Robert Koch Forum

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Building of the former natural science and medical institutes of the Royal University of Berlin on Dorotheenstrasse at the corner of Bunsenstrasse

The Robert Koch Forum (VCF; Listen ? / I ) is a complex of buildings in Berlin district of Mitte , the entire press line under the name Natural Sciences and Medical Institute of the Royal University of Berlin under monument stands. The parts of the building, which are uniformly designed in late Classicist forms, are considered "architectural jewels of the 19th century" and are counted as "among the architecturally significant buildings of the Schinkel successor". The entire complex is located in the government district and includes Dorotheenstrasse  94 and 96, Bunsenstrasse 1, Reichstagufer  8 and Wilhelmstrasse  67. Audio file / audio sample

The building complex, which has been known as the Forum since 2007 , is owned by the State of Berlin ( special fund for services of general interest ) and, once the renovation, which is scheduled to take place by 2022, is to be the main tenant of the Hertie School of Governance , the private university . The Einstein Center Digital Future has been located in the Wilhelmstrasse 67 building section since 2017 .

history

overview

The building complex was built from 1873 to 1883 on the initiative of the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz to accommodate the scientific, medical and technical institutes of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (since 1949 Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin ).

The physician and later namesake Robert Koch worked there as an important researcher . On March 24, 1882, he presented the discovery of the tuberculosis pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis to the Physiological Society in Berlin in the large lecture hall . In 1905, Koch received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this discovery . In the building complex were u. a. also the workplaces of the physicists Max Planck , James Franck and Gustav Hertz , Walther Nernst and Wilhelm Wien .

Construction and expansion

Natural science and medical institutes in a city map from 1893 (in the green oval)

Located on the then 7763 m² building area, south of Dorotheenstrasse (since 1822), west of Wilhelmstrasse (until 1964: Neue Wilhelmstrasse ), north of Reichstagufer (since 1882) and east of Bunsenstrasse (until 1892: Schlachthausgasse ) parts of the royal artillery workshop on both sides of Dorotheenstrasse were built in the 18th and 19th centuries . The artillery workshop was completely relocated to the Royal Prussian Rifle Factory in Spandau by the end of 1868 , in accordance with plans made by the Royal War Ministry from 1852 onwards, after completion of the expansion work begun in 1862 . Originally, the military administration wanted to sell the land occupied by the artillery workshop to refinance the costs for the new workshop in Spandau. This project was later refrained from, as the land was seen as very suitable for various necessary civil administration needs. After making a compensation payment, the land was transferred to civil administration. The property north of Dorotheenstrasse was jointly assigned to the Ministry of Agriculture, Domains and Forests and the Ministry of Spiritual, Educational and Medical Matters in early 1872 .

Natural science and medical institutes on the bank of the Reichstag before the addition and with the physical institute destroyed in World War II (before 1897)

The designs for the university buildings came from Paul Emmanuel Spieker , who had already become known with the construction of the university library. He was assisted by the building inspectors and site managers Karl Albert Fritz Zastrau , Moritz Hellwig and Friedrich Kleinwächter. On the trapezoidal site between Dorotheenstrasse and Reichstagufer, the building complex was built in a north and a south wing for the scientific, medical and technical institutes of the Friedrich Wilhelms University between 1873 and 1883 . First, from 1873 to 1877, the Physiological Institute at Dorotheenstrasse 96 (at that time No. 35) was completed, followed by the large lecture hall as an extension to the building on the courtyard side and the director's apartments on the south-western corner. In 1878 the buildings of the Physikalisches Institut on the corner of Reichstagufer and Wilhelmstrasse were ready for occupancy. In a second construction phase from 1879 to 1883, the Pharmacological Institute at Dorotheenstrasse 94 (at that time No. 34A) at the corner of Bunsenstrasse and the institutes at Bunsenstrasse were built.

Due to the need for additional space after 1900, the originally two to three-story buildings were increased. The architect Georg Thür adapted the architecture of the extension for the Chemical Institute in Bunsenstraße from 1907 to 1908 to the buildings from 1883.

Between 1942 and 1990

The buildings of the Physikalisches Institut were badly destroyed in the Second World War and, apart from the corner building on Bunsenstrasse, were demolished after 1955. The Institute for Medical Microbiology, Virology and Epidemiology moved into the former Physiological Institute in the 1960s , the former director's residence on the western corner of the complex became the seat of the Hygiene Institute of the GDR and the Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology worked on the Ostecke . The preserved part of the Physics Institute served as the Second Chemical Institute of the HU.

Since the turning point

After German reunification and the passed Bonn-Berlin law , the television broadcaster ARD had the ARD capital studio built on the area of ​​the physics institute that had not been rebuilt from 1996 , which opened in May 1999. On the front of the building of the ARD Capital Studio there has been a plaque since April 16, 1999, which names a number of Nobel Prize winners and other world-class physicists who once made the Physics Institute famous, including Max Planck , James Franck , Gustav Hertz , Walther Nernst and Wilhelm Wien .

