Villa Schöningen

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Villa Schöningen 2009
Reconstructed Minerva at Villa Schöningen, 2009

The Villa Schöningen is a historic residential building in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam , Berliner Strasse 86, on the corner of Berliner Strasse and Schwanenallee, a few meters west of the Glienicker Bridge .

On behalf of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Ludwig Persius designed a house in the Italian villa style for Kurd Wolfgang von Schöning , the court marshal of Prince Carl of Prussia . In the same year it was named after the town of Schöningen , east of Braunschweig , the place of origin of the von Schöning family.

After several changes of ownership and increasing neglect after 1945, the building was renovated in accordance with a listed building and a museum was opened in November 2009, which shows the history of the site as well as temporary exhibitions of contemporary art. Since 1977, the Villa Schöningen as a monument in the monument list of the country Brandenburg was added and part of a World Heritage site under a conservation Berlin-Potsdam cultural landscape.

history

Previous building and land negotiations

In place of the Villa Schöningen, there was previously a 17-year-old house, which the Potsdam master mason Christian Friedrich Fimmel built for the shipbuilder Martin Friedrich Nüssoll in 1826. To the north of the house was bordered by a wooden fence and a lavatory. This picture presented itself to the third eldest son of Friedrich Wilhelm III. , Carl von Prussia, who at the same time had the Glienicke country house on the other side of the Jungfernsee converted into a classicistic summer palace. The shipbuilder's house directly opposite disturbed the view from the palace complex into the Havel landscape due to its unpleasant exterior shape, which anyone who wandered to the popular Glienicke noticed . In 1832 the master carpenter Friedrich Wilhelm van den Bosch (1799–1855), also van der Bosch , bought the house in a foreclosure auction for 2,550 Reichstaler . He already owned the garden land bordering the shipbuilder's property in the north, which he used as a room.

South facade and site plan. Collection of Architectural Designs , 1845, Bl. XIV

After Friedrich Wilhelm IV took office in 1840, the garden architect Peter Joseph Lenné was commissioned; to beautify the landscape around Potsdam. The planning also included buildings that stood on the banks of the Havel or on connecting paths between the royal gardens and whose neglected exterior has a disruptive effect here or when looking at a further overview of the area from a high point. In this context, private owners of such houses were proposed to remodel them according to the architectural ideas of the king, or built-up land was purchased and the buildings were handed over to employees of the Prussian royal court with predetermined redesign requests. To finance the project, a cabinet order dated December 14, 1841 provided a specially set up immediate building fund with an annual budget of 20,000 Reichstalers.

The purchase of the property on Schwanenallee aimed at by Friedrich Wilhelm IV and the subsequent handover to the court marshal Kurd Wolfgang von Schöning initially failed due to an excessive demand from the master carpenter van den Bosch. Ludwig Persius noted in his work diary on May 2, 1843: I present the vd Boschsche Angel [egenheit]. SM are unwilling about the man's way of acting and realize very well that he wants to get a high purchase price or the building support from the king . Not least because of the fact that the house was built too close to the bank of the Jungfernsee due to the imprecise plot of land and was therefore partly owned by the royal family, an agreement was finally reached. On the order of Friedrich Wilhelm IV, a purchase contract was agreed on May 26, 1843 at the Potsdam City Court and signed by Kurd Wolfgang von Schöning and Friedrich Wilhelm van den Bosch on June 1, 1843. The purchase price was 5,500 thalers Courant , of which Schöning had to spend 3,000 thalers, which he had entered as a mortgage in the land register on November 10th of that year after delivery on October 8, 1843, as well as a right of first refusal of the king. He received 2,500 thalers from the Immediatbaufond.

