Villa Kennedy
Villa Kennedy is a luxury hotel in Frankfurt am Main . It belongs to the English Rocco Forte group . It is located on Kennedyallee in Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen .
Villa Speyer
The hotel complex consists of the listed central building, the "Villa Speyer", as well as the new buildings built in the same style. The villa was built according to designs by the Frankfurt architect Alfred Günther in 1901 in the historicizing forms of the Gothic and Renaissance periods and with a high-quality ashlar facade. It has a risalit structure and is closed on the eastern side by a corner tower. The original owner of the building at Forsthausstraße 62 (today Kennedyallee 70) was the Jewish banker Eduard Beit von Speyer (1860–1933) - son of the Hamburg entrepreneur Ferdinand Beit and a member of the Speyer family through marriage - one of the wealthiest Germans at the time of the German Empire. In 1938 the villa was "Aryanized" and became the property of the city of Frankfurt, which made it available to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Promotion of Science as the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biophysics (from 1948: Max Planck Society or . Max Planck Institute for Biophysics ). The institute was the workplace of the biophysicist Boris Rajewsky , who was respected for his scientific achievements and controversial because of his pro-National Socialist attitude. In 1949, the heir and son of the builder Herbert Beit von Speyer made a settlement with the city of Frankfurt am Main. The property remained in the possession of the city for a settlement of 150,000 DM.
Villa Kennedy
At the beginning of the 2000s, the Frankfurt project developer FAY acquired the entire property, had the Villa Speyer redesigned by the London architects Demetri Porphyrios and expanded considerably with new buildings. The hotel lobby and, among others in the tower, the "Georg Speyer Suite", which is one of the largest presidential suites in Europe with 326 m², are located in the Villa Speyer . The villa was given back its original facade, which had been lost by aerial bombs in the Second World War during the air raids on Frankfurt am Main . In particular, the gable and the facade decorations were renewed and the post-war top floor was removed and the original version reconstructed. The English Rocco Forte Hotels could be won as tenants . The entire property has been owned by the GEG German Estate Group since 2016, which in turn has been owned by DIC Asset AG since 2019 .
The new buildings, which today make up 90 percent of the hotel complex, were carried out in the same historicizing forms and careful architecture with the original facade material. Today the Villa Kennedy presents itself as a closed ensemble, which, although largely built in the 21st century, corresponds to the type of large palace hotel of the previous turn of the century. The 5-star hotel has 163 rooms, a restaurant and conference rooms.
The JFK's Bar 2012 in the Villa Kennedy received the "Glenfiddich Award for bar culture in 2011," one of the most coveted awards in the bar scene.
literature
- Karlsch, Rainer: Boris Rajewsky and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biophysics in the Nazi Era , in: Helmut Maier (Ed.): Community research, authorized agents and the transfer of knowledge: the role of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the system of war-related research of National Socialism (History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism; 17), 2007, pp. 395–452, ISBN 978-3-8353-0182-5 .
- Vinz de Rouet: I love Sachsenhausen! 33 reasons to love Sachsenhausen. Epubli, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86931-738-0 .
- State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.): Villa Speyer In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hessen
- Dieter Wesp: Villa Kennedy: residential building - research laboratory - luxury hotel: a piece of Frankfurt history: of wealth and robbery, of displacement and a new beginning, of privatization and new luxury , epubli, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-7450-4112-5 .
Web links
- Villa Kennedy website
- "Villa Kennedy" opens: Frankfurt receives super luxury hotel for the World Cup . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 2, 2006
Individual evidence
- ^ Address book Frankfurt 1901. Eduard Beit is listed there for the first time in 1901 with Forsthausstraße 62 as his residential address, after he was noted in the address books in 1899 and 1900 as the owner with the addition "New building".
- ^ Monument topography of the city of Frankfurt am Main. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7973-0576-1 , p. 267.
- ^ Eduard Beit von Speyer was not ennobled until 1910. Until then he was called Eduard Beit
- ↑ History of Villa Kennedy / Villa Speyer by Palace Hotels of the World (in English) ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Doris Kaufmann: History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society during National Socialism. Wallstein, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-89244-423-4 / ISBN 978-3-89244-423-7 , p. 406.
- ↑ Dieter Wesp: Villa Kennedy: residential building, research laboratory, luxury hotel. epubli, Frankfurt 2017, p. 133
- ↑ Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen a closer look: The Sachsenhausen Westend - Die Kennedyallee , there section: Forsthausstrasse No. 70 - Eduard Beit von Speyer (1860-1933) , lisa.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de of July 13, 2019
- ↑ gourmet-report.de: In the presidential suite with a spectacular view of Mainhattan's skyline
- ↑ GEG German Estate Group buys Villa Kennedy in Frankfurt
- ^ Eva von Engelberg-Dočkal (PDF; 2.1 MB): Reconstruction as contemporary architecture? Historicizing building in the context of monument preservation . Lecture at the Bauhaus Dessau on March 31, 2007
- ↑ Report on the award ( Memento of the original from July 20, 2016 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: 50 ° 5 ′ 49 ″ N , 8 ° 40 ′ 10 ″ E