Student village Schlachtensee
The student village Schlachtensee is a listed building ensemble of residential and community buildings, which was built in what was then West Berlin from the 1950s and was planned as a residence for students of the Free University . In October 2014, a residential complex based on the example of Schlachtensee, the Adlershof student village, went into operation on the campus of the Humboldt University .
Location and surroundings
The student village Schlachtensee is located in the southwest of Berlin in the district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf , district Nikolassee in the village of Schlachtensee, which is named after the lake of the same name . The listed part of the student village was built between 1959 and 1964 and was financed by a donation from the government of the United States of America . The student village is thus the first newly built student housing complex in Berlin after the war .
History of origin
The student village Schlachtensee is one of the most important structural contributions made by the Americans to the re- education of the Germans after the lost Second World War . The aim was to support the education of young people to become citizens of a democratic Germany with the means of architecture and thus to overcome totalitarianism . In Schlachtensee the future academic elite of the Federal Republic of Germany should find a home and experience political and democratic education. The architecture and many institutions such as the tutor program, the village council and working groups in the village-based library and other cultural institutions sprang from this idea and were greeted with generous help of the US State Department funded. The Ford Foundation paid ten of the tutoring positions. Eleanor Dulles , Ambassador of the United States and sister of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles , had campaigned for nearly ten million marks. In October 1957, she laid the foundation stone for the complex together with the Governing Mayor Willy Brandt . The idea of re- education followed the quota of residents according to West and East German as well as foreign students - until the construction of the Wall in 1961, GDR citizens also studied at the Free University .
The structure is considered the most important student village not only in Berlin, but is also unparalleled in Europe because of its outstanding architecture.
architecture
The student village of the Free University of Berlin, as its original name is, is composed as an ensemble of 28 loosely arranged houses on about five hectares like an urban landscape. The Berlin architects Hermann Fehling , Daniel Gogel and Peter Pfankuch designed the facilities for the first and second construction phase. In the first construction phase, from 1957 to 1959, twelve so-called mansions and six so-called ladies' houses - at that time students still lived separately by gender -, the mayor's office, a shop and the library . In the second construction phase, 1962–1964, a double house followed, the communal house and the now defunct house of the academic director.
All residential buildings - with the exception of the twin house 12/13 - have one to three storeys and were designed for groups of up to 30 students each. The listed complex of the first and second construction phase has been almost completely preserved right down to the furniture. From 1976 to 1978, in a third construction phase, four five-story shared apartments by the architects Krämer , Pfennig, Sieverts & Partner were added.
All residential buildings are grouped around a village green and form a unique ensemble of post-war modernism . The central buildings and the community center with theater and cafeteria , today's Club A18 , are located on the village green . The mayor's office with the technical center - today the town hall -, the shop currently used as a children's shop and the library that has been converted into a learning lounge are also located on the Anger. The fitness studio, which used to be in the sports studio - today: seminar house (project house) - has moved to building 14.
The student village is designed for communal living: The rooms are rather small, but light halls and stairwells as well as large kitchens in the residential buildings invite people to meet. With extensions from 1977, the Krämer buildings, the village offers space for more than 900 students.
For the student accommodation and to loosen up the complex structurally, the architects chose different house shapes: multi-storey cubes, Z-shaped houses, groups of houses made up of angles and strictly closed solitaires alternate with each other. At the southern end, the architects placed the communal house, which stands out clearly from the rest of the building with its expressive design language.
On the architectural and historical importance of the student village
The 18 residential buildings of the first construction phase of the student village can be divided into the four basic types A, B, C and N, so named by the architects, which always follow the same organizational principle inside. The sequence of rooms from one hall in the center of the building - the communicative center of the house, so to speak - to the individual living areas and common rooms is the same for all building types. The size of the student booths and the furnishings are also standardized across the board.
Each “booth” extends over a floor plan of around ten square meters and is always equipped with a built-in wardrobe, a bed, a desk attached to the wall and a wall shelf connected to the outer Eternit panel. In most of the rooms one wall is designed as a wooden wall. On the other hand, the arrangement of the furnishings is different - a total of 36 furniture variants were drawn by the architects - as well as the color sequence of the walls and ceilings.