View from the north of the Villa Schöningen with the Glienicke bridge made of stone designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the viewing pavilion Great Curiosity of the Glienicke palace complex. Collection of Architectural Drafts , 1845, Bl. XIII

A year earlier, Ludwig Persius had already received the order to create a worthy counterpart to the Italianizing Glienicke palace complex and to design the former shipbuilder's house in the Italian villa style. At the final meeting on September 29, 1843, Friedrich Wilhelm IV approved the financing of the renovation. The pure construction costs amounted to 8,020 thalers. The subsequent purchase of van den Bosch's room to the north for the creation of a courtyard, garden and, above all, a carriage depot required by Schöning increased the costs to 12,273 thalers. The gardens, with their basic architectural and geometric features , were presumably designed by the garden manager and later Berlin gardening director Gustav Meyer , a student and close collaborator of the gardening director Peter Joseph Lenné.

The villa is owned by the Wallich families

After the death of Kurd Wolfgang von Schöning on April 2, 1859, his children inherited the villa and later sold it to Prince Carl. This sold the property in 1864 to the royal appellate judge a. D. Eduard Gustav Louis Bonseri from Stettin, who lived in the house with his wife until 1871. In the same year the rentier Moritz Jacoby bought it from the childless couple for 13,000 Reichstaler , and after his death in 1878 it became the property of his three children, of whom the daughter Anna, wife of the banker Hermann Wallich , one of the first directors of the Germans Bank , was registered as the owner in the land register of the city of Potsdam in 1882. The family living in Berlin used the villa mainly in the summer months. The increasing traffic noise on the connecting road between Berlin and Potsdam, the development of the neighboring properties and, as a result, the restricted view of the Havel landscape were among other reasons for not using the villa from 1890 onwards. After twenty years of vacancy, the sale was finally considered in 1910. Despite the adversity, Hermann Wallich's son, the banker and later co-owner of the Frankfurt bank J. Dreyfus & Co. , Paul Wallich , moved into the house in 1913, which his family only lived in in the summer months in the early years and year-round from the 1920s. On December 14, 1931, he transferred the property to his non-Jewish wife Hildegard, who bought land on the banks of the Jungfernsee in 1932 and 1935 from Wilhelm II, who was living in exile in Holland .

On April 30, 1928, Hermann Wallich died at the age of 94 in Berlin. Paul Wallich, born in 1882, chose to commit suicide after the Reichskristallnacht on November 11, 1938 in Cologne. At that time, his adult children were already living abroad, and his wife Hildegard left the villa in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, to visit her family. She stayed in the United States forever , where she died in California in 1989 at the age of 101 . During the Second World War, the house was occupied from 1940 by the Wallich family's former cook and for some time served as a library for the Nazis and some military service .

Use of the villa from 1945 to the present day

State 1987; the villa is on the left, partly covered by a building at the border crossing and a balustrade of the Glienicke Bridge

The Red Army confiscated the almost undamaged villa in 1945 in order to set up a hospital for wounded Soviet soldiers. The Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB) followed the military in 1950, setting up offices on the ground floor for a short time and a children's home on the upper floor, which also moved into the lower rooms after the union moved out. When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 , a section of the fortified border system ran along Schwanenallee. The high barbed wire fence, which was later replaced by a wall made of concrete elements , ran on the east side of the house about fifteen meters from the front door parallel to the property , so that the Villa Schöningen was within the restricted border area . Although some buildings in this politically sensitive area were demolished in order to expand the soldiers' ›field of fire‹, the villa, which was only a few meters from the border crossing at Glienicke Bridge, was retained and continued to be used as a children's home, which over time also included some day-care children recorded. For example, the facility looked after around 40 children in the early 1980s, more than two-thirds of whom were week-long children who stayed in the home from Monday to Friday.

Villa Schöningen 2006. View from the southwest.

After the reunification, the Wallich heirs tried to transfer back the house, which had been publicly owned since 1983 , which the Potsdam "Office for the Regulation of Open Property Issues " announced to them in a preliminary decision on November 20, 1992. At the same time there were signs of closure of the children's weekend home, which finally took place on December 31, 1994 after the last thirteen children had been placed in a daycare center in the nearby Menzelstrasse. The Potsdamer Haus was the last children's home, of which there were 65 in the former GDR at the time of the fall of the Wall in 1989, from 126 in the mid-1970s.

The Wallich community of heirs sold the house in 1997 to the Berlin building contractor and architect Dieter Graalfs, who wanted to renovate the villa and build five more houses on the 7,400 m² property. After the development plan was rejected by the Potsdam city council due to its proximity to the world heritage site, the building contractor submitted an application for demolition, which was also rejected. The house, neglected by vacancy and vandalism, was acquired by the CEO of Axel Springer AG Mathias Döpfner and the banker Leonhard H. Fischer , CEO of the financial investor Ripplewood ( RHJ International ). After the renovation in accordance with listed buildings, a museum has been set up in the Villa Schöningen, which shows the history of the site in a permanent exhibition and contemporary art, which is presented in temporary exhibitions on the upper floor. On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall , the villa was opened on November 8, 2009 by Chancellor Angela Merkel .

architecture

Persius' design principles for conversions

As a model for the buildings designed by Ludwig Persius in the Italian style, the construction of Northern Italian villas or those in the vicinity of Rome from the 15th and 16th centuries served. Due to extensions that were added to the main house over time, the architecture of the villas did not follow regular symmetry, but rather looked like assembled parts from a construction kit due to the horizontal and vertical positioning of the different sized structures. Persius followed this design in his conversions with the possible use of the found substance, with satisfaction of the additional conditions for a desired enlargement of the facility and with consideration of the possible economy of funds, in a simple but satisfactory architectural style, and at the same time with consideration for the picturesque effect on the area. In addition, Persius deviated from the emphasis on a display facade and designed buildings with economical facade design that were designed equally on all sides. In order to bring this concept and the architectural appearance of the villa types closer to other builders and architects as a model, Friedrich Wilhelm initiated the publication of the Persius drawings in 1843 under the title “Architectural drafts for the conversion of existing buildings”.

Modification by Ludwig Persius

Front views of the Villa Schöningen and the Schiffbauerhaus, after Ludwig Persius, 1844. Collection of Architectural Drafts , 1845, Bl. XVI

Persius planned the renovation of the shipbuilder's house based on this design principle. The first construction work took place in October 1843 and the partial demolition of the house in spring 1844, the construction supervision of which was given to the construction manager Albert Julius Laucken. Of the two-storey house, five window axes long to the south and two window axes wide to the east, only the basement and ground floor were retained. The house entrance on the south side, on Berliner Straße, was given a two-storey porch with a round arch opening in the upper area and a flat gable roof, the corners of which were adorned with acroters . The half of the building with a gable roof to the west of the entrance area was kept lower than the east side with a flat hipped roof. The two-axle front east to Schwanallee was Persius a decorative accent with a blue blazoned arched niche between the windows on the upper floor in which a white combined zinc cast figure of Minerva from the Berlin iron foundry Moritz Geiss came to stand. The Roman goddess of wisdom and the art of war refers to the resident Kurd Wolfgang von Schöning as a military expert, who in 1856 received the title of "Army Historiographer" from Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The marble Minerva from the collection of Cardinal Alessandro Albani , which is now part of the Dresden Sculpture Collection, served as a model for the sculpture . The figure at Villa Schöningen was badly damaged in the summer of 1999 when strangers tried to remove it by force. After the restoration, the original with a copy of the head and the spearhead has been in the exhibition since 2009 and a figure copy in the arched niche. On the central supports above the fighters of the south and east-facing windows, female figures made of sanded zinc casting are attached as a further subtle ornament . In the north, Persius added a smaller single-axis building section to the house as a counterpart and connected the buildings with a slightly lower intermediate building in which he placed the main entrance. He designed the upper floor with a round-arched loggia . The column gallery was repeated in the Belvedere of a tower integrated in the intermediate building.

