Reich President's Palace
The Reichspräsidentspalais (also: Palais des Reichspräsidents ) was the official seat of the German head of state from 1919 to 1934 as the residence of the Reich President .
The palace was located on Wilhelmstrasse No. 73 and on the one hand housed the office of the Reich President , which regulated all matters connected with the function of the Reich President as a state institution, the private apartments of the President and some of his employees, as well as various representative and reception rooms.
History of the building
Construction and uses
The building, which later served as the Presidential Palace, was erected between 1735 and 1737 at the instigation of King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia . For the western expansion of Friedrichstadt, handsome buildings were to be built on what would later be Wilhelmstrasse; In return, the king awarded inexpensive land and contributed building materials. In 1734 the Secret Council of the General-Ober-Finanz-War- und Domainen -dirium and Landjägermeister Hans Bogislav von Schwerin received a building site for a palace and building materials worth 40,000 thalers . On August 29, 1737 he and his brother Kurt Christoph von Schwerin received the palace as an inheritance. Kurt Christoph soon parted with his share.
The builder was the Berlin Conrad Wiesend; French people (from the Berlin Huguenot community) could also have been involved in the design of the building, which is kept in the representative Louis Quinze style . The design was later completed by several large-scale wall paintings by Bernhard Rode .
After Hans Bogislaw's death in 1747, his brother Kurt Christoph was given guardianship over his children. On April 2, 1757, a few weeks before his death in the battle of Prague , he sold the palace and furnishings to Stephan Peter Oliver, Count of Wallis, for 50,000 thalers .
In 1769 the Minister of State Valentin von Massow bought the property for 14,000 thalers. In 1777 it was sold for 22,700 thalers to the Lord Chamberlain, Count Carl Fürst von der Osten, known as Sacken . Until 1811, Osten-Sacken was widow Christiane Charlotte Sophie , b. Freiin von Dieskau, owner of the palace. Their only child, a daughter from their first marriage with Julius Gebhard, Count of Hoym , was disinherited due to high debt, so that of their six children, Prince Friedrich August Carl von Hohenlohe -Neuenstein-Ingelfingen became the sole heir of the palace. He had to sell the house in 1816 to pay off his father's debts.
From 1816 the court printer Georg Andreas Reimer used the representative rooms for his family, his publishing house and a literary salon, while the wings were also used for factory work. After his death in 1842, his son Georg Ernst Reimer continued the main business on Wilhelmstrasse until 1858.
House Ministry
The Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV acquired the building in 1858. From then on it housed the royal house ministry and thus, among other things, the private asset management of the House of Hohenzollern . The house ministers who resided in the palace included Alexander Graf von Schleinitz (1862–1885) and August zu Eulenburg (1914–1918).
In 1919 the German Reich acquired the property from the abdicated German Kaiser Wilhelm II , who at that time was urgently dependent on foreign currency for the purchase of the Dutch Doorn Castle . The banker Eduard von der Heydt acted as the mediator of the transaction, which had been kept top secret for a long time .
Reich President
From 1919 to 1934, Reich Presidents Friedrich Ebert and Paul von Hindenburg resided in the building. In 1932/1933 it underwent a comprehensive renovation, during which time Hindenburg moved into the Old Reich Chancellery , Wilhelmstrasse 77. The Reich Chancellor ( von Papen , Schleicher , Hitler ) was assigned the State Secretary's apartment as accommodation during this phase 1930 built annex to the old Reich Chancellery.
After Hindenburg's death on August 2, 1934, the palace became the seat of the “Fuehrer's Presidential Chancellery”, the successor to the “Office of the Reich President”. Adolf Hitler, Hindenburg's successor in the office of Reich President and at the same time Reich Chancellor since August 3, 1934, now resided in the "Führer Apartment" in the renovated and converted Old Reich Chancellery as well as in his private apartments in Munich and on the Berghof near Berchtesgaden . From 1939 the Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop lived in the former private apartments of the Reich President. For this purpose, the building was extensively rebuilt in 1938/1939 according to plans by Albert Speer .
After 1945
After insignificant bomb hits and air pressure damage, the palace suffered from fires and artillery hits in the final phase of the street fighting over the government district . The building, now located in East Berlin and again called Palais Schwerin , was considered largely preserved after the war and should be rebuilt. Regardless of this, it suffered severe damage in the post-war period from cannibalization - tearing out valuable building materials and the boilers - and the removal of hazards initiated by the municipal clearing office . The destruction of the roof in 1949 by dismantling the iron roof structure was particularly devastating, whereby the four baroque sandstone sculptures including the balustrade and the cartouche of the central projecting into the courtyard were overthrown and destroyed. The alarmed monument protection authority could only prevent the removal of the dismantled roof, but did not manage to restore it. In 1950 the palace was declared a German cultural heritage . When a committee of experts examined the palace in 1951, it registered a degree of destruction of 48%, largely due to post-war neglect, and stated: “Only the interior is really lost.” The masonry was “not destroyed by fire” and needed “for the most part external restoration only ”. In December 1958 it was clear that the palace would remain as the magistrate's guest house. On the other hand, in December 1959, the magistrate surprisingly decided to demolish the Reichspräsidentspalais, the neighboring palace of Princes Alexander and Georg and the Monbijou Palace . The preservation authorities protested in vain, citing the Kulturbund of the GDR and well-known scientists: “It would not be justifiable for posterity to blow up this last baroque palace on Wilhelmstrasse. It must be the primary duty of the Berlin monument preservation authorities to save the last remaining buildings in old Berlin. ”In November 1960 the palace was blown up and cleared.
The balcony grille over the central portal was preserved and is still in a residential building in Berlin-Köpenick , Bahnhofstrasse 4. The two sandstone lions that crowned the pillars of the gate on Wilhelmstrasse first came to the zoo in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde .
From 1961 the garden was in the absolute restricted area of the Berlin Wall .
In the 1980s, the GDR had an extensive prefabricated residential complex built along Wilhelmstrasse and thus above the old building in order to erase the memory of the Prussian Wilhelmstrasse. In 1964 the street had already been renamed Otto-Grotewohl-Straße , and the property was then roughly at number 92.
A memorial column now describes the story. It stands in front of number 78 - Wilhelmstrasse, which was again continuous in 1993, now required consecutive house numbers. The southern edge of the property roughly corresponds to today's Hannah-Arendt-Straße in full length. Part of the Holocaust memorial covers the former park. His place of information is in the former garden.
Structural structure and organization of the facility
The building of the actual palace consisted of three wings. There were also a few outbuildings such as a garage for the President's vehicle fleet, a rear building and various small garden houses, greenhouses and a chicken coop.
On the forecourt at the front of the palace was a so-called “courtyard of honor” covered with gravel, where the Reich President received foreign ambassadors and heads of state as well as other distinguished guests. In later years it was customary for a twenty-strong form of honor from the Reichswehr to take up a position in the courtyard whenever the Reich President entered or left his official building. In the main courtyard was a fountain decorated with allegorical figures, behind which a wide, glass-roofed flight of stairs led to the entrance portal of the palace.
In addition to the office of the Reich President in the left wing of the building ("Chancellery") and the representative rooms for official occasions (receptions, banquets, dance evenings, etc.) in the central part, the residence included various private accommodations. While the president and the head of the office of the Reich President, the highest-ranking residents, each had their own spacious apartments - the office manager had twenty-six rooms in the right wing ("Meissner wing") - other residents had to make do with smaller apartments. The caretaker of the building (in most years a man named Horst Tappe) lived in an apartment on the top floor, while the head of state's chauffeur (Heinrich Demant) lived in the rooms above the former imperial stables, which had been converted into a garage for the vehicle fleet.
The building was surrounded by a large park which, in addition to walking paths, lawns and flower beds, also included some vegetable patches hidden behind hedges. In 1925 the street that ran along the garden gate was named after the recently deceased President of the Reich in Friedrich-Ebert-Straße .
Residents of the palace
The "residents" of the Reich President's Palace can be divided into two groups. First of all, those who “lived in” the palace in the narrower sense, that is, who not only went to work in the palace, but also lived there privately. And secondly, those people who came to the palace during the day to perform certain tasks, but did not live there privately.
Among the inhabitants of the first group, the respective holders of the office of the Reich President are to be named. In addition to the Reich President Ebert and von Hindenburg, the head of the office of the head of state, State Secretary Otto Meissner , was permanently at home in the palace from 1920 to 1939. Then there were the families of these three men. During Ebert's presidency, his wife and two sons lived in the palace, while Hindenburg brought along his son Oskar and daughter-in-law Margarete and the couple's three children, the youngest of whom was born in the palace. Meissner's household consisted of his wife and two children, including his son Hans-Otto Meissner . Other people who not only worked in the palace, but also had their own apartments there, were the house inspector (head of the housekeeping staff) Wilhelm Tappe, Hindenburg's personal servant Oskar Putz (called "Karl" to avoid confusion with the head of state's son of the same name) as well as the presidential chauffeur Otto Demant and the chauffeur of the presidential office Kurt Nehls.
