Residence department store

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The Residenz-Kaufhaus , popular under the acronym ReKa , was a department store in the style of reform architecture in Dresden- Altstädter Waisenhausstraße 16, on the corner of Prager Straße . The building burnt out in 1945 was demolished in 1950/1953. In 1993/1995 the Karstadt department store was built in the same place.

Building history

The residence department store, which was considered to be the “first major department store building in Dresden in glass and concrete” , was built in 1912 at the beginning of Prager Straße, opposite the Viktoriahaus , based on a design by the Leipzig architect Emil Franz Hänsel . Its design followed the model of the Berlin department store Wertheim .

View from Seestrasse to the ruins of the department store in 1947

The four-storey building was clearly divided by plastic, vertically extending over several floors pillars of concrete interspersed with large glass surfaces. Only on the first floor were oriels with decorative ornaments, so-called "window compartments" , inserted between the pillars . This was a reminiscence of the Dresden tradition. Above the cornice , which consisted of beaded rod , a lightly ornamented echinus and the eaves gutter, there were arched closed dwelling houses in the hipped roof . The horizontal bay porches and mid-height buildings visually compensated for the vertical emphasis by the pillars.

The interiors were kept in white, the ceilings were decorated with stucco and the mighty columns were clad with wood. The building had three elevators, each with a capacity of ten people.

Salesrooms

The department store operated in the legal form of a GmbH was opened on the afternoon of October 12, 1912. The approximately 500 employees offered its range on four floors in 55 sales departments. The goods were delivered via a driveway in Waisenhausstrasse.

In line with the new department store trend of the time, all items were priced on price tables. While on the ground floor u. a. Haberdashery , men's items as well as perfumeries and paper goods were offered, women's fashions, corsets and shoes could be purchased on the first floor . A very broad assortment was offered to those interested in shoppers on the second floor - it ranged from sports and toys to books, clocks and photo items to electrical items and items for interior decoration. This floor also housed a refreshment room. In the end, the top floor housed the whole range of household items available at the time and a wide-ranging food department in which, in addition to colonial goods , meat and sausage products from an in-house butcher's shop, fruit and vegetables as well as live fish swimming in a pool were available.

Trivia

  • The department store receives repeated literary mentions. The Romanist Victor Klemperer mentions in his diaries the purchase of the book Flucht im "Reka" written by the Italian anti-fascist Francesco Fausto Nitti (1899–1974) in early 1933.
  • The painter Albert Wigand worked as a window dresser in the Reka from 1930 to 1943 to secure his livelihood .

literature

  • Fritz Löffler: The old Dresden. History of his buildings . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1981, ISBN 3-363-00007-3 .
  • Matthias Lerm: Farewell to old Dresden. Loss of historical building stock after 1945 . Forum Verlag, Leipzig 1993, ISBN 3-86151-047-2 .
  • Ulrich Hübner et al .: Symbol and truthfulness. Reform architecture in Dresden. Verlag der Kunst Dresden Ingwert Paulsen jun., Husum 2005, ISBN 3-86530-068-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Löffler, p. 420, p. 441, image no. 535 [The residential department store on the corner of Prager- / Waisenhausstraße by K. Hänsel (Leipzig) 1912] and Lerm, p. 234 [Residenz-Kaufhaus (Reka)]
  2. ↑ Löffler, p. 420
  3. ↑ Hübner et al., P. 19
  4. ↑ a b c The information was taken from a newspaper article "On the opening of the new Residenz-Kaufhaus" in the Dresdner Anzeiger of October 13, 1912 and other contemporary press releases as well as images of several newspaper advertisements with references to the opening, which were published in 2012 on the website "Daily -Dresdenbild "had been provided cf. daily Dresden picture .
  5. ↑ Victor Klemperer (Ed. Walter Nojowski with the assistance of Hadwig Klemperer): Diaries 1933-1934 . Structure of Taschenbuchverlag, Berlin 1995, p. 37. For more information on the author Nitti, see the Italian Wikipedia page

Coordinates: 51 ° 2 ′ 48.1 ″  N , 13 ° 44 ′ 14.2 ″  E