Robinson Crusoe House

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Robinson Crusoe House (left) and House Atlantis , view from Martinistraße

The Robinson Crusoe House in Bremer Böttcherstraße No. 1 and Martinistraße No. 19 was built in 1931 according to the preliminary design by Ludwig Roselius as the last house on the street. It is one of the most interesting examples of German architecture from the interwar period and has been a listed building since 1973.

history

At the southern end of Böttcherstraße (formerly Bötticherstraße ) there were several two-story, eaves-facing, small warehouses around 1900, which were demolished in the course of the new development on Böttcherstraße around 1921. The coffee trader and founder of the Kaffee HAG company, Ludwig Roselius , initiated the purchase of the first properties before the First World War . In the early 1920s, he had convinced the Senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and the city's building authorities with the plan to build a small colony for artists and small craftspeople with studios, shops and apartments near the market square, in line with the north German building tradition . After the land further to the north had already been built on, the two houses on Martinistraße could be inaugurated in 1931. With the gable fronts facing Martinistraße, the Robinson Crusoe House (left) and the Atlantis House completed the development of the street to the south.

Until 1944, many of the rooms in the Robinson Crusoe House were used by the Bremen Club for its meetings. The oldest social club in Germany was created in 1931 through the merger of the Bremen Society and the Museum Society, founded in 1783 . In addition to the club rooms (dining room, bar, gallery and Scotland parlor) there was also a Vogeler room on the second floor in which nine paintings exemplified Heinrich Vogeler's artistic development. The hall on the ground floor was initially used by Kaba to present the cocoa drink, which was invented by Ludwig Roselius.

In October 1944, incendiary bombs destroyed almost the entire Böttcherstrasse. The building was largely restored to its original state by Kaffee HAG by 1954.

Today, in the stairwell, panels in the manner of woodcut printing plates, which were carved by Theodor Schultz-Walbaum during the reconstruction in 1954 , remind of the history of the house.

In 1979 Ludwig Roselius jun. the Kaffee HAG together with the Böttcherstrasse to General Foods and in 1981 the buyback of the Böttcherstrasse. In 1989, Sparkasse Bremen bought the entire street, including its buildings, except for the Atlantis building. In 2004 Böttcherstraße became part of the Bremer Sparer-Dank Foundation . It is operated by Böttcherstraße GmbH , a subsidiary of the financial holding company of the Sparkasse in Bremen.

The Crusoe Hall is located in this building , where temporary exhibitions are shown, as well as offices and apartments (as of 2014).

Surname

The fictional character Robinson Crusoe from the novel by Daniel Defoe from 1719 chose Roselius and thus symbolized the Hanseatic thirst for action and pioneering spirit. In addition, Crusoe was the son of a Bremen merchant named Kreutzner who emigrated to England ( Hull and then York ) and who became prosperous there. In the English language of Robinson from Kreutzner, the name Crusoe was formed, so to read at the beginning of the novel.

Building

Roselius had supplied the preliminary design for the Robinson Crusoe house. His house architect Karl von Weihe took up the sketchy, small drawing by Roselius "enthusiastically". Daughter Hildegard Roselius writes: “Together, the two friends designed the house as it has been rebuilt today.” The construction department for Böttcherstrasse under the direction of Weihe took on the detailed elaboration. Roselius designed a house based in part on the more conventional, historical Lower Saxon building forms with a modern and more expressionistic stepped gable . The daughter said: “I can still see her in front of me today [1954], this sketch, a sheet torn from a notepad. And I can still see the gable growing up under my father's hands. [...] He drew the gable as high as his sense of proportion would allow him. Then he finished the drawing with a firm horizontal stroke. […] In this horizontal line lay his whole being: controlled energy, clarity of will and the sense of a balanced measure. ”The stepped gable to Martinistraße takes up old design elements of Bremen gabled houses and divides the gable with large-format windows with small muntins . In its original version from 1931, this gable was significantly more stringent than the gable after 1954.

Like all buildings on Böttcherstraße, the red bricks characterize the facades. For the Atlantis house , the common arcade motif is taken up with a thick, round column and the entrance to Böttcherstraße is thus marked on both sides.

Silver lion, bearing the day by Hoetger
Panther, bearing the night by Hoetger

Interior decoration and art

The interior was designed by the architects Alfred Runge and Eduard Scotland , who had already designed two other houses on Böttcherstrasse.

The furnishings of the house were lost. As a remainder, wooden panels with scenes from the story of Robinson Crusoe, carved and colored by Theodor Schultz-Walbaum, have been preserved in the stairwell .

Noteworthy are the twelve colored lead glass windows made by Bernhard Hoetger from 1926 on the ground floor and the bronze figures Silver Lion, Carrying the Day and Panther Carrying the Night, from 1912.

literature

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Monument database of the LfD
  2. ^ Oil painting by Wilhelm Bartsch from 1899. In: Hans Hermann Meyer: Die Bremer Altstadt , p. 199. Edition Temmen , Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-686-7 .
  3. ^ Hermann Gutmann: Die Böttcherstrasse - A reading book. P. 115 f.
  4. ↑ Hildegard Roselius: Ludwig Roselius and his cultural work . Georg Westermann Verlag, Braunschweig 1954, p. 73.

Web links

Commons : Böttcherstraße  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 53 ° 4 ′ 29.4 "  N , 8 ° 48 ′ 18.8"  E