The President's staff and household staff were only to be found in the premises during the palace's working hours. As a rule, the staff of the Reich President consisted of fifteen middle and higher officials, ten female typists and eight clerks. The housekeeping team consisted of cooks, cleaning women, housekeeping, gardeners, a carpenter who did repairs, and the guards.
Among the members of the staff of the Reich President, whose most important employees Ebert and Hindenburg stood by the side in the same way, the following should be emphasized: The Ministerialrat Heinrich Doehle , who dealt with the affairs of internal politics, and the Legation Councilor Oswald Baron von Hoyningen-Huene , who served the Reich President was assigned as a representative of the Foreign Office, as well as Oberregierungsrat Wilhelm Geilenberg, who ran the cash business. There were also one or two officers who acted as liaison officers to the Ministry of Defense. Under Hindenburg, his son Oskar von Hindenburg took over the post of first military adjutant to the Reich President and Wedige von der Schulenburg that of the second adjutant.
See also
literature
- Laurenz Demps : Berlin-Wilhelmstrasse. A topography of Prussian-German power . 3rd updated edition. Ch. Links, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86153-228-X .
- Hans-Otto Meissner : Young years in the Reich President's Palace . Bechtle Verlag, Esslingen 1988, ISBN 3-7628-0469-9 .
Web links
References and comments
- ↑ a b Ludwig Gollmert, Wilhelm Graf von Schwerin, Leonhard Graf von Schwerin: History of the von Schwerin. Part 2: Biographical News. Wilhelm Gronau, Berlin 1878, pp. 222-223.
- ↑ a b c d Doris Reimer: Passion & Calculus. The publisher Georg Andreas Reimer (1776–1842). De Gruyter, 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-080881-0 , pp. 119-121.
- ↑ Family history through the ages. 3. Brandenburg-Prussia. Von Massow family, accessed March 18, 2015 .
- ^ Johann Samuelersch , Johann Gottfried Gruber : General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts. Section 2, Part 11, Brockhaus, Leipzig 1834, p. 284 ( Google Books ).
- ^ Doris Reimer: Passion & Calculus. The publisher Georg Andreas Reimer (1776–1842). De Gruyter, 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-080881-0 , p. 157.
- ↑ On this and also on the following: Laurenz Demps: Berlin-Wilhelmstrasse. A topography of Prussian-German power , Ch.Links Verlag, Berlin 1994, pp. 285–287 and 306 f., Always with evidence.
- ↑ Otto-Grotewohl-Strasse . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
- ^ Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
- ↑ Hans-Otto Meissner mistakenly gives Demant the first name Heinrich in his memoirs; the Berlin address books for the years 1911 to 1943 only know one Otto Demant who was a chauffeur or driver; that he must be the presidential chauffeur is evident from the information given for his place of residence: from 1928 as Wilhelmstrasse 73, the Reichspräsidentpalais. According to Demant, Meissner worked from 1911 to 1918 as a chauffeur for Kaiser Wilhelm II (the address books confirm this by listing an Otto Demant as a truck driver from 1911, but not before); from 1919 to 1934 Demant then worked as a chauffeur for the Reich Presidents Ebert and Hindenburg, then until 1945 as a chauffeur for the head of the "Presidential Chancellery of the Führer", d. H. Otto Meissner; Until 1939 the Berlin address books list Demant as resident at Wilhelmstrasse 73, then from 1940 to 1943, like Otto Meissner, as resident in Bellevue Palace , the Reich's guest house. According to Demant Meissner Junior, in April 1945 he took his father by secret routes to Schleswig to the headquarters of Hitler's successor as Reich President, Grand Admiral Dönitz (cf. Hans-Otto Meissner: Young Years in the Reich President's Palace , p. 61).
- ↑ Nehls is listed as the second chauffeur of the office by Hans-Otto Meissner, without mentioning a first name. The first name is revealed in the Berlin address book for 1932, p. 2313, in which Nehls is also identified as living at Wilhelmstrasse 73. In the address books from 1931 to 1939 he is listed as resident at Wilhelmstrasse 73, then from 1940 to 1943 as resident in Bellevue Palace, the Reich's guest house.
- ↑ On Meissner's recommendation, Geilenberg moved from the Reich Office for the Administration of the Reich Railways to the Office of the Reich President, to which he was head of the registry from 1920 to 1945.
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 50.3 " N , 13 ° 22 ′ 53.4" E