As with the asymmetrical external facade, the individualized community of western character should be made clear through different color and furnishing concepts. No resident owns more than others and yet his living area can be clearly distinguished from others. The principle of an individualized, self-confident and not aligned community has been carried over to architecture or, conversely, is only made possible by architecture. Against this background, the student village of Schlachtensee is, as it were, “built democracy”.
Outwardly, the residential buildings are characterized by a strict color, but completely asymmetrical facade. In addition to the narrow steel window profiles and anthracite-colored Eternit panels, the two-tone plaster structure is striking. The facade surfaces consist of a colored high-quality scratch plaster, with the white surfaces referring to the living areas, the black to the common areas. Rooms, halls, kitchens and corridors are extensively glazed. The room-spanning sequence of materials and floor-to-ceiling corridor glazing support the principle of flowing rooms. In addition to the residential buildings of the first construction phase and the mayor's office, two small single-storey pavilions were built on the central village square, which were reserved for central student village functions. Across from the mayor's office, a library building with glass on three sides was erected, and a shop building with skylights on the southern edge of the square. Both buildings were used differently on the initiative of students: the shop became a children's shop, the library was converted into a sports studio.
The community center located on the village square was only realized in the second construction phase and redesigned in 1959 by Fehling + Gogel. The building, which was previously planned to be cubic, has now been given a very expressive shape with a protruding roof and white plastered facade and is vaguely reminiscent of the Berlin Philharmonic , in whose competition the trio of architects after Hans Scharoun won second prize. The house initially contained a cafeteria and an event hall for three hundred people. In the 1970s, the facade was clad with Eternit panels for cosmetic reasons. As an all-day restaurant, the cafeteria was not profitable, as the students largely catered for themselves in their small kitchenettes on the living floor and in the university canteen. Club A18 has been located in the former cafeteria since 1974 .
The avant-garde claim of the student village does not only extend to the built architecture. The urban and landscape surroundings are also included in the design concept. The landscape garden was designed by Hermann Mattern , who can be considered one of the most important garden designers of the mid-20th century. In a seemingly loose sequence, the residential buildings are grouped around the lower-lying village square, which, based on the Greek model, forms the agora of the student settlement. Diagonal pathways connect the houses with the central plaza, which is connected to the neighborhood by a likewise diagonal access road. The square is framed by all central and communal buildings and rhythmized by a diagonally aligned water basin. The room sequences are not hierarchical, but seemingly arbitrarily designed and do not aim at monumental gestures anywhere. Two birch groves from the time of the homestead were integrated into the landscape garden and connect the place with its history.
The old fruit tree espaliers, which Fehling absolutely wanted to keep within his re-planning, were lost. The design concept of Matterns for the small settlement unit Studentendorf Schlachtensee is without a doubt based on the Scharoun model of the urban landscape, which for the art historian Andreas Butter should apply as an "identification foil for a free, cooperative coexistence of people". According to Butter, the natural and non-axial room design developed by Scharoun for the living cell was implemented in an exemplary manner in the student village of Schlachtensee, entirely in keeping with the landscape design of the Enlightenment. "The English park is laid out in such a way, its paths are guided in such a way that the visitor is given back the freedom to choose which to visit." This horticultural concept, which was programmatically implemented in Sweden at the time and had social connotations, was one for German gardening and spatial design student housing complex something completely new; although the residents of the student village were not only enthusiastic about the gardener Mattern. The strong Scharoun references in the interior design, but also in the architecture of the community center, are not surprising for Butter, "as all the building and gardening artists involved were closely related to him".
Planned demolition and rescue of the monument
Although it has been a listed building since 1991, the Berlin Senate wanted the student village to be demolished in 2001 with the exception of five buildings and the property to be sold. A new building for the Berlinische Galerie was to be financed with the hoped-for sales proceeds . Initiated by the self-government and largely led by the urban planner and architect Hardt-Waltherr Hämer , resistance developed among the remaining and former residents, and an initiative was founded to fight for the preservation of the monument. With the decision of the Senate in March 2003 to sell the Studentendorf to the Cooperative Studentendorf Schlachtensee eG , the demolition was successfully averted. On June 16, 2004, the Berlin House of Representatives approved the sale after long negotiations. Since then, the cooperative has been running the student village and renovating it house by house while still in operation. House 19 has been part of the artist association Haus 19 e. V. rented.
