Lobkowitz Palace (Lesser Town in Prague)
Coordinates: 50 ° 5 ′ 13.8 ″ N , 14 ° 23 ′ 53 ″ E
The Lobkowicz Palace in Prague is the former city residence of the von Lobkowicz family and is now the seat of the German embassy . The building should not be confused with the Lobkowicz Palac , the Lobkowitz Palace in Prague Castle in the Hradschin district , which was restituted to the family .
The Lobkowitz Palace, just like the Lobkowitz Palace (Vienna) named after the Bohemian noble family, is located on the Lesser Town of Prague , approx. 200 meters south of the castle in the street Vlašská ( Wälsche Spitalgasse ) house number 19.
history
The family owned the baroque palace built between 1703 and 1707 by the architect Giovanni Battista Alliprandi and court stone cutter Giovanni Pietro della Torre for Count Franz Karl Přehořovský since 1753. It is one of the most famous palaces in the Baroque style of Prague, Ludwig van Beethoven and Carl Maria von Weber gave concerts in the dome hall.
In 1927 the family sold the building to the Czechoslovak state. For several years the palace was the seat of the embassy of the People's Republic of China . After the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1973, it has served as the headquarters of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany since 1974 .
In the late summer of 1989, the German Embassy in Prague became known worldwide when thousands of GDR citizens sought refuge there and occupied the palace and grounds for weeks; most recently there were 4500 people. On September 30, 1989, after negotiations with the GDR and Czechoslovakia , the German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher was able to announce to those waiting on the spot that they were allowed to leave for the Federal Republic. Genscher about this in 2011: Unbelievable: In those days between September 10 and 30, 1989, the entire GDR exit policy was reversed. After the occupation ended, the area was renovated.
According to German-Czech plans from the mid-1990s, the building was to become federal property. For this purpose, the vacant former US embassy, Neustädtische Kirchstrasse 4–5 , in Berlin-Mitte, was to be transferred to the Czech Republic. In August 2009, the Foreign Office announced that talks with the Czech Republic about this had intensified. At the end of August 2014 it was announced that the sales negotiations had failed. The Czech government - so it was said - did not want to expose itself to the charge of selling a piece of baroque architecture abroad. Instead of a sale, a 50-year lease was concluded.
literature
- Harald Salfellner, Werner Wnendt : The Lobkowicz Palace. A place of German history in Prague . Vitalis Verlag, Prague 1999. ISBN 80-85938-65-0 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns, Stephan Lebert: "It was difficult to lead a normal life". Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the father of the FDP , on [...] , in: Zeit-Magazin , supplement of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit , Hamburg, No. 20/2011, p. 16
- ^ Felix Ehring: Federal government wants "Genscher's balcony". So far, the Federal Republic has only rented the Prague embassy. Now she wants the famous building from the turning point 1989 entirely through a barter deal. In return, it offers an old US embassy. In: Frankfurter Rundschau of September 18, 2009, page 5
- ^ Karl-Peter Schwarz: The half-sentence of the century . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of October 1, 2014, p. 4.