Oberpostdirektion (Berlin)

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Oberpostdirektion Berlin
(1954–1991: Landespostdirektion)
Main entrance on Dernburgstrasse

Main entrance on Dernburgstrasse

Data
place Berlin-Charlottenburg
architect Senior Post Building Officer Willy Hoffmann , Architect John Martens (building decor)
Architectural style expressionism
Construction year 1925-1928
Coordinates 52 ° 30 '18.5 "  N , 13 ° 17' 4.1"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '18.5 "  N , 13 ° 17' 4.1"  E

The former Oberpostdirektion is a listed , architecturally significant service building in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district . It is one of the main works of Berlin Expressionism of the 1920s . The last tenants were departments and subsidiaries of Deutsche Telekom until 2019 . As of April 2020, the building complex is being gutted, renovated and rebuilt. The space will then be re-let.

location

The former post office building at Dernburgstrasse 50 is located between the A 100 city motorway and Herbartstrasse at Lietzenseepark .

History and architecture

On January 1, 1850, with the reorganization of the Prussian postal system, Berlin received an Oberpostdirektion (OPD) and the head of the Hofpostamt was also appointed Oberpostdirektor while retaining his title of "Hofpostmeister". In the Reichspost buildings completed in 1878 at Königstrasse  60 and Spandauer Strasse 19-22, the business premises of the Hofpostamt (HPA), the letter post office (BPA), the general post office, the telephone exchange V and the office apartments of the chief post director, the head of the HPA and BPA as well as the some sub-officials housed.

Two years after the formation of Greater Berlin , the Deutsche Reichspost decided in 1922 to build a new building for the Berlin Oberpostdirektion, because the supreme postal authority was now spread over twenty different locations in the city, some of which were far apart.

The Post acquired an 18,000 m² site in Charlottenburg between the Ringbahn and Lietzensee, bounded by Dernburgstrasse and Herbartstrasse . An administration building for 1000 employees was planned. Due to the hyperinflation of 1922/1923 , the start of construction was delayed by three years, so that the inauguration did not take place until May 1928. It is the most important work by senior post office building officer Willy Hoffmann . The outer enclosing walls are bricked, the inner supporting structure is designed as a steel skeleton in order to have greater freedom in the room design. Hoffmann had to provide sufficient office space, as well as meeting rooms, a ballroom and a canteen. The construction costs amounted to 4.433 million Reichsmarks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around 15.85 million euros).

The building is a four-wing complex, in the middle of which there is a connecting wing with a hall. All components are covered flat and plastered in bright white. There are two annexes to the south , of which the lower one ends on Dernburgstrasse with a squat, polygonal tower.

The conciseness of the elongated main facade emerges through the red-brown terracotta shaped stones with which the main cornice, the window frames, the entrances and the building edges reaching the thickness of the columns are clad. The contrast with the light wall surfaces creates an impressive graphic effect.

Architecturally interesting is the five-story main staircase on Dernburgstrasse with its eighteen-meter-high pillars clad with tiles that are arranged in a circle.

use

After the end of the Weimar Republic and Hitler's seizure of power , Berlin's highest postal authority was called Reichspostdirektion from 1934. Just a few days after the end of the war , on May 19, 1945, the post and telecommunications system of the later divided city was subordinated to the Berlin magistrate and thus became a communal matter. The Reichspostdirektion became the "Post and Telecommunications Department of the Greater Berlin City Council ".

With the division of the city in the course of 1948, a “Democratic Magistrate” was constituted in the eastern sector on November 30, 1948; in the three western sectors formed after the election in December 1948 the magistrate Reuter II the government. In the Reuter Senate , the authority was called from January 1951 " Senate Administration for Post and Telecommunications" (SVPF). There was never a Deutsche Bundespost Berlin organization - this term was only found on Berlin postage stamps .

As part of the closer affiliation with the Deutsche Bundespost, the Landespostdirektion Berlin (LPD Berlin) was founded on April 1, 1954 , which was dissolved in 1991 in the run-up to the privatization and splitting of the postal services.

From 1948 until the move to the new Postbank high-rise in Kreuzberg in 1971, the building also housed the Berlin West postal check office .

Mailing address

The name of the street was changed to Gustloffstraße on February 15, 1936 during the Nazi dictatorship because of Heinrich Dernburg's Jewish origin . Wilhelm Gustloff had been shot a few days earlier by the Jewish student David Frankfurter . As the “ martyr of the movement”, Nazi propaganda made Gustloff one of its martyrs .

The post and telecommunications department of the four-sector city did not want to use the street name contaminated by the Nazis and therefore used the unofficial address 'Heinrich-von-Stephan-Straße 50'. The name, which goes back to Heinrich von Stephan (1831–1897), the General Post Director of the German Reich, organizer of the German postal system and co-founder of the Universal Postal Union , was also found in the address and telephone books. It was not officially renamed Dernburgstrasse until July 31, 1947.

  • View from the radio tower eastwards: in the center of the picture below the four-wing OPD building with the round annex on the right

  • A polygonal tower concludes the annex on Dernburgstrasse

literature

Web links

Commons : Oberpostdirektion  - Collection of pictures

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Oberpostdirektion
  2. ↑ Falk Jaeger: Posthorn & Imperial Eagle. 1987, p. 169.
  3. ↑ Telephone card: Oberpostdirektion Berlin (1991)
  4. ↑ Martin Wörner among others: Architectural Guide Berlin. 2013, p. 222.
  5. ↑ Where was the post and telecommunications headquarters located after 1945? , PDF; 3.2 MB, from fgberlin.de , accessed on August 25, 2019