Woman figure at a window on the east facade

This was less intended for the beautiful view, but was intended as a vertical component in the staggered group of buildings. Through the redesign, Persius succeeded in giving the residential building two façades to the south and east, making the villa look in all directions from the Glienicke palace complex opposite, as well as from Babelsberg palace further south as a focal point on the bank of the Jungfernsee. Due to his trip to Italy, Ludwig Persius transferred the artistic building supervision to Ferdinand von Arnim in January 1845 and the overall supervision to Friedrich August Stüler , who continued these tasks after his return and Persius' sudden death. In October 1845 the renovation work was completed.

Redesign by the Wallich families

In 1881/82 there were structural changes on the Wallich family's property for the first time since the renovation by Persius. After the purchase of an adjacent orchard to the north and the demolition of the plastered carriage shed, a larger stable building made of red and yellow striped brickwork with a coachman's apartment on the upper floor was built. The property was surrounded by a brick wall, also striped red and yellow, which was decorated with a cast zinc lion. It is not certain who designed the stable building. A Berlin architect named H. Richter submitted the building application, but was probably only responsible for the construction. One of the upper court building councilors at the time would be considered, either Reinhold Persius or Moritz Gottgetreu . One hundred years later, in 1982, the stable building was demolished again. The cast zinc lion has been missing since 1992.

Garden wall on the east side

The first renovation of the villa according to Persius took place in 1888/89, when Hermann and Anna Wallich had the interior of the house redesigned according to their needs. The order was given shortly before by Emperor Friedrich III. Ernst Eberhard von Ihne was appointed court architect . In order to create more living space, Ihne enlarged the originally back intermediate building to the east to Schwanenallee and pulled it beyond the north-facing part of the building, so that the east facade got a front stepped from south to north. The basement received a house entrance with a four-step staircase and the formerly open loggia on the upper floor received a window opening divided by two pillars, which went over the entire width of the component. In addition, when the Glienicke Bridge was rebuilt between 1905 and 1907, Villa Schöningen was moved to a different position towards the Jungfernsee. The house, which was originally located close to the bank, came to stand further away due to earthfills and thus lost its direct connection to the water.

The last major renovation took place in 1922, when Paul and Hildegard Wallich had the Villa Schöningen extended by one part of the building. They commissioned the Berlin architecture firm Breslauer & Salinger with the renovation work . Alfred Breslauer drafted plans for an extension, which he placed in the north-west corner. With the exception of the tower, the three-storey building cube towered over the two-storey components designed by Persius. Breslauer built the utility rooms on the ground floor and a large dining room in the southern area from which a terrace could be entered. Bedrooms and modern bathrooms were set up on the two upper floors.

literature

  • Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg: Ludwig Persius. Architect of the king. 1st edition. Potsdam 2003, ISBN 3-7954-1586-1 , pp. 46-54.
  • Katie Hafner: The house by the bridge. The Schöningen Villa in Potsdam and its residents. Märkischer Verlag, Wilhelmshorst 2004, ISBN 3-931329-36-4 .
  • Mathias Döpfner, Lena Maculan: Villa Schöningen on the Glienicker Bridge. A German-German museum. Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-89479-601-3 .
  • Dirk Heydemann: The Villa Schöningen and the Potsdam cultural landscape. Considerations for the garden conservation treatment of the garden. Diploma thesis, technical college, department of land maintenance. Berlin 1991, OCLC 180453671 .
  • Klaus Kürvers : Villa Schöningen: Potsdam, Berliner Straße 86. The building history of a tower villa by Ludwig Persius. Unpublished report for the Office for Monument Preservation Potsdam, Berlin / Potsdam 1999.

Web links

Commons : Villa Schöningen  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ludwig Persius: Architectural drafts for the conversion of existing buildings. Published by Persius on the highest orders of His Majesty the King of Prussia . 3. Delivery: Villa Schöningen on Glienicke Bridge . Potsdam 1845, no p.
  2. ↑ Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv , Landbucharchiv Potsdam, basic file concerning the Potsdam located, in the Landbuch von Potsdam Vol. 31, Bl. No. 1596 (formerly: Berliner Vorstadt, Vol. 2, Bl. No. 82) gal. Property
  3. ↑ a b c Döpfner, Maculan: Villa Schöningen an der Glienicker Brücke , p. 120.
  4. ^ Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage, I. HA, Rep. 89 Secret Civil Cabinet, No. 28684, Bl. 1
  5. ^ A b Ludwig Persius: Architectural drafts for the conversion of existing buildings. Issued by Persius on the highest orders of His Majesty the King of Prussia . 1. Delivery: The royal. Civil Cabinet House b. Sanssouci . 2. Delivery: The court gardener Sello's official apartment in Sanssouci . Potsdam 1843, p. 5.
  6. ^ Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage, I. HA, Rep. 89, Secret Civil Cabinet, No. 28684, Bl. 69
  7. ^ Eva Börsch-Supan (Ed.): Ludwig Persius. The diary of the architect Friedrich Wilhelm IV. 1840-1845 . Munich 1980 (Art History Studies, Vol. 51, fol. 79)
  8. ^ Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv, Rep. 2 A Government Potsdam I HB, No. 1116, Bl. 197
  9. ^ City administration Potsdam, land register archive, basic file concerning the one in Potsdam, in the Potsdam land register volume 31, p. 1596 gal. Property, Bl. 4
  10. ↑ Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv, Rep. 2 A Government Potsdam I HB, No. 1122, Bl. 49/50
  11. ^ Jörg Limberg: Villa Schöningen . In: Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): Ludwig Persius. Architecture guide . Potsdam 2003, p. 70.
  12. ↑ a b Döpfner, Maculan: Villa Schöningen an der Glienicker Brücke , p. 121.
  13. ↑ Katie Hafner: The house on the bridge. P. 213.
  14. ↑ Katie Hafner: The house on the bridge. P. 59.
  15. ↑ Katie Hafner: The house on the bridge. P. 145.
  16. ↑ Katie Hafner: The house on the bridge. P. 87.
  17. ↑ Katie Hafner: The house on the bridge. P. 92.
  18. ↑ Katie Hafner: The house on the bridge. P. 208.
  19. ↑ Katie Hafner: The house on the bridge. P. 221.
  20. ↑ Katie Hafner: The house on the bridge. P. 185.
  21. ↑ Katie Hafner: The house on the bridge. P. 223.
  22. ↑ The total land area of ​​around 7,400 m² results from parcel 197 (historic Villa Schöningen property) with around 2,500 m² and the later purchased parcels 198 and 202 with a total of around 4,900 m². Development plan no. 35–3 "Schwanenallee / Berliner Straße" of the state capital Potsdam from May 27, 2008, p. 16.
  23. ^ Sabine Schicketanz : Villa Schöningen becomes a cultural center . In: Potsdam am Sonntag of April 8, 2007, p. 5, ed. from Potsdamer Zeitungsverlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co., Potsdam and Katrin Lange: Villa Schöningen becomes a cultural center . In: Welt online on April 2, 2007.
  24. ↑ Märkische Allgemeine ( Memento of March 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) of November 9, 2009, accessed on December 6, 2015.
  25. ↑ Speech by Chancellor Angela Merkel on the occasion of the opening of the Freedom Museum "Villa Schöningen" , accessed on December 6, 2015.
  26. ↑ Harry Nehls: The Minerva statue of the Villa Schöningen. In: SPSG (Hrsg.): Jahrbuch 2003 , p. 49.
  27. ↑ Klaus Kürvers: The conversion of existing buildings to beautify the landscape. Theory and practice of a »romantic functionalism« using the example of Villa Schöningen . In: SPSG (Ed.): Ludwig Persius. Architect of the king . Potsdam 2003, p. 54.


Coordinates: 52 ° 24 '48.8 "  N , 13 ° 5' 15.7"  E