Viktorshöhe (Bad Godesberg)

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Aerial photo of the Viktorshöhe (2013)

The Viktorshöhe in Schweinheim , a district of the Bad Godesberg district of Bonn , dates back to a villa and landscape park from the beginning of the 20th century. It was the official seat of the first Federal President in 1949/50 and, during this time, expanded to include numerous new buildings, from 1975 to 1991 the seat of the Soviet and, until 1999, the Russian embassy in the Federal Republic of Germany. A Consulate General of the Russian Federation has been based here since 1999 .

location

The Viktorshöhe is located in the north of the district of Schweinheim on the south side of the Klufterberg sloping to the north at 163– 165  m above sea level on the Kottenforstterrasse . NHN . In the north and east the area is bounded by a forest area, in the south by the forest road .

history

Villa Wendelstadt

Villa Wendelstadt after its completion (1913)

From the middle of the 19th century, and increasingly from 1857 onwards, the so-called "Schweinheimer Heide" area was used for the extraction of alum ore and vitriol oil . 1890 were Berechtsame canceled, after which the site was broke. Then a landscape park was created for the entrepreneur Carl Samuel Eduard Toepler (* 1857) in the area of ​​the former alum dump . Between 1893 and 1900, the gardens were redesigned under the direction of the head gardener Senf. In 1907 Hermann Wendelstadt (1862–1928), a physician and professor at the University of Bonn and the son of the former Godesberg mayor and Cologne banker Victor Wendelstadt, acquired an area of ​​around 300 acres on the Schweinheimer Heide, now renamed Viktorshöhe in honor of his father . From 1908 to 1910 he had the Villa Wendelstadt built here based on a design by the Royal Building Councilor Johannes Radke . Construction began in September 1908, construction took 16 months and was in the hands of the architect Theo Westbrocks. Five outbuildings were built together with the villa: a porter's house with an automobile hall, a poultry house and three greenhouses . The buildings on Viktorshöhe were also designed for use as Hermann Wendelstadt's private research institute.

As of May 1922, the Wendelstadt couple no longer owned the property, but instead a property management company called Wendelstadt & Co. founded by Hermann Wendelstadt. The use of the property by the family ended in 1928 with the death of Wendelstadt, whose sons settled in Bremen .

Period of National Socialism (1933–1945)

The Wendelstadt & Co company leased the property from June 1933 to the Bad Godesberg Office , which in the same month made it available to the National Socialist Sturmabteilung (SA) to set up a labor camp with around 200 members. It was called "General Litzmann " and was carried by the Lower Rhine Labor District Association. The Godesberg Office had a right of first refusal as part of the lease and acquired the Viktorshöhe on July 7, 1933 - with the exception of the agriculturally used land - with an area of ​​38  ha (of 54 ha). From March 1934 the "SA-Hochschulamt Bonn" rented the premises as a sports school or military training camp of Bonn University .

From the end of October 1935 to the end of March 1938, the Viktorshöhe, along with three other locations in Bad Godesberg, served as accommodation for members of the " SA -Hilfswerk Nord-West", the successor organization of the Austrian Legion , which was recruited from Austrian National Socialists who had fled to the German Reich. The party then acquired the property to set up a rest home for the pension scheme of the Cologne-Aachen district . In 1943 the Deutsche Reichsbahn took it over to house a school for the higher service . Towards the end of the Second World War , the premises of the Reichsbahnschule on Viktorshöhe served as the headquarters of the Reichsbahndirektion Cologne , whose previous main building had been damaged. Due to its strategic importance, the Allied air forces bombed the Viktorshöhe in February 1945, causing damage to the Villa Wendelstadt.

Use by the federal government

After the Second World War, the Viktorshöhe served as a rest home for around 30–40 employees of the Reichsbahn . When Bonn was designated the provisional seat of government of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 , the Viktorshöhe offered itself as the temporary seat of the Federal President, who was to be elected for the first time in September 1949 . The federal government rented the area from the Reichsbahn and had it rebuilt and furnished from September 3rd according to plans by the architect Hans Schwippert at a cost of 350,000 D-Marks . The last residents of the convalescent home moved out on September 5th, and the Viktorshöhe had to be ready for occupancy by the time of the Federal President's election on September 12th. A total of nine construction companies were involved in the renovation carried out by the construction management of the Reichsbahn, the garden design was commissioned by Hermann Mattern .

On September 12, 1949, the first Federal President, Theodor Heuss, moved into Viktorshöhe on the day of his election together with initially 25 employees of the Federal President's Office - on September 19, 1949, the members of the first Federal Cabinet received their certificates of appointment there. For the guarding of the official seat, for which there was a guard house on site since the renovation, 28 officers of the police of the administrative district of Cologne were initially responsible and from April 1950 the city police of Bonn were responsible. Heuss and his family lived in three rooms on the upper floor of the villa, in which the more than 60 employees of the - initially rather unorganized - presidential office also worked. Foreign ministers Dean Acheson (USA) and Robert Schuman (France) were among the state guests received at Viktorshöhe .

