Strousberg Palace
The Palais Strousberg was built according to plans by the architect August Orth in 1867/1868 as a city palace for the entrepreneur and so-called "railway king" Bethel Henry Strousberg at Wilhelmstrasse 70 in Berlin . The technical facilities, which were remarkable at the time, and the splendor of the furnishings still stood for refined luxury and elegant representation decades after the first newer palace building in Berlin was built . After Strousberg's financial collapse in 1875, Prince Hugo zu Hohenlohe-Öhringen acquired the property from the bankruptcy estate. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland rented the representative building in 1876, bought it in 1884 and used the palace as a British embassy for decades. The ruin of the building, which was badly damaged in World War II , was removed in autumn 1950 despite the existing monument protection . The cleared property, which belonged to East Berlin with the division of Berlin , remained fallow until reunification . In its place is the British Embassy today .
A palace for the railway king
In 1867, Strousberg bought the property at Wilhelmstrasse 70 for 122,500 thalers , after having previously acquired the property at Wilhelmstrasse 80 and then reselling it to the Prussian tax authorities at a profit. The architect August Orth built the palace for a price that a few years later was put at 900,000 marks , using the walls of an older building that had previously served as the residence of the Prussian statesman Friedrich Carl von Savigny . Orth was Strousberg's "house architect" during these years and designed and created private building projects for him. This included, for example, the conversion of Zbirow Castle near Pilsen into a country residence for the Strousberg family. He also built buildings for companies controlled by Strousberg, including the Berlin cattle market on Brunnenstrasse for the cattle market limited partnership or the Görlitzer Bahnhof for the Berlin-Görlitzer Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft . In Orth's oeuvre, the palace is one of the few buildings in which the facade was based on classicist forms, while otherwise he generally preferred the neo-renaissance for secular buildings and the neo-Gothic in his numerous church buildings . Details of the exterior such as the baroque balustrade and the rich decoration of the interior with borrowings from many stylistic epochs already identify the palace as a representative of eclectic historicism .
The first modern palace in Berlin had - in keeping with the reputation of the railway pioneer Strousberg as a man of progress - some remarkable technical facilities such as gas lighting, hot water heating, washing machine and bathroom. The splendid, spacious public rooms, including a picture gallery for the Strousbergs art collection, which took up the entire ground floor, as well as the location on the elegant Wilhelmstrasse with its palais and ministries, showed the social position that the entrepreneur occupied with his city palace. After Orth's death, the magazine Berliner Architekturwelt recalled in 1901 that the Palais “was rightly praised as a masterpiece in elegant representation and yet that noble measure that was influenced by Schinkel's tradition” , and in 1896 the Standardwerk Berlin and its buildings paid tribute to them The layout and furnishings of the interior , which is as large as it is cozy, were unprecedented at the time of its creation in Berlin . The production in real building materials was also specifically mentioned, which is unusual in thrifty Prussia with its traditional use of substitute building materials such as painted zinc cast and plaster instead of stone or stucco marble instead of marble.
Use as a British embassy
After difficulties with a railway project in Romania , the Strousbergs empire collapsed financially. Strousberg himself was arrested in Russia for a credit offense. The Moscow District Court sentenced him to an exile in 1876, which he did not have to serve. Strousberg had to give up his palace on Wilhelmstrasse as early as 1875, and the property with the palace fell into bankruptcy. He now lived alternately for months in England or on his son-in-law's estate near Bromberg and tried his social rehabilitation with various projects and memoranda.
On March 20, 1876, Prince Hugo zu Hohenlohe-Öhringen bought the palace as the minimum bidder. The general, hereditary member of the Prussian mansion , did not live in the palace himself. The Berlin address book from 1877 lists the steward and the porter as well as the office of the English embassy and Lord [Odo] Russell, the English ambassador, as the tenant. This began the decades-long use of the representative palace in a prime location as a British embassy. The prince eventually sold the property to the Commissioners of Her Britanic Majestys Works and Public Buildings on December 18, 1884 . During the subsequent renovation, again according to August Orth's plans, an extension with a large ballroom was built instead of an open terrace and part of the garden, which connected the two side wings of the palace and thus allowed better use for social events with up to 600 guests. In the years that followed, the palace was increasingly narrowed down by new buildings with up to five floors. The most serious was the construction of the Hotel Adlon in 1907 instead of the Palais Redern , which also bought and integrated the Hotel "Reichshof" at Wilhelmstrasse 70a. As a result, the embassy was surrounded on two sides by the higher hotel, which in addition to the loss of light led to noise and odor nuisance from the hotel kitchen. The last British ambassador before World War II, Sir Nevile Henderson , described the embassy as cramped, dark and musty . However, plans to move came to nothing as a result of the outbreak of war.
