Vox house

The Vox-Haus (also Voxhaus ) in Berlin was an office building located near Potsdamer Platz in what was then the Tiergarten district , where the history of radio in Germany began in 1923 . The building was completed in 1908 and demolished in 1971.

location

The address of the Vox house was Potsdamer Strasse 4, from 1937 house number 10. Today the southwest wing of the Kollhoff Tower in Alte Potsdamer Strasse occupies roughly the same place. A little southwest of the former property, today's Voxstrasse, named after the Vox house, branches off from Alte Potsdamer Strasse.

history

Guests in the Vox House: Josef Deitmer , