the first own publishing house was completed on Friedrichstrasse with a paper cellar and its own vehicle hall. With this, the WAZ moved from its founding house in Bochum to Essen. Funke pushed ahead with the construction of the house in his hometown of Essen, since the media life of the region was already concentrated here in the old Essen newspaper district. In the west of the newspaper district, the then representative publishing house and a technical building for the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung were built. Both were adapted several times to the needs and therefore changed significantly. They were pulled out in January 2019 by the Funke media group, which settled in the new media house in the west quarter. In the same year, this old publishing house on Friedrichstrasse and the corner of Bert-Brecht-Strasse was demolished.
In 2012, Petra Grotkamp, Jakob Funke's daughter, bought the shares of Erich Brost's grandchildren and became the majority shareholder, so that the WAZ group was renamed Funke Mediengruppe. In 2018 Petra Grotkamp handed over her shares to her three children.
media house
The foundation stone was laid on July 4, 2016 in the presence of the architect Herwig Spiegl, the Essen city director Hans-Jürgen Best, the managing director of the real estate company Deutsche Anlagen-Leasing , Kai Eberhard, the managing director of the real estate project developer Kölbl Kruse , Stephan Kölbl and the Managing Directors of the Funke Mediengruppe, Michael Wüller and Manfred Braun. The topping-out ceremony followed on May 16, 2017 at the Medienturm (Medienhaus 2).
The entire complex consists of the media house 1 north and the media house 1 south at the eastern and southern end of Segerothstraße as well as the media house 2, a five-storey round tower on Berliner Platz, on the approximately 12,000 square meter property. The four-storey media buildings 1 north and south are together around 285 meters long and have three wings to the east. All buildings together offer around 46,000 square meters of gross floor area. They were built according to plans by the Viennese architectural office AllesWirdGut on the edge of the university district near the former Essen Nord train station. The outwardly black building parts of Meidienhaus 1 are intended to be reminiscent of a coal seam and thus symbolize the home of the publishing house. In addition, it is reminiscent of the printing ink , the round media house 2 represents the shape of a printing cylinder . In the complex of media house 1 are the editorial offices of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) and the Neue Ruhr Zeitung (NRZ) with a production desk, conference and seminar areas It housed an employee restaurant, a service center, a fitness room, a roof terrace and a daycare center. The local editorial offices of the WAZ and NRZ as well as the sports editorial office and a kiosk are located in the tower of Medienhaus 2. On top of the round tower is a 7.5 meter high and 40 meter long light wall, on whose 480,000 electronic pixels messages are displayed.
On September 26, 2017, the area of the media house was named in honor of the co-founder of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) Jakob-Funke-Platz.
Initially, it was planned to move into the company headquarters with around 1200 employees in summer 2018. On August 27, 2018, the management postponed the opening ceremony planned for September 15, due to structural problems with the technical infrastructure, the so-called "building intelligence", to a date that was still unknown. The move was finally completed in January 2019.
The area with the previous headquarters in the Friedrichstrasse / Sachsenstrasse area, which was once called the newspaper district , is being abandoned and demolished in order to build the planned Osram Quarter , a new building area with offices and apartments.
The Funke media group has announced the closure of its printing plant on Schederhofstrasse, which was established in the 1970s and replaced a printing plant on Sachsenstrasse, in 2020. Newspaper printing is to be concentrated in the larger facility in Hagen in the future. The reason given is falling numbers of print media, so that both print shops are only half full. The 120 print shop employees in Essen were given the prospect of job offers in Hagen, despite the underutilization.
Media tower started for the Essen Light Festival (2016)
Longhouse, view from the northwest (April 2018)
Media tower, view from the east (April 2018)
Longhouse, view from the south (April 2018)
Media Tower (2019)
literature
- Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of March 31, 2018: 70 years of WAZ - the anniversary supplement
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Frank Stenglein: The WAZ is moving: Farewell to the old Essen newspaper district ; In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung from January 19, 2019
- ↑ Frank Stenglein: New Funke headquarters is the keystone of the university district. In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. March 27, 2016, accessed January 19, 2019 .
- ↑ Press release of the city of Essen from September 20, 2017 ; accessed on January 19, 2019
- ↑ MEEDIA GmbH & Co. KG of August 27, 2018: Tech problems with the new company headquarters: Funke Mediengruppe cancels planned opening ceremony ; accessed on January 19, 2019
- ↑ competitionline.com: Sachsenstrasse / Bert-Brecht-Strasse ; accessed on January 19, 2019
- ↑ Funke media group closes the printing house in Essen in 2020. In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. February 7, 2019, accessed February 8, 2019 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 27 ′ 36.8 ″ N , 7 ° 0 ′ 18.4 ″ E