In 2006, the Charité handed over the existing building ensemble to the Liegenschaftsfonds Berlin , which aimed to sell state-owned real estate. Starting in 2007, the latter offered the property on the market under the name Robert Koch Forum and presented it in October of that year at the internationally frequented Expo Real trade fair in Munich. In September 2009, the Liegenschaftsfonds sold the “most expensive property from the Charité's portfolio” to the Arcadia Berlin Foundation charitable GmbH , a sister foundation of the charitable British Arcadia Fund . The foundation of the Swedish historian and Tetra Pak heir Lisbet Rausing and the American history professor Peter Baldwin intended to set up a private university in the Robert Koch Forum . After the sale, the Robert Koch Museum, previously located on the first floor, had to move out. The Charité was able to use the building rent-free until September 2012. The foundation's plans failed, however, so that the state of Berlin bought back the listed complex in 2016 for an almost unchanged price of around 15 million euros .

In September 2013, the architecture photographer Amaury Wenger photographed the vacant Robert Koch Forum. This atmosphere gave its name to the photo technology exhibition Beyond the blinds ('Behind the blinds') opened in 2015 in the German Museum of Technology , which showed 17 of these photographs.

In March 2017 an already renovated part of the building (Wilhelmstrasse 67 m² with 2180 drew up Area ) the office of the publicly funded Einstein Center Digital Future one. In August / September 2017, the property on Wilhelmstrasse 67 was assigned to the special fund for services of general interest (SODA) in order to secure it as a strategically important building in the long term in the ownership of the State of Berlin.

From summer 2022 onwards, the Hertie School of Governance, a private university previously located on Friedrichstrasse, with more than 900 students, professors and employees as the main tenants, is to move into 9,000 of the 12,000 m². The usage concept of the Robert Koch Forum includes, among other things, a good 25 seminar rooms, a library with 80 seats, the two existing historical lecture halls and a new variable event hall with 300 seats. In addition, the Einstein Center Digital Future will have more space and the Berlin University Alliance of the three Berlin universities ( FU , HU and TU ) will move into business premises. For this purpose, the historic building complex is to be renovated by the state-owned BIM Berliner Immobilienmanagement for 42.5 million euros. The architecture and engineering office TSSB architekten.ingenieure was awarded the contract for the total renovation tendered . All structural damage is to be repaired, pollutants removed and the technology of the roughly 13,920 m² gross floor area replaced. The main renovation work should begin in 2020 (as of February 2019).

architecture

Ground floor plan (before 1897)
Ground plan of the first floor (before 1897)

The stately building complex near the historic core of the Charité was the largest new institute for science in the Empire of that time. The complex was designed in a uniform late-classicist style based on the model of the Schinkel Building Academy . The buildings were erected as massive masonry structures with cap and vaulted ceilings . The roofs are all covered with zinc corrugated sheet on formwork.

The facades, designed in antique forms, are structured by porches and above the side entrances by bay windows. The base is faced with Belgian granite , above is a brick facing in warm red and brown-yellow tones. The brown-yellow brick surfaces are enlivened by darker horizontal layers. The mighty structure on a basement is loosened up by frieze bands with ornaments made from colored Mettlach slabs as well as various architectural decorations with profiled stones and terracotta relief slabs on cornices, borders and parapet areas.

The buildings are separated from the sidewalks ( sidewalks ) by an insulating trench fenced in with parapet grids, which should keep the vibrations caused by road traffic away from the work rooms in the institutes.

The cast iron staircase inside the former Physiological Institute is decorated with handrails in palmette motifs; the large lecture hall with surrounding arcade gallery and skylight as well as many other equipment details testify to the extraordinary quality of the craftsmanship of the interior furnishings. A memorial set up for Robert Koch is located in two ground floor rooms with almost completely preserved furniture from the period of construction .

The later expansion work can be clearly seen on the attached attic storey, the windows of which are made in smaller pieces. A noticeable building element is the middle of the building with two flat risalits on which a bay window rests. In between is the arched main portal, accessible via five steps. A Berlin balcony is located above the door, which is decorated with carvings and ironwork . Portrait medallions of the physician Albrecht von Haller and the physician and natural philosopher Johannes Müller are incorporated into the portal spandrels .

Web links

Commons : Natural Science Institutes University of Berlin (Dorotheenstrasse)  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

Individual proofs marked with B.

  1. ↑ a b Berlin and its buildings. II. And III .: The building construction . Here p. 265.
  2. ^ Berlin and its buildings. II. And III .: The building construction . Here Fig. 255 from p. 257 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Berlin and its buildings. II. And III .: The building construction . Here p. 266.
  4. ^ Berlin and its buildings. II. And III .: The building construction . Here p. 267.

