Spar headquarters in Duisburg

Remains of the supporting structure of the company hall

Senior center with rock garden and former stairwell

The savings headquarters Duisburg was a Wholesale Society in the commercial area on the inner harbor between Stapeltor and Springwall . Similar to the Ludwigsforum , only a few building segments and floor plan markings have been preserved in the Garden of Remembrance (Altstadtpark).

In 1877 the company Brügmann & Sohn (sawmills and planing mills) built the first steam saw mill on this site. In 1939, the Karl Schmidt colonial goods warehouse was established, and the first merchandise was coffee and various fruit wines. In 1959, the trading company expanded to become the Spar headquarters for the Ruhr area, and the brothers Wilhelm Schmidt-Ruthenbeck and Ernst Schmidt took over the OHG in the second generation. They supplied over 500 Spar retailers in the Ruhr and Lower Rhine areas and also founded the first Metro self-service wholesale store in Essen in 1963. The Spar headquarters in Duisburg was ultimately dissolved through the establishment of Metro AG and the transfer of the family assets to Stiftung Mercator Schweiz .

All that remains of the storage buildings are the markings on the floor plans, some support struts and the former staircase as a tower. These remnants were worked out by Dani Karavan with his typical stylistic devices such as white stripes, incorporating nature through plantings, reminiscent of the original building with a rock garden and deliberately segmenting the areas through different soil levels as parts of the old town park.

A senior citizens' center was built on the southern part of the property.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The background of Stiftung Mercator on its own website ( memento of the original from March 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Web links

Commons : Sparzentrale Duisburg  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• History of the inner harbor on the inner harbor portal
• Description of this sight on the route of industrial culturehttp: //vorlage.rik.test/~1~10114

Coordinates: 51 ° 26 ′ 19.6 ″  N , 6 ° 46 ′ 0.5 ″  E