Ottilie von Hansemann House

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House Ottilie von Hansemann
Street view of the house in May 2013

Street view of the house in May 2013

Data
location Berlin-Charlottenburg
builder Carl Kuhn
architect Emilie Winkelmann
Construction year 1914/1915
Floor space 9188 m²
Coordinates 52 ° 30 '51.7 "  N , 13 ° 19' 4.5"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '51.7 "  N , 13 ° 19' 4.5"  E

The Ottilie-von-Hansemann-Haus in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg is a listed building from 1914 that served as a girls' and women's boarding school. After various uses between 1972 and 2013, it was converted into a residential building by the end of 2016.

location

The building, built in the neoclassical style , is located at Otto-Suhr-Allee 18-20 in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district . The complex faces its south front with the main entrance of the avenue, a transverse building with a flat roof is attached to the courtyard side. The surrounding courtyard area is around 4000 square meters .

story

In 1869, under the auspices of Princess Victoria , Georgiana Archer founded the Victoria-Lyceum Association to promote higher education for women . In particular, he pursued the goal of giving women free access to all German study facilities. In 1910, the association acquired the property at Berliner Straße 37/38 in what was then the city of Charlottenburg, on which a villa from the 1880s was built. The Simon house of the architect Adolf Schaum was demolished in 1914 in favor of the planned central residential and educational facility for women.

The architect Emilie Winkelmann , at that time the first independent German architect, carried out the planning work. According to their designs and under the responsibility of the building contractor Carl Kuhn from Moabit , the Victoria Lyceum was built on the club's property from 1914 to 1915, despite economic problems caused by the First World War . (Immediately afterwards [plot 39] there was already the Klockow'sche Higher Girls' School , named after its owner and headmistress Ida Klockow.)

The purchase of the land and the construction work for the Victoria Lyceum could use the foundation of Ottilie von Hansemann be financed 200,000 Mark had provided (adjusted for inflation in today's money: approximately 356,000 euros). In addition, both the architect and the association contributed to the construction work and costs. In 1919, the city of Charlottenburg became the owner of the property and appointed Ottilie Fleer as its first director .

Ottilie von Hansemann had decreed in her will that another million Reichsmarks should flow into the foundation of the educational institution. As early as 1919, the building underwent its first renovations and was given the name Victoria Study House . In addition to the students, the director, an economic manager, a head gardener and a porter lived here .

The right side of the building contained the classrooms from the second floor, the remaining parts of the house served as student dormitories . On the first floor of this building wing there was a hall for 200-300 people, which from 1919 onwards was gradually used by the Theater Tribüne, which was founded here . Well-known actors and actresses appeared in the theater such as Marlene Dietrich , Rudolf Platte or later Hildegard Knef . During the Nazi era, the room was also used as a cinema for a time . It was not destroyed at the end of the Second World War and was reopened for theater performances on June 1, 1945 on the instructions of the first Soviet city commandant, Nikolai Bersarin .

The economic manager used the usage fee to be paid by the students to maintain the home; the foundation monies were available for other expenses. At that time, the building complex offered extensive comfort with central hot water heating, elevators, a library, a reading room, a sports room and even a darkroom . The garden was tended by a gardener and also had playgrounds for the residents' children.

Around 1927, the district administration gave the school facility and dormitory the name of the women's rights activist Ottilie von Hansemann , who campaigned for the admission of women to all courses and, above all, unselfishly supported the building of the house. The name Haus Ottilie von Hansemann was carved on the entablature above the columns . (The neighboring Krockow-Lyceum was given up in these years, however, in the 1940s a society for ceramic industrial supplies was established in this building .)

Ottilie Fleer remained the director of the school residence until 1934, in 1935 Ottilie Suttinger took over this office and held it until at least 1943. At that time the board of trustees of the Victoria Studienhaus was chaired by Dr. Maier.

When medical facilities and accommodation were urgently needed after the end of the Second World War, the student home served as a makeshift hospital and retirement home for some time .