In February 2006, the Federal Republic of Germany elevated the student village of Schlachtensee to the status of a “cultural monument of national standing” and has since been promoting its structural renovation. The German Foundation for Monument Protection , the Becksche Foundation, the State of Berlin and the Free University of Berlin are also partners and sponsors for the operation and renovation .
Sale of the property
In June 2010, the cooperative sold the property to the Swiss pension fund CoOpera collective foundation PUK and leased it back for a term of 99 years.
Renewal of the monument in accordance with the requirements of the monument
The renovation of the buildings began in 2006. In the process, rooms were enlarged, bathrooms installed, student apartments created and the houses rebuilt energetically. The renovation of houses 4 and 8 was completed in 2009, on March 19, 2009 the buildings were ceremoniously handed over to the students of the Free University of Berlin. 2010–2011 the renovation of houses 20 and 21 as well as the partial renovation of the children's shop in house 15. From 2012 to 2013, houses 5, 18 and 6 were renovated by the architects Brenne Architekten. The renovation of houses 9, 10, 22 and 23 began in 2014 and was completed in October 2015. The former library on the village square was restored in 2014.
Houses 2 and 17 were completed in 2016, and houses 12 and 13 from the second construction phase in March of the following year. The planning for the renewal of the four communal houses was also started in 2017, the completion of the construction work is scheduled for 2020.
Financing partner in the ongoing renovation is u. a. the environmental bank. After all the work is completed in 2024, the student village will have space for around 900 residents.
The student village in the novel
The student village Schlachtensee is one of the settings of the novel The beautiful phoenix bird by Jochen Schimmang , which deals among other things with the time of the student movement . One chapter of the novel is entitled Die Höhlen von Schlachtensee .
The student village in the film
Some scenes from the film The Reader by Stephen Daldry, based on the novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink , were shot in House 2 in the Studentendorf. Scenes from the film Aliens by Florian Gärtner from 1993 were also recorded in the student village Schlachtensee.
literature
Monographs
- Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin (ed.): Berlin and its buildings . Part VII, Volume B Social housing. Berlin 2003.
- Guido Brendgens, Norbert König: Berlin architecture . Architecture guide. Berlin 2003.
- Adrian von Buttlar , Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper , Kerstin Wittmann-Englert: The architecture of post-war modernism. Architecture Guide Berlin 1949–1979 . Berlin 2013.
- Yorck Förster, Christina Gräwe, Peter Cachola Schmal (eds.): German Architecture Yearbook 2017 . Berlin 2017.
- Peter Gruss , Gunnar Klack, Matthias Seidel (eds.): Fehling + Gogel. The Max Planck Society as client of the architects Hermann Fehling and Daniel Gogel . Berlin 2009.
- Konstantin von Freytag-Loringhoven: Education in the Kollegienhaus. Reform efforts at the German universities in the American zone of occupation 1945–1960 , Stuttgart 2012, pp. 485–498.
- Jürgen Häner: 20 years of student village Schlachtensee . Berlin 1979.
- Vroni Heinrich: Hermann Mattern. Gardens - Landscapes - Buildings - Teaching. Life and work . Berlin 2012.
- Florian Heilmeyer: Show site post-war modern Berlin. The New Architecture Guide No. 107. Berlin 2007.
- Kai Kappel, Mattias Müller (ed.): Historical images and culture of remembrance in the architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries . Regensburg 2014.
- Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Ed.): Monuments in Berlin. Steglitz-Zehlendorf district, Nikolassee district. Monument topography of the Federal Republic of Germany . Petersberg 2013.
- Rolf Rave, Hans-Joachim Knöfel: Building since 1900 in Berlin . Berlin 1968.
- Martina Schilling (Ed.): Free University of Berlin. An architectural guide to university buildings . Berlin 2011.
- Jochen Schimmang : The beautiful phoenix bird , here the chapter The caves of Schlachtensee . In: Suhrkamp, 1979
- Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment (Ed.): Monument energetic - less is more . Folder accompanying the traveling exhibition of the same name. Berlin 2012.
- Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment (Ed.): Selfmade City Berlin. Urban design and residential projects on your own initiative . Berlin 2013.
- Otto Stammer (ed.): Students on dormitories. Results of an empirical-sociological study at the Free University of Berlin . Carried out in the Institute for Sociology at the Free University of Berlin. Berlin 1959.
