Villa Gans (Koenigstein)
The Villa Gans is a listed former upper-class residential building in Königstein im Taunus and now serves as the administrative headquarters of the German Pension Insurance Hesse .
construction
The Frankfurt industrialist Adolf Gans (* 1842, † March 6, 1912) commissioned the construction of a representative three-wing country house as a retirement home. In 1910, the architect Bruno Paul built the Villa Gans on the 114,000 square meter site on the outskirts of Königstein. The property was designed as a terraced park. The Swiss painter Karl Walser created large-format murals for the interior design, which, as illusion paintings (similar to today's photo wallpapers ), gave the impression of spaces opening up into nature. The client did not live to see the completion of this villa.
The Vordertaunus was the preferred residence of wealthy Frankfurt citizens around the turn of the century. Other members of the Gans family had villas built. So Ludwig Wilhelm Gans, the grandson of Cassella co-founder Ludwig Aaron Gans in Oberursel (see: Villa Gans (Oberursel) ), later an educational institution of the DGB youth. Daughter Clara Gans also had the Gans Villa built on Falkensteiner Strasse in Kronberg im Taunus by architect Peter Behrens in 1929 (see Villa Gans (Kronberg) ). Brother Friedrich Ludwig (Fritz) Gans had found a building site in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe in 1893 and had a castle-like villa with 60 rooms built there by Louis Jacobi and Alfred Leopold Löwengard.
Military use
During the First World War , the widow of Adolf Gans made the villa available to the military out of patriotism and bore the running costs herself. The villa was used as an officer's rest home. The widow died in 1918 and ownership passed to the couple's five daughters.
After the end of the war, Königstein was occupied by French and later British troops from 1918 to 1928 as part of the occupation of the Rhineland . The Villa Gans was confiscated and used by the occupation forces.
Rest home of the Reichspost
With the seizure of power of the Nazis and the members of the Jewish family Goose were victims of persecution. In 1938, Adolf Gans' family was forced to sell Villa Gans in Königstein for 280,000 Reichsmarks (today's purchasing power: 1.21 million euros) to the Deutsche Reichspost . Even this money was denied to the owners. It was paid into a Sperrmark account and confiscated after the goose heirs were forced to emigrate.
The Deutsche Reichspost operated a rest home for female postal workers in the Villa Gans. She ran another rest home in the nearby Oberreifenberg , today's nature park hotel Weilquelle.
Restitution and use of the clinic
In 1945 the occupying forces confiscated Villa Gans and used it as a “Victory Guest House” as a guest house. General Eisenhower now used the first floor as his quarters. Here he received as host u. a. Georg C. Marshall, General Clay, John D. Rockefeller, Josef P. Kennedy, Paul Getty, Henry Ford II. And also Bette Davis, Errol Flynn etc. On April 1, 1952, the restitution was made to the heirs of Adolf Gans. The heirs did not keep the house, however, but sold it to the State Insurance Institute Hessen (LVA Hessen) .
The LVA Hessen operated the Hainerberg Clinic in Villa Gans, an observation hospital with an internal department and a tuberculosis department . In 1978 the clinic was temporarily closed and reopened in 1982 after expanding to 165 beds as a clinic with a focus on psychosomatic diseases . In 1997 the clinic was closed and the other six clinics of the LVA Hessen took over.
Villa Gans was converted into the administrative headquarters of the LVA Hessen for 23.3 million euros and has been used for this purpose by the Deutsche Rentenversicherung Hessen as the successor to the LVA Hessen since 2005 .
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literature
- Heinz Sturm-Godramstein: Jews in Königstein. Königstein im Taunus 1983, ISBN 3-9800793-0-9 , pp. 36-38.
- Angela von Gans / Monika Groening: The Gans family 1350-1963 ; Verlag Regionalkultur 2006, ISBN 3-89735-486-1
Web links
- Article FAZ "Landesversicherungsanstalt moves into offices at the former" Villa Gans "from June 16, 2005
- Rebuild in 2003
Coordinates: 50 ° 10 ′ 18 ″ N , 8 ° 28 ′ 0.5 ″ E