The southern section of Berliner Straße (only as far as Am Knie - later Ernst-Reuter-Platz ) was given the name of Berlin's Governing Mayor Otto Suhr in 1957 , so all the parcels were renumbered. A year earlier, the house (now number 18-20) had once again become a dormitory for female students.

An extension built in the 1970s in front of the large hall on the right wing of the building formed the ticket hall of the tribune theater. The cultural facility, which was closed in 2008, moved out of the annex completely in 2011 because the lease had not been extended. The annex will be demolished, but the former stage hall is to be used again for cultural purposes as far as possible. The investors are in negotiations with an actress who could run a language school here. However, the financing for this special work has not yet been secured.

After 1972, when the property had to be sold due to tight budgets, the building then served as an office block, mainly for the employees of the neighboring Deutsche Bank .

The house had been completely empty since 2011. The foundation Developers Ltd. has acquired the property in April 2014 on behalf of investors Dirk Germandi and Martin Rasch and submitted concrete plans in the autumn of the same year. The monument was dismantled to form apartments and a newly designed new building was built in the courtyard area to the north. An investment of 48 million euros was planned for the 97 apartments in both buildings in 2014; Both condominiums and rental apartments have been built primarily for the Technical University.

In the summer of 2015, the entrance area attached to the facade for the theater stand (theater) was demolished as part of the renovation.

architecture

In an architectural explanatory report it says: “The exterior of the building” is based “on the architecture of the 2nd half of the 18th century”. The same source notes that “its insides were shaped by a progressive and diverse educational concept for the female students and supported by emancipatory thoughts”.

The L-shaped plastered building is five floors high, and there is also a usable attic. A tiled hipped roof forms the end of the middle part of the building, the side wings are closed with pyramid roofs .

The ground floor area contains higher rooms, which are arranged asymmetrically around the central entrance: to the right of the entrance the windows extend to the floor and can therefore also serve as doors, to the left of the entrance there are low, rather square windows that suggest basement rooms.

The receding middle section of the building was adorned on the fifth floor with a balcony running over four window axes . In front of the entrance there is a row of six Doric columns in the style of ancient temples, which support an open terrace. Columns, stucco decorations and spacious, high rooms continue inside . Doors to the stairwell are partly made of glass with ornaments.

The transverse building in the courtyard adjoins on the fifth floor with a balcony that extends around a corner over several axes. A row of columns with a terrace above is placed in front of the transverse building on the courtyard side and on the front side. The staircases of the main building, which are located in the side wings, curve out of the facade in a semicircle.

The new investor speaks of the “original splendor of the house” and of “smart floor plans” that are no longer clearly recognizable after decades of other uses, but the building fabric has been superbly preserved.

The extensive gardens of the Ottilie-von-Hansemann-Haus, for many years just a parking lot , are being revitalized. A decorative courtyard with a pergola and fountain is to be created here - a "green campus ".

literature

  • Ulrich Paul: Departure at Ernst-Reuter-Platz . In: Berliner Zeitung , November 26, 2014, p. 18.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Berliner Straße 37/38> Villa Simon In: Architekturmuseum der TU Berlin; Retrieved December 5, 2014.
  2. ↑ Berliner Strasse 39 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1914, V, p. 607. “Klockow-Lyzeum”.
  3. ↑ Fleer, Ottilie, director . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1919, Part I, p. 628. Berliner Strasse 37/38 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1919, V, p. 568. “Viktoria Lyzeum”.
  4. ↑ Berliner Allee 37/38 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1921, V, p. 580. “Viktoria-Studienhaus”.
  5. ↑ grandstand theater . In: District lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
  6. ↑ Ottilie von Hansemann House . In: District lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
  7. ↑ Berliner Strasse 37/38 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1928, IV, p. 1203. “Viktoria Studienhaus, Haus O. v. Hansemann ".
  8. ↑ Fleer, Ottilie> Director . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1934, I, p. 567.
  9. ↑ Berliner Strasse 37/38 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1935, IV, p. 984.
  10. ↑ a b Cay Dobberke: In the theater tribune the curtain stays down . In: Der Tagesspiegel , October 17, 2014, accessed on December 5, 2014.
  11. ↑ Explanatory report quoted in / on profi-partner.de