Flour House (Berlin)

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The first Berlin flour house on Museum Island housed a flour scale and storage rooms for flour supplies

The flour house in Berlin was a building on Museum Island that belonged to the Berlin Bakers' Guild. In the flour house, incoming flour deliveries were weighed with flour scales and then temporarily stored. The first flour house building was erected in 1776, but demolished in 1826 in the course of the construction of the museum buildings. A second flour house building was built from 1824 to 1826 in the immediate vicinity, also on Museum Island. This building also had to make way for the expansion of the museum area in 1897.

The first flour house

Location of the first flour house on the Neuer Packhof on Museum Island.
Detail from Selter's Berlin plan, 1811
At the Mehlhaus (rear building), the Iron Bridge built in 1798 led over the Kupfergraben .
Anonymous engraving, around 1800
View of the New Packhof on Berlin's Museum Island with a crane and the first flour house building (left). In the background the New Lusthaus, which was used as the Berlin stock exchange.
Friedrich August Calau , around 1800

In the 18th century, the Berlin bakers did not have their own flour scales or warehouse , so that the flour deliveries , which mostly arrived by water , had to be unloaded and stored in the open air on Museum Island, where the Neue Packhof was at that time . Only King Frederick the Great gave the Berlin bakers' guild a suitable place on Museum Island to build a flour warehouse. This was finally erected in 1776 directly next to the New Packhof by the building adjudicator Friedel Am Kupfergraben (in the 21st century building site for the planned new entrance hall of the Pergamon Museum ). The massive house had a flour scale and a spacious vaulted cellar. Because of the damp subsoil, it had to be built on strong posts and grates. It had a sandstone frontispiece showing seated children leaning against filled sacks. In the gable field there was the inscription: "Mehlhaus built for the old German and French baker trade Anno MDCCLXXVI".

Behind the flour house there was a bridge over the Kupfergraben. It was rebuilt in cast iron in 1798 and called the Iron Bridge . The work produced in Malapane, the royal iron foundry in Silesia , spanned the copper trench in an approximately twelve-meter-long arch and had a visible iron structure and railing (see illustration).

The second flour house

The second Berlin flour house (built 1824–1826) was located on the area of ​​today's Bode Museum .
Location of the second flour house on the north-western tip of Museum Island (top left) on the area of ​​today's Bode Museum.
Detail from Selter's Berlin map, 1846
The second flour house (left) with the flour bridge over the Kupfergraben at the northwest tip of Museum Island.
Detail from a historical postcard, 1885

The erection of museum buildings on the area north of the pleasure garden under King Friedrich Wilhelm III. made a relocation of the flour house necessary. A two-story new building was built in 1824–1826 a little further north at the confluence of the Kupfergraben with the Spree . After the completion of the new building, the older flour house was demolished.

The grain trade and meetings of the Berlin bakery also took place in the new flour house . The restoration business that developed on this basis made the house a popular venue used by many Berlin associations, especially in the winter months, where there were also dance events.

Next to the flour house there was the art barracks since 1876 , a provisional half-timbered building in which the annual exhibitions of contemporary Berlin artists took place from 1876 to 1881 and 1884.

In 1890 the Prussian government acquired the flour house and the surrounding area in order to gain space for the further expansion of the Museum Island. In 1897 the flour house was demolished because its land was needed to build the Kaiser Friedrich Museum (since 1956: Bode Museum ).

literature

  • E. Kolbe: History of the bakers' guild in Berlin. Berlin 1897.
  • W. Mila: Berlin or history of the origin, the gradual development and the current state of this capital. Nicolaische Buchhandlung, Berlin and Stettin 1829.
  • Otto Mönch: The flour house, founded by Frederick the Great. In: MVGB 1912, pp. 4-7.
  • Renate Petras: The buildings of the Museum Island. VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1987. ISBN 3-345-00052-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Description of the royal royal cities of Berlin and Potsdam - Volume I , p. 72, 1786
  2. ↑ W. Mila: Berlin or history of the origin, the gradual development and the current state of this capital. Nicolaische Buchhandlung, Berlin and Stettin 1829, p. 409.
  3. ↑ Otto Mönch: The flour house, founded by Frederick the Great. In: MVGB , 1912, pp. 4-7.
  4. ↑ Renate Petras: The buildings of the Museum Island. VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1987. ISBN 3-345-00052-0 , p. 15.
  5. ↑ Renate Petras: The buildings of the Museum Island. VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1987. ISBN 3-345-00052-0 , p. 12.
  6. ↑ Berlin, historically and topographically depicted , p. 125, 1848

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 19 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 41 ″  E