Town Hall (Kaliningrad)

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Kaliningrad City Hall, 2006

The Town Hall of Kaliningrad is located at pl. Pobedy 1. The building was built in 1923 according to plans by Hanns Hopp as an office and exhibition building for the German East Fair opposite and called the Handelshof . It has served as the town hall of Königsberg since 1927.

location

The area around today's pl. Pobedy (formerly Hansaplatz ) was built on with public buildings after the abandonment of the Steindammer Gate at the beginning of the 20th century. Here you will find, among other things, the Kaliningrad Severny train station (formerly North Railway Station), the buildings of the Kaliningrad State Technical University (formerly Regional and District Court ), the General Staff of the Baltic Fleet (formerly Upper Postal Directorate ) and the branch of the FSB secret service (formerly Police Headquarters ). The main entrance to the German East Fair was located directly opposite the Handelshof on today's pl. Pobedy.

Building history

The Handelshof was built in order to be able to offer an office building to the companies involved in the German East Fair. The management of the newly founded non-profit "Handeshof - Königsberg Pr. GmbH", which was supposed to erect and rent out the building, was taken over by the municipal measuring office, which also operated the Deutsche Ostmesse. After a delay due to inflation, the Handelshof was built from April to November 1923. The architect Hanns Hopp, who was employed by the Messamt at the time, created the design. Like the entire facility of the Deutsche Ostmesse, the new Handelshof was also placed in the previously undeveloped old ramparts. In order to accommodate all the desired functions, Hanns Hopp designed a large building with five floors and four wings arranged around an inner courtyard. A restaurant was located in the basement. On the ground floor there were three shops and a branch of the city bank; the glass-covered atrium and the first floor were intended as exhibition space for the German East Fair. The offices were on the floors above. After a short time it turned out that the Handelshof was too large. Since it belonged to the city anyway, it was able to bring together different departments of the city administration here in 1927, which until then had been divided into different buildings.

The building was heavily modified in the 1950s and rebuilt in an unadorned manner. The initial planning of the construction still envisaged retaining the obtuse-angled shapes above the windows and doors. But the obtuse-angled forms disappeared, and the visible bricks were plastered over. Contrary to the original construction plan, the building was given an emphasis on the vertical through plastered pilaster strips . They resemble the "temple motif" in Khrushchev Classicism architecture, better known as Socialist Realism architecture . This style, named after Nikita Sergejewitsch Khrushchev , “interwoven classicist motifs with modern ones”.

architecture

Handelshof in Königsberg around 1925 as an office and exhibition building for the German East Fair opposite

The Handelshof was a special building task for Hanns Hopp because of its size. It was the first major building in the young architect's work. Hopp divided the large structure with wide risalits at the corners. The high hipped roof with the wide dormers is visible from the street. The "expressive", ie emphatically expressive details of the design are indebted to the sense of style of the early 1920s: the triangular elements above the windows, the plastered and emphatically rough facade, the serrated ribbons in the plaster. With his approach of dividing the building into large, "classic" shapes and laying the expressionist design language with its jagged patterns flat on the surface, he was completely in line with the trend of the avant-garde building culture of the early 1920s.

In 1923, Hanns Hopp built the administration building in the Expressionist style , with a plastered facade, zigzag bands and obtuse-angled shapes over the windows and doors.

Building plastic

The two Königsberg sculptors Hermann Brachert and Ernst Filitz were involved in the Handelshof . Her sculptures are so closely related to the architecture that a close collaboration between the two artists and the architect Hanns Hopp can be assumed.

Hermann Brachert created the so-called house brand for the main entrance. A figure in the posture of Christ the ruler of the world, similar to medieval representations, held a model of a house on his lap. Next to it, two heads protrude from the wall, one is a portrait of Hanns Hopp. This sculpture is not mentioned in Brachert's work lists. It has not been preserved.

Hermann Brachert created two large sculptures in 1921 for the entrance to the Stadtbank branch . The larger-than-life figures, cast from artificial stone, depicted the goddess Fortuna as an allegory of luck and the god Mercury as an allegory of trade. The whereabouts of the sculptures after the Second World War is uncertain, they are considered lost.

The sculptor Ernst Filitz enriched the railing at the entrance to the cellar restaurant with sculptures.

literature

Web links

Commons : Kaliningrad City Hall  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Gabriele Wiesemann: Hanns Hopp 1890–1971. Königsberg, Dresden, Halle, East Berlin. A biographical study of modern architecture . T. Helms, Schwerin 2000, ISBN 3-931185-61-3 .
  2. ↑ Podehl, illustration no. 243 on p. 220: "Construction planning for the trading yard for the Kaliningrad town hall around 1960"
  3. ↑ a b Podehl, p. 214
  4. ↑ Podehl, p. 212.
  5. ↑ Podehl, p. 46
  6. ↑ Baldur Köster: Königsberg. Architecture from the German era . Husum, Husum 2000, ISBN 3-88042-923-5 .
  7. ↑ Dietrich Zlomke (Ed.): The sculptor Prof. Hermann Brachert 1890-1972. Exhibition for the 100th birthday. Weingarten 1990, p. 13 .

Coordinates: 54 ° 43 ′ 9.9 ″  N , 20 ° 30 ′ 1.5 ″  E