Otto Wels House
The Otto-Wels-Haus is a functional building of the German Bundestag in Berlin . It is located on the Unter den Linden boulevard (no. 48–56) in Dorotheenstadt in the Mitte district . It is named after the social democrat Otto Wels (1873–1939), a leading politician of the Weimar Republic .
history
The building was constructed by the architects Emil Leibold, Herbert Boos and Hanno Walther in the early 1960s. It served as the seat of the Ministry for Internal German Trade, Foreign Trade and Material Supply of the GDR . The inauguration took place on July 26th, 1965. At that time the house had eight parts with 430 office rooms, a large hall for 300 people, ten smaller meeting rooms and various other representative rooms.
After German reunification , the architects offices Brands, Kolbe and Wernik worried 1992-1997 a makeover , where from the old building only the reinforced concrete - skeletal structure remained intact. Subtle neoclassical style elements were used in the exterior design of the building, which was raised by one floor . Inside the house now offers space for offices of members of the Bundestag, on the bottom two floors it opens onto the boulevard Unter den Linden with a row of shops.
On March 23, 2017, Norbert Lammert , President of the Bundestag, announced that the Council of Elders had decided to rename the building, which had been named after its address at Unter den Linden 50 , to "Otto-Wels-Haus". The occasion was the anniversary of the Reichstag debate on the Enabling Act of 1933 . At that time Otto Wels - despite the persecution that was already beginning and the presence of SA men in the hall - took on the task of justifying the rejection of the "Law to Eliminate the Need of the People and the Reich" for the SPD . a. with the famous words "Freedom and life can be taken from us, but not honor."
Web links
- Unter den Linden 50th German Bundestag
- Bundestag names building after Otto Wels and Matthias Erzberger. German Bundestag, March 23, 2017
Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 1.5 ″ N , 13 ° 23 ′ 6.7 ″ E