Villa Kamecke

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Central building of the Villa Kamecke after the entrance was relocated as a Royal York Lodge , around 1900
The Villa Kamecke, later the Royal York Lodge, on an old engraving
View of the Villa Kamecke from the Spree side (directly above the top of the mast of the sailing ship),
detail from an old Berlin cityscape

The Villa Kamecke , also called Loge Royal York , was a baroque villa built by Andreas Schlueter at the beginning of the 18th century on Dorotheenstraße in Berlin . After the worst destruction in World War II , the remains were removed in 1950.

The construction

The garden house for Ernst Bogislav von Kameke was designed by Andreas Schlüter and built in 1711/1712 in his private pleasure garden in Dorotheenstadt on Leste Strasse . Schlüter's last building in Berlin, with its own hand-made decoration of figures and facades, was considered "a masterpiece of the late North German high baroque". The flat-roofed building of eleven axes , known at the time as Lust-Hauß , was single-storey with a low attic and had a two-storey curved three-axis central building projecting towards the street. On its roof there were four statues each facing the street and the garden. A hall leading through the two floors of the central building opened up towards the garden.

Location and owner

The pleasure house was set back from the street on a property opposite the Dorotheenstädtische Church . Behind the villa there was a park-like garden with an artificial hill, a fountain and a “salon of tall chestnut and elm trees” that sloped down to the bank of the Spree , where it ended with a “magnificent balustrade with putti”. The property bounded to the east by Neustädtische Kirchstrasse was one of the most westerly near the Berlin fortress wall . First at the shipyard, in 1695 it came into the possession of Daniel Ludolf von Danckelmans , whose heirs sold it to Kamecke in 1711. Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky acquired the villa from Kamecke's heirs in 1746. After several changes of ownership, it was the seat of the Royal York Lodge from 1779 until its dissolution in 1935.

The changes in use of the garden house, which had already become an urban residential building before Gotzkowsky's time, resulted in radical renovations of its interior. The handing over of a strip along Neustädtische Kirchstrasse for the purpose of development made the property considerably smaller and the ridge of the Reichstag in the 19th century cut it off from the Spree for good. After additions to both sides in the years 1881–1883 ​​by the architects Ende & Böckmann , the Villa Kamecke was no longer vacant.

The fall of the Villa Kamecke

During World War II , the interior burned out as a result of an Allied bombing raid in November 1943. The outer walls with all of Schlüter's facade decorations were preserved. In August 1945 only the garden facade and the walls of the hall remained. The four figures that were removed from the roof of the central building before the ruin was blown up in 1950 have been exhibited in the Kameckehalle in the Bode Museum since 1953 . Some other plastic remains came to the Märkisches Museum . The property of the villa is integrated into the area of ​​the press and information office of the federal government and built over.

Web links

Commons : Villa Kamecke  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
  • historical recordings in the photo archive Photo Marburg
  • Katharina Dudey: Where When What - Video, 2010
  • Illustration of the street side in a documentation from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg: →
  • Illustration of the floor plan in a documentation from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg: →

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Götz Eckardt (ed.): Fates of German architectural monuments in the Second World War. A documentation of the damage and total losses in the area of ​​the German Democratic Republic. Volume 1. Berlin - capital of the GDR, districts Rostock, Schwerin, Neubrandenburg, Potsdam, Frankfurt / Oder, Cottbus, Magdeburg , Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1980, p. 36 (with illustration).
  2. ↑ Detailed description of the building by Richard Borrmann: Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler von Berlin. With a historical introduction by P. Clausewitz , Verlag von Julius Springer, Berlin 1893, pp. 344–346.
  3. ↑ For the history of the garden, see Folkwin Wendland: Berlins gardens and parks from the founding of the city to the late nineteenth century , Propylaen, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-549-06645-7 , pp. 72-75. There also the quotations and the contemporary designation Lust-Hauß .
  4. ^ Based on a report by Hans Scharoun , in facsimile with Bernd Maether: The Destruction of the Berlin City Palace. A documentation , Berlin Verlag Arno Spitz, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-8305-0117-X , p. 151.
  5. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Engel and Hans-Joachim Schlott-Kotschote (eds.): Fontane then and now. A selection from the “Walks through the Mark Brandenburg” with additional reports, the previously unpublished introduction to a “History of the Friesack Country” and a list of the churches and mansions of the former province of Brandenburg and Berlin that are important from the point of view of monument preservation according to the status of April 1, 1958 , publishing house for international cultural exchange, Berlin-Zehlendorf 1958, p. 236.
  6. ↑ Below there are two iron vases from the garden, see Walter Stengel : Flowers. Source studies on Berlin's cultural history , Märkisches Museum, Berlin 1952, p. 5.
  7. ^ History of the place and the building. The building complex of the Press and Information Office , bmub.bund.de , accessed on March 2, 2016.

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '7 "  N , 13 ° 23' 5"  E