In 1939 the embassy was closed and the Reich Ministry of Food moved in. Bombs damaged the building during air raids in 1943. A post-war photo shows severe damage to the street facade in the area of the portico, the leftmost column of which is completely missing. In 1950, the preservation authorities insisted several times on the preservation of the embassy building and, despite the high degree of destruction of 80%, pushed for a restoration. On October 24, 1950, the demolition work on the neighboring Hotel Adlon damaged the building to such an extent that the ruin, which was no longer stable, was then removed. In the new British Embassy, which was built from 1998 to 2000 on the site of the old embassy and two neighboring properties, part of the wrought-iron grating from the entrance portal of the destroyed Palais Strousberg is reminiscent of the previous building.
Description of the building
facade
The facade facing Wilhelmstrasse was shaped by a monumental portico extending over two floors in the central axis, supported by four Corinthian pillars made of sandstone. In the pediment there was a relief with five figures on an unknown subject. Historical photographs show a winged figure as the central figure in the middle, perhaps an allegory of art. A female figure with a caduceus on the right may have portrayed an allegory of traffic - suitable for a railroad company's home. A portico was an unusual motif in private houses in Berlin in the 1860s and is more reminiscent of the Palladian buildings in England, where Strousberg spent his youth.
Five window axes each to the left and right of the portico divided the simple plastered facade with incised ashlar. Instead of the outermost window axis in the basement and ground floor on the north side of the building, a passage closed with a double-leaf wooden gate led into the courtyard. The partially barred windows in the basement reached below street level. The windows on the upper floors were framed and the high windows in the common rooms on the ground floor were also provided with a straight roof , each supported by two consoles . Apart from laurel wreaths beneath the supported by consoles wreath cornice in sandstone facade had no further bauplastischen jewelry. A balustrade stretched the entire length of the facade over the main cornice .
ground floor
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Ground floor plan:
1 lobby 2 vestibule 3 reception room 4 dance hall 5 boudoir 6 dining room (next to it on the upper floor bedroom) 7 billiard room 8 library 9 anteroom 10 office of the ambassador 11 bedroom 12 picture gallery 14 anteroom to the ballroom 16 passage 17 courtyards with glass roof 18 sideboard 23 courtyard 24 large ballroom |
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Basement floor plan:
1 passage 2 dining room of the servants 3 kitchen 4 economy 5 laundry with washing machine 6 Plättstube 7 Roll chamber 8 pantry 9 atrium 10 washing space 11 Elevator 12 hot water heater 13 cellar 14 coach-house 15 Diener room 16 Stable 17 dishes chamber 18 lining chamber 19 Covered yard (Wagenremise) 20 passage 22 Cave 23 yard |
Via a staircase and the portal in the portico, visitors reached the vestibule , which extended over two floors and was illuminated by a skylight in the coffered oval dome. Above that were movable screens with gas flames , which provided brilliant brightness in the dark. The two runs of the marble staircase joined on a platform supported by a semi-dome. From there the stairs led to a gallery that continued on both sides of the upper floor. The balusters of the handrail balustrade of the stairs and gallery were made of bisque porcelain . The reception room on the left extended over all five window axes of the south wing and led to the dance hall, an octagonal room with four round corner niches. A skylight illuminated the windowless room, above which there was gas lighting similar to that in the vestibule. If necessary, the paneled north wall could be folded down into an atrium behind it, covered with a glass roof, and then served as a stage for an orchestra or a performance. The adjoining boudoir connected the dance hall to the large ballroom via another anteroom, the former greenhouse. After purchasing the embassy, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland had it built according to plans by August Orth instead of a garden terrace on the west side. The coupled Corinthian columns made of stucco marble on the walls and between the windows to the garden courtyard as well as the flat ceiling supported by vaulted shells with rich stucco decorations and ornamental ceiling paintings created the festive impression. The Berlin sculptor Otto Lessing created two stucco reliefs with dancing maenads for the British Embassy in 1877 , probably as part of the wall decoration in the large ballroom. In the dark, the lighting was again provided by movable screens with gas flames above the oval skylight, which also ensured ventilation.
