Oberfinanzdirektion Frankfurt am Main (building)

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Complete system from the southeast, January 2012

The former administration building of the Oberfinanzdirektion Frankfurt am Main was a listed office building on Adickesallee in the Nordend district of Frankfurt am Main . The building was built between 1953 and 1955 according to plans by the Bad Homburg architect Hans Köhler .

Until 2009, the building was the seat of the Oberfinanzdirektion (OFD) Frankfurt am Main, which is the central authority responsible for the state of Hesse . After moving to the new Main Triangel office building in Sachsenhausen's Deutschherrnviertel in 2009 , the building was empty. At the end of 2014, the main building, which could not be renovated due to heavy pollution, was demolished. The new Frankfurt School of Finance & Management was built in its place until 2017 .

history

prehistory

Southwest Pavilion, January 2012
Bridge between the main house and the pavilion from the southwest, January 2012
Staircase southwest and facade detail from the southwest, January 2012

Tax offices existed in today's Hesse even before the First World War . However, it was not until the great financial hardship after the war, mainly due to the huge reparation payments and general national debts, that financial and tax laws were standardized throughout the Weimar Republic , as well as the three-tier system of financial administration at the state level, which in principle still exists today.

In 1919, state tax offices were created in the two cities of Kassel (as the capital of the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau ) and Darmstadt (as the state capital of the People's State of Hesse ). They were supplemented by 23 similar offices in the other countries of the empire. The end of the Second World War also brought about the dissolution of the Reich Finance Administration , which had existed since 1937 , under which the state tax offices were run as Oberfinanzpräsidien.

In the next step, the previous responsibility of the regional finance committees was transferred to the Hessian Ministry of Finance as the highest level of finance administration; the regional finance committees in Kassel and Darmstadt were dissolved. The Oberfinanzdirektion Frankfurt am Main was initially set up in Wiesbaden as a new intermediate authority . After a short search, however, a building site for a new administration building in Frankfurt am Main was found.

The building as the seat of the OFD

The property on Adickesallee , which had previously been used for allotment gardens and was flowed through by the Marbach, was characterized by an unfavorable load-bearing capacity. The architect Hans Köhler and the engineers Rolf Himmelreich and Ernst Schirmacher therefore dispensed with the typical skeleton construction with a curtain wall . Instead, a reinforced concrete silo was built between 1953 and 1955 with a wall thickness of only 18 centimeters. The price for this construction method - which significantly reduced the shell construction costs - was the small size of the office space of around 10 square meters and the small windows of only 1.50 by 1.50 meters.

Nevertheless, the building was recognized by the State of Hesse in 1957 as an “exemplary achievement” and is now considered a monument to the architecture of that time. However, ignorance of the materials used led to a heavy burden on the building fabric during renovation in the 1970s. In addition to floor adhesives containing naphthalene , façade panels that had become loose were also attached with a toxic tar adhesive that penetrated deep into the masonry. In addition to the outdated size of the room, this led the authorities to move out in December 2009.

Future and reuse

The state of Hesse continued to own the building. In November 2012 the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management acquired the 30,000 square meter property to build a new campus there. Because of the naphthalene pollution, the main building was allowed to be demolished despite the monument protection; only the “presidential building” needs to be preserved and integrated into a new building.

In an architectural competition in 2013, the two architects Dominique Perrault and Henning Larsen emerged as the winners. The jury decided on Larsen's design, which has five protruding and recessed cubes. The demolition of the former regional tax office began in September 2014. The new building was occupied in October 2017.

architecture

Following the principles of the architecture of the 1950s in Germany, the house was markedly functional and characterized by a strictly structured rectangular facade. The main building, 120 meters long, had 11 floors, a height of 35 meters and an office area of ​​8,381 square meters. At the height of the last fifth there were two staircase extensions; one on the Adickesallee side and one on the back. With their semicircular head, these broke the austerity of the entire building a little.

The monotony of the front was relaxed by the facade design. The cladding consisted of split tiles of different colors. For cost reasons, rejects from a manufacturer in the Bavarian Forest were used . This resulted in a changing color impression of the facade depending on the incidence of light. In 1955, contemporary newspapers spoke (not necessarily positively) of "impressionistic flicker" and a "color turmoil".

The pavilion in front of the building , the so-called “presidential building”, is offset on its axis from the main building and, due to its non-central location, deliberately breaks the symmetry of the entire complex. The porch stands partly on stilts that taper strongly towards the bottom and thus stood out visually from the main building. Large windows and a light construction create a strong contrast. The office of the head of the OFD and conference rooms were housed in the presidential building. The annex and main building were connected by a glass bridge.

literature

Web links

Commons : Oberfinanzdirektion Frankfurt am Main  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from December 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Julia Lorenz: Finance School buys land from new area. Welt Online , November 29, 2012, accessed June 9, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Dieter Bartezko: When finances want to build . In: FAZ . August 28, 2013, p. 25 .
  4. ↑ Lukas Gedziorowski: Demolition of the regional tax office has begun. Journal Frankfurt Nachrichten, September 3, 2014, accessed on October 16, 2014 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 7 ′ 58.6 ″  N , 8 ° 40 ′ 53.7 ″  E