Rheinstrasse 232 (Bornheim)

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The building at Rheinstrasse 232 was a single-family house in Hersel , a district of the city of Bornheim in the Rhein-Sieg district in North Rhine-Westphalia , which was built in the early 1960s and demolished in 2000. From 1974 to 1990 it served as the residence of the head of the permanent representation of the German Democratic Republic . The house was on the banks of the Rhine across from the island of Herseler Werth .

history

The house was built in 1962 based on a design by the architect Heiner Schmidbauer as a villa for his own family, originally from Bavaria. In 1969 a swimming pool was added. In the early 1970s, the United Aluminum Works (VAW) commissioned Schmidbauer, who had already built a number of industrial buildings for the company, to build a new plant in Stade . Since this project made Schmidbauer's move necessary, the family put the property up for sale. At that time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR was looking for suitable properties to accommodate their new permanent representation in the Federal Republic of Germany as a result of the basic treaty of 1972. Michael Kohl, as the designated head of the representation, visited several properties in the Bonn region in the spring of 1973 that could be suitable as his own residence. This also included the Schmidbauer family's villa, which the East German delegation had become aware of through an advertisement in a newspaper. Upon completion of negotiations with the commercial policy department of the Foreign Ministry of the GDR, the state acquired the villa through purchase agreement on 14 December 1973 for 2.6 million German marks . She also acquired a house on Heisterbacher Strasse in Hersel from the property of Schmidbauer's daughter, which was to house the servants of the residence. When the permanent representation was opened on May 2, 1974, Kohl moved into the house, and his accreditation took place on June 20. Typical of the relationship between Kohl and his successors in office, Ewald Moldt (1978–1988) and Horst Neubauer (1988–1990), to the city of Bornheim and the district of Hersel were annual receptions for the local carnival prince and his followers.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the following steps on the way to reunification , the last head of the Permanent Mission, Horst Neubauer, returned to Berlin in July 1990; his deputy continued the official business. When the former territory of the GDR joined the Federal Republic of Germany on October 3, 1990, the permanent representations in Berlin and Bonn were dissolved. The property in Hersel was part of the former GDR property owned by the Federal Republic of Germany and administered by the Federal Property Office. In 1991, Yemen planned to establish the residence of its ambassador there. Instead, the property served as the temporary residence of the Ambassador of the Philippines before the seat of government was moved to Berlin (1999) .

After a lawyer had acquired the property, the villa was demolished in 2000 and a new residential building was built in its place.

architecture

The house had a flat roof and was partly on stilts. It had large picture windows. The living space was about 500  m² . A swimming pool was added to the house. In its modern design, it was a special feature among the rest of the buildings on the banks of the Hersel Rhine.

See also

literature

  • Christian Lonnemann: The permanent representatives of the GDR in Bornheim - "Hersel Alaaf". In: Rhein-Sieg-Kreis (Ed.): Yearbook of the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis. Edition 27, year 2012, Edition Blattwelt, Reinhard Zado, Niederhofen 2011, ISBN 978-3-936256-46-8 , pp. 108–115.

Web links

Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 33.4 "  N , 7 ° 2 ′ 35.8"  E