Villa La Collina

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The Villa La Collina (2012)

The Villa La Collina (German "Villa Hügel") is a historic villa building in the village of Cadenabbia near Tremezzo on the west bank of Lake Como in Italy . It became known as the vacation home of Konrad Adenauer , the first Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany , who spent many of his summer vacations there from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s. The villa with its 2.7 hectare park has been used by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation as an international meeting place since 1977 . In 1990 it was expanded to include the Accademia Konrad Adenauer and is now also used as a conference venue for guest events and as a hotel .

In 2004 the Villa La Collina was classified by a parliamentary committee as a memorial of national importance and since then it has been the only memorial in Germany outside of German territory.

Architecture, landscape and history

View of Lake Como and the town of Bellagio from Villa La Collina

The villa building, built in 1899, is located high above the village of Cadenabbia, which explains the name "Villa Hügel". The village of Cadenabbia, located directly on Lake Como, belongs to the municipality of Griante and is its tourist center. The park surrounding the villa is directly adjacent to Villa Arminio , where Konrad Adenauer was a guest in 1957 - during one of his first holiday stays in Cadenabbia .

The property has been owned by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) since 1977. In order to enable the operation of the area as a modern conference center, the KAS built a guest and farm building, the Accademia Konrad Adenauer, below the villa on the park area . In addition, the villa was rebuilt and modernized. Currently (2015) the facility for conferences , family celebrations or hotel guests offers event and accommodation options for up to 60 people in 34 rooms, 22 of which are in the new building. In addition to 12 guest rooms, the villa has a dining room, fireplace, library and a terrace with a view of the lake. There is also a restaurant with a covered terrace, a conference room with simultaneous interpreting , two boccia lanes, a garden swimming pool and the 27,000 square meter park available to conference or holiday guests .

The area was designated as a landscape protection zone in the 1990s , which makes further new buildings and extensions impossible.

Konrad Adenauer's connection to the villa

Konrad Adenauer playing boccia in Cadenabbia 1958

On the recommendation of Heinrich von Brentano , who was Foreign Minister under Adenauer from 1955 to 1961 and who had family roots in the Italian Tremezzo, Adenauer first visited the area in the spring of 1957. After vacation stays in Cadenabbia at Villa Rosa and Villa Arminio , Adenauer moved into Villa La Collina for the first time during his summer vacation in 1959 from August to September. The former Federal Chancellor stayed a total of 18 times in the small Italian village and stayed at Villa La Collina twice a year until his death in 1967, most recently in the summer of 1966.

Adenauer's former chancellor portraits of Graham Sutherland and Oskar Kokoschka were both made in the Villa La Collina.

Villa La Collina (srl) and controversy

The villa was acquired by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung from a German building contractor in 1977 and is now operated as a srl , which is close to a German GmbH . In the 1990s, 8.3 million  DM federal funds were allocated, of which 5 million DM went to the construction of the conference center and 3.3 million DM to the renovation of the villa. However, the facility could not be operated economically as a pure educational facility, the expense of maintaining the property and its operation, including personnel costs, led to annual losses of DM 700,000 in the early years.

The KAS only achieved cost coverage from the mid-1990s through, according to its own statements, “third-party events from other non-profit organizations” and “more tourist visits”. From 1998 the Federal Audit Office criticized this practice and complained that the Villa La Collina was predominantly run as a "hotel with tourist-commercial use" and that the educational facility was being used inappropriately. The KAS then tried repeatedly but unsuccessfully to sell the property. From then on, the Court of Auditors demanded a minimum share of the income from the conference operations of 80 percent, otherwise the repayment of the entire funding amount would be threatened due to misuse of funding. Finally, in 2004, the budget committee of the German Bundestag classified the villa as a memorial site of national importance , and the federal government should also help finance it. The Ministry of the Interior thereupon waived the repayment of the funds for the purchase and expansion of the property. Only part of the subsidy for expansion and operating costs amounting to 244,000 euros was reclaimed  by the KAS due to "unintended" use.

This did not affect the commitment of the federal government to continue to bear up to 40 percent of the operating costs in accordance with the average annual share of political education measures in the villa. For this, the KAS has received an average of around 100,000 euros from the federal government since 1994 and according to information as of 2005. The total amount of public subsidies for the villa in 2005 was 5.3 million euros. In the meantime, the system of political foundations in Germany and their public funding came under repeated criticism from the public and the media, with both the public grants to the Villa La Collina and its "construction" as a "national memorial on foreign soil" being discussed.

The Villa La Collina is currently (2015) still operated by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation as an "international meeting and conference center for politics, business and culture" and advertised as an "individual meeting or vacation location".

Monument in Cadenabbia for the vacationer and honorary citizen Konrad Adenauer

literature

  • Verónica Reisenegger (Ed.): Cadenabbia and Lake Como. Adenauer's Villa La Collina - a cultural and political meeting place with European charisma. Enjoy, hike and relax (=  Merian - the pleasure of traveling ). Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Sankt Augustin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939826-68-2 .

Web links

Commons : Villa La Collina  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Adenauer in Cadenabbia. In: Website of Villa La Collina (www.kas.de/villalacollina). Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung , February 6, 2007, accessed on May 8, 2015 .
  2. ↑ a b c Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Where Konrad Adenauer learned to play boccia. Chancellor private. In: Die Welt (online edition) . WeltN24 GmbH, September 21, 2013, accessed on May 8, 2015 .
  3. ↑ a b See Villa La Collina. Lake Como. In: Website of Villa La Collina (www.kas.de/villalacollina). Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung , May 5, 2015, accessed on May 8, 2015 .
  4. ^ A b c Franz Schmider: Villa La Collina: Adenauer's second Bonn is to be sold for 11.5 million. In: Der Tagesspiegel (online edition) . Verlag Der Tagesspiegel GmbH, July 17, 2000, accessed on May 8, 2015 .
  5. ^ NN: Where Adenauer played boccia. Foundations . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1/2000 , January 3, 2000, pp. 18 ( spiegel.de [accessed on May 8, 2015]).
  6. ↑ a b NN: Adenauer villa used for purposes other than intended . Foundations. In: Der Spiegel . No. 22/2005 , May 30, 2005, p. 18 ( spiegel.de [accessed on May 8, 2015]).
  7. ↑ a b Martin Lutz, Uwe Müller : The cartel of the state plunderers. Political foundations. In: Die Welt (online edition) . WeltN24 GmbH, October 10, 2014, accessed on May 8, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Martin Lutz, Uwe Müller : The foundation system . Cover story. In: Welt am Sonntag . October 5, 2014, p. 40 ( welt.de [accessed on May 8, 2015]).

Coordinates: 45 ° 59 ′ 31 ″  N , 9 ° 14 ′ 11 ″  E