Villa Spiritus
The Villa Spiritus is a villa on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn in the Gronau district , which was built in 1896/97. It was used by the United Kingdom's armed forces from 1945 to 2011 . The villa stands as a monument under monument protection .
location
The Villa Spiritus is located in the north of the federal quarter at the end of Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse (house number 19), opposite the Federal Cartel Office and Villa Hammerschmidt , the second official seat of the Federal President. Due to the prominent corner position above the banks of the Rhine (Wilhelm-Spiritus-Ufer) there are visual connections to the Rhine Plain and the Siebengebirge . A wide public staircase, which is a listed building, leads down from the villa to the banks of the Rhine.
history
The villa was built as a single-family home belonging to the Lord Mayor of Bonn, Wilhelm Spiritus , after whom the bank of the Rhine below is named, based on a design by the Cologne architects Alfred Müller and Otto Grah. It was the first house on Kaiser-Friedrich-Strasse, which was still under construction at the time. After the building application had been submitted and the building permit was granted in July 1895, a lining wall was first built , and construction of the villa did not begin until spring 1896. The final acceptance took place in April 1897.
In 1919 French occupation forces seized the property; the mayor Wilhelm Spiritus, who has just resigned from his position, was able to continue to live in seven rooms with his family. In 1933/34 the villa was rebuilt with the aim of furnishing three individual apartments on behalf of the Spiritus family. In 1935 a basement garage was built. An originally existing garden gate was removed after the Second World War at the latest.
On June 16, 1945, the British Armed Forces ( Control Commission for Germany ) seized the building. The occupation forces set up a liaison staff to the Parliamentary Council there in 1948/1949 . It was directed by Michael Thomas (* 1915), son of the writer Felix Hollaender and, as a German citizen, a career officer in the British Army during the Second World War. After the Occupation Statute came into force in September 1949, the villa also housed the offices of the British High Commission for a time. The liaison office headed by Thomas remained in the building, now as part of the high commission. As the seat of the liaison officer ( liaison officer ), informal contacts with German government members, members of the Bundestag and representatives of the press were established from there .
From 1955 the Villa Spiritus, now located on the northern edge of the new parliament and government district, served as the liaison staff of the British armed forces and operated as the Headquarters of the British Forces Liaison Organization or Joint Services Liaison Organization . The tasks of the liaison staff included looking after military properties in the Federal Republic and legal support for members of the armed forces. In 1956, the federal government acquired the property to give it to the British armed forces under the NATO troop statute. Around 60 people were employed there until the government headquarters were relocated to Berlin in 1999. The building then housed a liaison office with 25 employees and served as a conference center for the British Armed Forces.
On November 4, 2011, the Villa Spiritus was returned to the owner, the Federal Real Estate Agency (BImA), as part of the general withdrawal of the British Armed Forces from Germany in the presence of Bonn's Lord Mayor Jürgen Nimptsch . From July 2012, the villa was up for sale by the BImA in an offer process that took place until October 2012 for private use as a residential building. Subsequently, a renovation of the villa began under the supervision of the monument authorities, in the course of which it was to get its original spatial structure again. The previous attic was refurbished as a loft apartment and equipped with windows, but is now used as an office.
architecture
Stylistically , Villa Spiritus can be assigned to the villas of the picturesque style with a medieval vocabulary of forms . The main building has two full and two top floors and is surmounted by a tower. Weiberner tuff is used as facade cladding . The gable on the Rhine side is curved and shows baroque shapes, the tracery around the bay windows and the terrace are designed in a neo-Gothic style. The entrance portal on the courtyard side with its pilasters and medallions is in Renaissance shapes . Gothic arch friezes can be found on the tower . Inside the building, the ceilings are equipped with magnificent cantilever vaults , the entrance hall has a representative wooden staircase. On the courtyard side above the entrance is the coat of arms of Wilhelm Spiritus with a helmet and a Prussian eagle , on the Rhine side the coat of arms of the city of Bonn with a helmet .
“In the case of Mayor Wilhelm Spiritus' villa on the banks of the Rhine, recourse to the formal language of the early 16th century is likely to have a similar justification as in the case of the Gründerzeit town halls, which were built in the same style: the choice of building forms was based on the model of the urban bourgeoisie in the late Middle Ages. "
literature
- Olga Sonntag : Villas on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn: 1819–1914. Volume 3, Catalog (2). Bouvier, Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-416-02618-7 , pp. 42-46 (also dissertation University of Bonn, 1994).
- Heinrich Blumenthal: The Villa Spiritus. In: Rheinische Heimatpflege . New episode. 31st year, No. 2, 1994, pp. 128–131 (= Wilhelm Spiritus, a Rhenish Prussian. Bonn Lord Mayor with the longest term of office. In: General-Anzeiger . Edition of May 5, 1993, Bonn city edition, p. 15 ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ List of monuments of the city of Bonn (as of March 15, 2019), p. 28, number A 1043
- ↑ List of monuments of the city of Bonn (as of March 15, 2019), p. 58, number A 188
- ^ A b Heinrich Blumenfeld: The Villa Spiritus .
- ^ The Parliamentary Council, 1948-1949: Akten u. Logs. Volume 8. The Relationship of the Parliamentary Council to the Military Governments Oldenbourg Verlag 1995, p. 5
- ↑ Michael Thomas: Deutschland, England über alles: Return as an Occupation Officer , Siedler, 1984, pp. 263, 266, 268.
- ↑ Rüdiger von Wechmar : Actor in the Lodge , Siedler, 2000, p. 122.
- ^ A b Helmut Vogt : Guardians of the Bonn Republic: The Allied High Commissioners 1949–1955 , Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2004, ISBN 3-506-70139-8 .
- ^ The Queen's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions for the Government of Her Majesty's Naval Service , HM Stationery Office, 1953, p. Mlvii.
- ^ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: Verschworene Gesellschaft , Akad.-Verlag, 1995, ISBN 978-3050026558 , p. 78.
- ↑ British Evening for Good Contacts , General-Anzeiger, June 9, 1988, Bonn city edition, p. 5
- ^ The British Armed Forces leave Bonn , General-Anzeiger, 5./6. November 2011
- ^ Authority is silent about purchase price and new users , General-Anzeiger , January 26, 2013
- ↑ Sale of conversion properties by the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks , German Bundestag , 18th electoral period, printed matter 18/2091, July 11, 2014, p. 25
- ↑ Stucco ceiling with grimaces discovered , General-Anzeiger, September 7, 2013
- ↑ Loft under the roof of Villa Spiritus , General-Anzeiger , June 29, 2015
- ↑ Olga Sonntag: Villas on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn 1819–1914 .
- ↑ Eberhard Grunsky: A bourgeois residential area of the Wilhelminian era: On the history and monument value of the southern part of Bonn . In: Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein , Stadtarchiv Bonn (ed.): Bonner Geschichtsblätter: Jahrbuch des Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein , ISSN 0068-0052 , Volume 27, Bonn 1975, pp. 191-208 (here: p. 203).
Web links
- Entry on Villa Spiritus in the database " KuLaDig " of the Rhineland Regional Association (with a brief description of the LVR Office for Monument Preservation in the Rhineland by Elke Janßen-Schnabel, 2015)
- Villa Spiritus Bonn ( Memento from December 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), British Forces Germany
Coordinates: 50 ° 43 ′ 26.1 ″ N , 7 ° 7 ′ 0.1 ″ E