- Martin Wörner, Karl-Heinz Sigel, Paul Hüter, Doris Mollenschott: Architectural Guide Berlin. Berlin 2013.
- Wüstenrot Foundation (ed.): Preservation of modern monuments. Concepts for a young architectural heritage . Stuttgart, Zurich 2011.
- Ralf Zünder: Studentendorf Schlachtensee 1959 to 1989 . A documentation. Berlin 1989.
Articles and unpublished manuscripts
- Andreas Barz: What remains of the ideas of re-education after the end of the Cold War? Notes on the rescue of the student village Schlachtensee . In: Kai Kappel, Mattias Müller (Hrsg.): Historical images and culture of remembrance in the architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries . Regensburg (2014), pp. 111–128.
- Andreas Butter: The student village Berlin-Schlachtensee. Notes on architectural and social history . (Unpublished script as an attachment to the report by the Berlin State Monuments Office.) Berlin 2005.
- Marina Döring: Student residences . In: Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin (ed.): Berlin and its buildings . Part VII, Volume B Social housing. Berlin (2003), pp. 206-244.
- Dorothea Külbel: Restoring democracy . In: Bauwelt , Heft 35 (2012), pp. 20–27.
- Peter Rumpf: Redevelopment of the student village Berlin-Schlachtensee . In: Baumeister , Booklet B6 (2008), pp. 86–91.
- Student village Berlin-Zehlendorf . In: Bauwelt , issue 51/52 (1959), pp. 1448–1497.
- Christoph Tempel: Studentendorf Schlachtensee is a national cultural monument . In: Bauwelt , Issue 20 (2006), p. 4.
- Student village of the Free University of Berlin, Berlin-Schlachtensee . In: Werk - Swiss monthly for architecture, art, artistic trade . No. 9, (1961), pp. 128-131.
- Mathias Remmele: ... getting on in years. Student village Schlachtensee. In: "Deutsche Bauzeitung", 3 (2015) 58–63.
Web links
- Cooperative Studentendorf Schlachtensee eG
- Student self-administration Studentendorf Schlachtensee e. V.
- Entries in the Berlin State Monument List:
Individual evidence
- ↑ Beatrice Härig: The Democracy Experiment. In: Monuments , Volume 29, No. 6, December 2019, pp. 20–26.
- ↑ The weighting of the respective areas is also made clear by the ratio of individual living space of 40 to 60 percent communal space.
- ↑ See Dorothea Külbel (see literature), p. 20: “What is democratic about the architecture of Fehling, Gogel & Pfankuch is, as it were, independent of the participation model chosen and does not necessarily have to follow the colleges or tutors principle. Even after the abolition of the tutor model, the student village has proven to be a place that promotes democracy and participation. The student revolt of the 1968 movement would hardly have been possible without spaces for development like the student village of Schlachtensee and without places where people can emancipate themselves from their own society. "
- ↑ The library was part of the colleges concept and offered books and magazines on around 80 m². Due to financial difficulties, but above all because of the competing institute libraries of the universities, the operation of a library was no longer profitable and was discontinued. The building was used as a table tennis room and later as a fitness room. The grocery store also only survived a short time in the student village. On the initiative of the student body, after completion of the residential community buildings, a children's shop was founded by Krämer, Pfennig & Sieverts in order to offer the parents living in the student village a care option.
- ↑ The result of the competition for the Philharmonie is described in detail in the Bauwelt magazine , January 1957. Parallels to the community house, which was realized later, but also to Frank Lloyd Wright's designs, become apparent when looking at the designs.
- ^ Butter, p. 8.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Hermann Mattern's garden, which is reminiscent of a heather landscape with prominent groups of trees, allowed only little student use, despite the great spatial compositions. The lawns were not designed as sunbathing areas with individual grass perennials, but purely as an ornamental garden area. The diagonal paths did not allow direct routes to the outside, so that beaten paths emerged everywhere that were later paved. Except for the small terrace areas of the house, the village square and the garden did not offer any special lounge areas, which outraged the residents.
- ↑ Butter, ibid.
- ↑ The village now belongs to the Swiss. In: Berliner Zeitung of June 17, 2010.
- ↑ Student village becomes a construction site. In: The daily newspaper of September 11, 2006.
- ↑ Press release ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 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. .
Coordinates: 52 ° 25 ′ 44 ″ N , 13 ° 12 ′ 56 ″ E