On December 15, 1950, the Federal President was able to leave the Viktorshöhe and move his official residence to the converted Villa Hammerschmidt in the center of the new parliamentary and government district . Thereupon the Federal Ministry of Transport took over the five- hectare property on the Viktorshöhe in February 1951 in order to accommodate the road traffic department, which was previously located in Offenbach .

Embassy of the Soviet Union / Russian Federation

Parade drive of the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Bonn (2014)

After the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955, the Soviet embassy was initially located in Rolandswerth , the office in the former Hotel Rolandseck-Groyen and the residence in the Villa Henzen . In 1965 plans were made for the embassy to move to a larger property. In exchange for a plot of land owned by the German embassy in Moscow , the federal government also offered the Soviet Union a plot of land covering seven (of 16 federally owned) hectares on the Viktorshöhe, which was sold in 1971 for 13.5 million D-Marks by the Federal Railroad in Moscow the property of the federal government passed. In Muffendorf has already been completed in 1972 an apartment building for the embassy staff, in the spring of 1972, the then ambassador was referring Valentin Falin near the Polish Viktorshöhe House Venner Straße 31 as the new residence of the embassy. In 1975, the Bonn city council passed a development plan for the site in Schweinheim, which enabled a new building for the Soviet embassy. Thereupon the USSR acquired the Viktorshöhe from the federal government in 1975, so that the Villa Wendelstadt became the seat of the embassy chancellery even before the new building plans were implemented.

After an initial building application in May 1980, the foundation stone was laid for the new embassy buildings on Viktorshöhe in April 1984, which were carried out under the direction of a joint venture commissioned by Hochtief and Wayss & Freytag as general contractor , and a full-fledged infrastructure to cover all the essential needs of the embassy staff created. An 18-meter-high complex was built as the office building southwest of Villa Wendelstadt, consisting of an atrium house and a representative, inwardly curved and marble- clad wing in neoclassical shapes facing the park . To the west of it are four staggered residential buildings (for about 120 families), which are flanked by a school and a cinema building . The facility also includes a gym , a swimming pool and a kindergarten , as well as a gatehouse and an underground car park designed for 150 cars .

Banquet Hall (2014)

In June 1989 the new embassy buildings were inaugurated by Mikhail Gorbachev , and the last ones were completed in 1990. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the embassy was converted into the diplomatic representation of the Russian Federation in Germany. The Ukrainian embassy , which before its independence (1991) formed a union republic within the Soviet Union , was temporarily located at Viktorshöhe . On May 8, 1999, the UN special envoy Carl Bildt and the Russian special envoy for Yugoslavia Viktor Stepanowitsch Tschernomyrdin met there for talks on the settlement of the Kosovo conflict . In the course of relocating the seat of government , the Russian embassy moved to Berlin in August 1999 (→ Russian embassy in Berlin ). A Russian consulate general was then set up at Viktorshöhe , which went into operation in November 1999 and was initially responsible for Baden-Württemberg , Hesse , North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland with 200,000 nationals. After the establishment of another consulate general in Frankfurt am Main , the consular district has included the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland since October 8, 2007. At least until 2008 there was also a branch of the Russian embassy, ​​which was last occupied by a deputy marine attaché . On November 30, 2012, an external service provider opened a new Russian visa center in Bonn, which has been located in the Godesberg center (Burgstrasse 54) since December 2016 after the partner company changed. The Consulate General currently employs 25 diplomats and around 100 other employees - exclusively Russian citizens (as of 2013); it is the world's largest professional consular mission for Russia. The consulate general is also home to a museum of the diplomatic presence of Russia on the Rhine.

Consuls General after taking office:

