Villa Oscar Freiherr von Kohorn zu Kornegg
The Villa Oscar Freiherr von Kohorn zu Kornegg is an upper-class residential building built in 1907 at Parkstrasse 35 in Chemnitz , which has been divided into several apartments since the 1930s. The house, built by architects Wenzel Bürger (1869–1946) and Karl Johann Benirschke (1875–1941), is stylistically part of the so-called reform architecture and is a listed building .
The house was originally built for the factory owner Friedrich August Hempel, co-owner and personally liable partner of the Lohse Brothers company (dyeing and merging company), and his family. Hempel, who later also acted as a shop steward for the Sächsische Textil-Berufsgenossenschaft in Leipzig, had consciously bought this property on the edge of the city park at the end of 1908, in the vicinity of which various wealthy and influential Chemnitz manufacturers had already built their villas - the most famous example is the Villa Esche .
In September 1916, Klara Berta Hempel first became the new owner of the house. But as early as April 1917, the respected Jewish industrialist Oscar von Kohorn acquired the detached villa with side building (horse stable, coach house, apartment) and the adjacent park. According to the contract drawn up in the office of the respected notary Julius Böhmer, a purchase price of 245,000 marks was agreed. Kohorn had the house expanded in the Art Deco style and lived in it with his Vienna-born wife Valerie and his sons Heinz-Horst and Rolf Stephan.
The wealthy carpet manufacturer Kohorn, who was one of the donors for the renovation of the municipal theater in Chemnitz in 1924, had close personal relationships with its general manager Anton Richard Tauber . He also maintained good contacts with the composers Richard Strauss and Franz Lehár and with the tenor Leo Slezak . So it was not surprising that the people mentioned were repeatedly guests in the villa during their stays in Chemnitz. It is said that Richard Strauss and his wife had their own bedroom. The "Hymn to the Kohorn House", which Strauss composed in 1925 in honor of the couple in Stuttgart, is a testament to mutual respect.
During the Great Depression was that in August 1931 bankruptcy proceedings initiated against the assets Kohorns that but two months could be adjusted later. Nevertheless, in March 1933 the foreclosure auction of the villa was ordered by the court. The Sächsische Staatsbank in Dresden was used as an administrator. During this time five apartments were built into the villa under the construction management of the Chemnitz architect Erich Basarke .
The forced administration of the villa came to an end in autumn 1939 when it was sold to the Saxon State Bank. In April 1941 the dentist Dr. Oskar Heinz Schiefer (1908–1978), who had set up his own practice in Chemnitz in 1934, is the new owner. After the end of the war, Dr. Due to the low rental income, Schiefer was unable to have the construction defects on the building repaired. A new covering of the roof with tiles or renovation work on the balcony and veranda remained in the planning stage.
In 1975 the city council of Karl-Marx-Stadt bought the villa and used it as an outpatient medical and therapeutic facility until it was re-privatized at the end of the 1990s. As part of a comprehensive renovation of the house, considerable structural changes were made in 1984. After the villa property was transferred back to Kohorn's heirs, it was sold to private investors in 2005, who in the following years, in coordination with the Saxon State Office for Monument Preservation, carried out a professional repair and dismantling of the original residential villa. Today the villa houses the representative offices of a Chemnitz company and an apartment.
Literature and Sources
- Stefan Weingart: Former Villa Kohorn. In: Searching for traces. Jewish citizens in Chemnitz. Places of their life and work. Places of remembrance. Ed. from the city archive of Chemnitz. Chemnitz 2002, p. 45.
- Building files archive of the city of Chemnitz
- Land registry of the city of Chemnitz
Coordinates: 50 ° 48 ′ 44.9 " N , 12 ° 54 ′ 6.7" E