The picture gallery was another extravaganza for Strousberg's presentation of his painting and sculpture collection. The billiard room to the east was an additional lounge that led back to the boudoir or library via the walnut-paneled dining room. Above the paneling of the library room - like the furniture made of walnut - there was a skylight in the ceiling with murals. At night, this room could also be lit by gas lighting, as described for the other rooms. The adjoining rooms on Wilhelmstrasse served as the ambassador's anteroom and study. Above the small, low windows of the utility rooms in the basement, large windows over three meters high in the anteroom of the large ballroom, in the large ballroom and in the picture gallery visually connected the social rooms with the gardens in the large courtyard, the facades of which were structured by Corinthian columns under an architrave . Via stairs from the billiard room and boudoir, residents and guests reached the garden courtyard, which was originally only closed on three sides and opened to the west in a flat arched terrace. Its course can still be read in the floor plan of the basement. The terrace was open to the garden of the adjoining Palais Redern and expanded the small garden of Palais Strousberg to include the spacious garden of Palais Redern. With the construction of the large ballroom instead of the terrace and part of the garden, this reference was lost.
First floor
On the upper floor were the private bedrooms and children's rooms with the associated facilities such as toilets, bathrooms and closets for the large Strousberg family. The central hot water heating , which in Berlin in the late 1860s was only available in a few public buildings such as the Neues Museum , was a sign of extreme progressiveness in private households and made the stay pleasant in the winter months. The design of a bathroom with elaborate wall and ceiling paintings in the Pompeian style from the architectural sketchbook (see illustration above) gives an idea of the luxurious and refined interior design . The servants' rooms on this floor presumably housed the senior domestic servants such as the head of house and the governess .
Basement
The palace's utility rooms and ancillary rooms were located in the basement. The approximately three meter high storey was about halfway below street level, so that the rooms could still be lit through windows. The passage on the northern boundary of the property led to a covered courtyard, which also served as a carriage house and a ramp to the level of the basement. A door in the middle of the passage followed by a staircase down to the level of the basement was used by the servants and goods suppliers as access to the building. The adjacent side wing of the building accommodated the spacious stables as well as the feed and harness room for the horses. The coachman's apartment and rooms for the servants were along Wilhelmstrasse, illuminated by low windows. In the room below the vestibule on the ground floor, the numerous employees, which the economy of the manorial house required, dined in a separate dining room. The largest area in the main house was occupied by the kitchen and the associated rooms such as the washing-up room, pantry and wine cellar. An elevator took the food to the sideboard on the ground floor next to the dining room. The boiler for the hot water heating and next to it the wine cellar were both conveniently located for deliveries of goods near the entrance to the utility rooms. In the side wing along the southern property line, there was space for the laundry room and its premises. The laundry room "with washing machine" demonstrated technical progress in 1868. The grotto in the last room of the south side wing was a remnant of the original design of the garden before the construction of the ballroom.
literature
- Laurenz Demps : Berlin-Wilhelmstrasse: a topography of Prussian-German power. 3rd reviewed edition, Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86153-228-X , pages 114f, 182, 254.
Web links
- Image of the entire facade in the photo archive Photo Marburg
- Plans for the Palais Strousberg in the architecture museum of the TU Berlin
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Architects Association of Berlin / Association of Berlin Architects (ed.): Berlin and its buildings. Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1896, Volume 2, pp. 112–114.
- ↑ Obituary for August Orth with author abbreviation "AR" in: Berliner Architekturwelt , 4th year 1901/1902, issue 3 (from June 1901), p. 112.
- ^ Berlin address book 1876, directory of houses by street
- ^ Jörg Kuhn: Otto Lessing (1846–1912): sculptor, craftsman, painter; Life and work of a sculptor of late historicism, with special consideration of his work as a building sculptor . Dissertation FU Berlin, 1994, page 115
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 57 ″ N , 13 ° 22 ′ 51 ″ E
