Spandau town hall

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Spandau town hall
The Spandau town hall

The Spandau town hall

Data
place Berlin-Spandau
architect Heinrich Reinhardt ,
Georg Süßenguth
Architectural style Reform style
Construction year 1910-1913
height 80 m
Coordinates 52 ° 32 '6 "  N , 13 ° 12' 1"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 32 '6 "  N , 13 ° 12' 1"  E

The Spandau town hall was designed by the architects Heinrich Reinhardt and Georg Süßenguth and built between 1910 and 1913. It is located at Carl-Schurz-Straße 2-6 on the southern edge of the old town of Spandau in the Berlin district of Spandau .

Construction and architecture

Today's Spandau town hall became necessary because the old town hall on the market was already too small around 1900 and administrative parts had to be housed in other buildings. When Spandau lost its fortress status in 1903, areas became vacant and in 1908 the magistrate decided to build a new representative town hall, which was to underline Spandau's status as an independent city. Two million marks were estimated for the construction , in the end the costs amounted to six million marks. In order to save costs, no expensive materials were used inside. So marble on the walls was replaced by correspondingly looking painting. The official laying of the foundation stone took place on April 3, 1911.

The rectangular building has three symmetrical courtyards and is vaulted by a high mansard roof . The facade design has partly baroque forms, which are also taken up inside the building, especially in the stairwell. Above a basement there are three upper floors with a mezzanine floor at the end. The 116 meter long facade has a seven-part structure of the window axes with a gabled risalit in the middle. The 80 meter high tower, with four clocks, above the rear part of the main wing, which is one story higher than the side wings, is visible from afar as a landmark ; with it, the town hall is the tallest building in the district. It was designed as a southern counterpoint to the Nikolai church tower. The meeting rooms and the representative rooms are located behind the main front. A large segmented gable spans over the main entrance in the roof zone, with the city coat of arms in the middle and the dedicatory inscription to the side:

"Built under the government of Kaiser Wilhelm II by the citizens in the years MCMX - MCMXIII"

The town hall was inaugurated on September 15, 1913, 18 years to the day after the inauguration of the synagogue on Lindenufer. The city's Jewish community had donated a colorful window for the marriage room. The company Siemens & Halske AG donated the electrical central clock system. The building is made entirely of bricks, in the tower the vaults were transferred into the main pillars with arches, similar to the sacred buildings. A public elevator led to the lantern . The ruin of the elevator is still in the tower today.

The mayor's apartment was on the second floor of the south wing and was converted into offices in 1936 when the mayor's seat was moved to Villa Lemm . Even today the apartment can be recognized by some artifacts . The original parquet floor can be seen in the hallway, the only real balcony faces the south inner courtyard and kitchen tiles are still preserved in the offices. Even a sewage pipe connection for a toilet has been preserved in the town hall corridor.

The town hall has an auxiliary building along the Am Wall street to the Stabholzgarten at Carl-Schurz-Straße 8, the former police building with a cell corridor, which is connected to the main building via a two-storey transition (in the vernacular "civil servant career") on the first and second floors .

Opposite the town hall, according to the planning of the architect Arnold von Goedecke from 1912, a town theater with 800 seats was to be built at the end of a street leading to the middle section of the town hall. This project did not come to fruition due to the outbreak of the First World War .

Reconstruction and restoration

During the Second World War , the Spandau town hall suffered severe damage as a result of Allied air raids . The reconstruction in a simplified form took place in the 1950s. So today, two turrets that the projections ed, no longer exists and the originally present dome of the main tower was a 1957 Reiner Seidel provided designed degree. The vestibule, once richly decorated with Art Nouveau ornaments, was restored in 1987 and 1988. The decorations of the remaining parts of the building were covered. The representative halls were also designed more simply in the 1950s and wall decorations are limited to simple geometric figures. In the lobby, the sculpture was Eselsreiter of August Gaul set up.

A red British telephone booth had stood in front of City Hall since the late 1970s . It was dismantled due to vandalism in 2000 and has been accessible again as a public bookcase in the waiting area of ​​the citizens' office since 2013 .

There is a parking garage behind the town hall , which was built around 1980 as part of the renovation of the old town of Spandau.

function

The town hall was the symbol of the city of Spandau until it was incorporated into Berlin as a district in 1920. Today the Spandau district office is located in the town hall . The Spandau District Assembly also meets here .

traffic

The underground station in front of the town hall is called ' Rathaus Spandau ' (terminus of the U7 line ). The bus transport hub in the Spandau district is also located here . Across from the town hall is the Berlin-Spandau long-distance and S-Bahn station .

literature

  • The town hall in Spandau . In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung , vol. 33 (1913), no. 101 , pp. 701–705, no. 102 , ill. On pp. 710–711 and no. 103 , pp. 717–720.
  • New buildings by Reinhardt & Süssenguth . In: Berliner Architekturwelt , vol. 16 (1914), issue 12 , pp. 479-518.
  • 100 Years of Spandau Town Hall - A companion volume to the town hall anniversary , Spandau Research Volume 3, ed. by Joachim Pohl and Felix Escher, Berlin 2013. Six essays with 115 pictures on the history of the town hall.

Web links

Commons : Rathaus Spandau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Tourist Info Spandau [1]
  2. Spandau's "Old Lady" becomes a library. In: qiez.de , March 11, 2013