Other individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
  2. ↑ a b c d Amory Burchard: New location for the Hertie School in Berlin: Government college at a historic site . In: Der Tagesspiegel , December 17, 2018, accessed on April 20, 2019.
  3. ^ Robert Loddenkemper : Robert Koch (1843–1910): The discovery of the tubercle bacillus . In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt , Volume 104, No. 12, 2007, p. A-775. Retrieved April 21, 2019.
  4. ^ Wilhelmstrasse . In: Kaupert's street guide through Berlin , accessed on April 23, 2019.
  5. ↑ Reichstagufer . In: Kaupert's street guide through Berlin , accessed on April 23, 2019.
  6. ↑ Bunsenstrasse . In: Kaupert's street guide through Berlin , accessed on April 23, 2019.
  7. ↑ a b c d Institute for Monument Preservation (Ed.): The architectural and art monuments of the GDR. Capital Berlin-I . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, p. 199 ff .
  8. ^ Otto Kuntzemüller : The artillery workshop . In: ibid .: Documentary history of the city and fortress of Spandau of origin of the city to the present day . Published by the Magistrate of the City of Spandau, 1881, p. 256 ff.
  9. ^ Memorandum concerning the approval of a sum of 150,000 Rthlrn. to cover the costs of manufacturing and furnishing the new artillery workshop building in Spandau. In: Appendices to the shorthand reports on the negotiations of the House of Representatives during the meetings of the 3rd session of the 10th legislative period from October 6, 1869 to February 12, 1870. Volume 2. Berlin 1870, file No. 209, p. 923 f.
  10. ^ Stenographic reports on the negotiations of the German Reichstag. 2nd legislative period - 2nd session 1874/75. Fourth volume. Berlin 1875, document No. 88, p. 844.
  11. ↑ Dorotheenstrasse 35 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1890, part 2, p. 89.
  12. ↑ Dorotheenstrasse 34A . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1890, part 2, p. 89.
  13. ^ Center of the metropolis of knowledge . ARD capital studio , accessed on April 21, 2019.
  14. ↑ Isabell Jürgens: Berlin building history is for sale . In: Die Welt , 23 August 2007, accessed on 22 April 2019.
  15. ↑ Robert Koch Forum is looking for buyers . In: Immobilien Zeitung , issue 45/2007, November 15, 2007, p. 23. Accessed April 22, 2019.
  16. ^ Arcadia Berlin Foundation buys Charité property . In: Ärzte Zeitung , September 8, 2009, accessed on April 20, 2019.
  17. ↑ Isabell Jürgens: Robert Koch Forum: Berlin is getting a new private university . In: Berliner Morgenpost , September 4, 2009, accessed on April 22, 2019.
  18. ^ Robert Koch Forum sold to the foundation: Arcadia Fund comes to Berlin . Charité, press release, August 28, 2009, accessed on April 20, 2019.
  19. ↑ Jan Thomsen: Robert Koch Forum: New headquarters for Berlin's departure to become the digital capital of Europe . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 13, 2016, accessed on April 22, 2019.
  20. ↑ Beyond the blinds. The Robert Koch Forum: Photographs by Amaury Wenger. Gallery of the permanent photo technology exhibition. May 6th to August 2nd, 2015 . Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin Foundation , accessed on April 20, 2019.
  21. ↑ Thomas Frey: Pictures from the Robert Koch Forum . In: Berliner Woche , June 1, 2015, accessed on April 22, 2019.
  22. ^ Special construction: Robert Koch Forum, Berlin . Website of dgk Architekten GmbH, accessed on April 22, 2019.
  23. ↑ Strategically important properties are included in the special fund for services of general interest . Senate Department for Finance , Press Release No. 17-019, August 3, 2017, accessed on April 20, 2019.
  24. ↑ Dirk Jericho: Palais remains state property: Senate rules out privatization of important properties . In: Berliner Woche , September 6, 2017, accessed on April 20, 2019.
  25. ↑ The historic Robert Koch Forum is being extensively renovated - the Hertie School of Governance is moving in as the main tenant . The Governing Mayor - Senate Chancellery - Science and Research, press release, February 1, 2019, accessed on April 21, 2019.
  26. ^ A b Robert Koch Forum - Berlin . Website of TSSB architekten.ingenieure Tröber Skorupa Seeger Berner PartGmbB, accessed on April 23, 2019.
  27. ↑ dpa: ++ Hertie School will move to the historic Robert Koch Forum in 2022 . Berliner Morgenpost , February 1, 2019, archived from the original on April 23, 2019 . ;.

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 6.8 ″  N , 13 ° 22 ′ 52.6 ″  E