literature

Web links

Commons : Former Embassy of the Soviet Union / Russian Federation  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Gregor Berghausen: The Wendelstadt and Godesberg family . In: Godesberger Heimatblätter , No. 50 (2012), Bad Godesberg 2013.
  2. ^ Rita Hombach: landscape gardens in the Rhineland. The collection of the historical inventory and studies of the garden culture of the "long" 19th century. (Contributions to architectural and art monuments in the Rhineland, Volume 37) Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 2010, ISBN 978-3-88462-298-8 , pp. 143, 241.
  3. ^ A b Karl Josef Schwalb: Austrian National Socialists in exile in Bad Godesberg (1934–38) . In: Godesberger Heimatblätter: Annual issue of the Association for Home Care and Home History Bad Godesberg eV , ISSN  0436-1024 , Issue 36, Association for Home Care and Home History Bad Godesberg , Bad Godesberg 1998, pp. 55–62.
  4. ^ Helmut Vogt : Guardians of the Bonn Republic: The Allied High Commissioners 1949–1955 , Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2004, ISBN 3-506-70139-8 , p. 108.
  5. ^ City of Bonn, City Archives (ed.); Helmut Vogt : "The Minister lives in a company car on platform 4": The beginnings of the federal government in Bonn 1949/50 , Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-922832-21-0 , pp. 59–61, 61–62, 100– 101, 105, 160, 194-195, 228.
  6. ^ Institute for Contemporary History : Files on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany 1973 , Oldenbourg Verlag 1989, p. 85
  7. ^ Institute for Contemporary History (Ed.): Files on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany 1981 , Oldenbourg Verlag 2012, p. 79
  8. ↑ After ten years of history and at the same time as the "Starting Shot" in Moscow , General-Anzeiger , April 5, 1984, p. 12
  9. ↑ Karl-Heinz van Kaldenkerken , Oberstadtdirektor Bonn (ed.); Friedrich Busmann : Expansion of the federal capital. 10 years capital city agreement 1975–1985 . Bonn 1986, p. 19.
  10. ↑ Michael Gassmann : Built messages . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 26, 2001, No. 224, p. 52
  11. ↑ The Kremlin chief must rule on the Rhine , Der Spiegel , June 12, 1989
  12. ↑ Foreign Office (ed.): List of diplomatic missions in the Federal Republic of Germany , as of March 1992
  13. ↑ Foreign Office (ed.): List of diplomatic missions and other representations in the Federal Republic of Germany , as of December 1993
  14. ↑ Tagesschau from May 8, 1999 ( online )
  15. ↑ Bonn Council Information System - Statement by the Administration (PDF), September 2006
  16. ↑ Bek. D. Prime Minister of December 9, 1999: Professional Consular Mission of the Russian Federation, Bonn , Ministerialblatt (MBl. NRW.) - Edition 2000 No. 2 of January 14, 2000, p. 17
  17. ↑ Now the Russians are here too , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , December 28, 2007
  18. ↑ Bek. D. Prime Minister - III.A 2 - 03.14-13 / 06 v. November 5, 2007: Professional consular mission of the Russian Federation, Bonn , Ministerialblatt (MBl. NRW.) - 2007 edition No. 34 of November 30, 2007, p. 779
  19. ↑ List of diplomatic missions and other representations in the Federal Republic of Germany ( Memento of November 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) (as of October 30, 2008), Foreign Office
  20. ↑ Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Bonn ( Memento from January 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  21. ↑ Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Bonn - visa and entry questions ( Memento from August 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  22. ↑ Visa and entry questions , Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Bonn
  23. ^ Russian Visa Center in Bonn , DG News, January 25, 2017
  24. ^ A piece of Russia in Godesberg , General-Anzeiger, October 24, 2013
  25. ↑ Interview with the outgoing Consul General of the Russian Federation in Bonn Fedor W. Khorokhordin . In: Kabinett - Journal of the Federal City of Bonn and the Rhenish Region , Volume 21, Issue 2 / Summer 2010 ( Memento from November 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), p. 20.
  26. ↑ Consul General - Welcome , Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Bonn
  27. ↑ Professional consular mission of the Russian Federation, Bonn - Bek. D. Prime Minister v. January 11, 2000 - AS AB-501-1 . In: Ministerialblatt (MBl. NRW.) , Edition 2000 No. 1 of March 2, 2000, p. 148.
  28. ↑ Consulate General of the Russian Federation, Bonn - Bek. D. Prime Minister v. February 6, 2001 - III.6-501-1 . In: Ministerialblatt (MBl. NRW.) , Edition 2001 No. 13 of March 9, 2001, p. 336.
  29. ↑ Consulate General of the Russian Federation, Bonn - Bek. D. Prime Minister v. June 5, 2001 - III.6-501-103 / 01 . In: Ministerialblatt (MBl. NRW.) , Edition 2001 No. 41 of July 16, 2001, p. 913.
  30. ↑ Consulate General of the Russian Federation, Bonn - Bek. D. Prime Minister v. April 24, 2003 - III.3 03.14-5 / 03 . In: Ministerialblatt (MBl. NRW.) , Edition 2003 No. 19 of May 20, 2003, p. 457.
  31. ↑ Professional consular mission of the Russian Federation, Bonn - Bek. D. Prime Minister v. July 11, 2006 - III.4 03.14-13 / 06 . In: Ministerialblatt (MBl. NRW.) , 2006 edition No. 22 of August 4, 2006, p. 411.
  32. ↑ Professional consular mission of the Russian Federation in Bonn - Bek. D. Prime Minister - III A 2 - 03.14. - 12/10 BC June 25, 2010 . In: Ministerialblatt (MBl. NRW.) , 2010 edition No. 33 of October 19, 2010, p. 773.
  33. ↑ Professional consular mission of the Russian Federation in Bonn - Bek. D. Prime Minister - LPA II 1 - 03.14-4 / 15 v. April 30, 2015 . In: Ministerialblatt (MBl. NRW.) , 2015 edition No. 15 of May 29, 2015, p. 358.

Coordinates: 50 ° 41 ′ 6.4 ″  N , 7 ° 8 ′ 2.2 ″  E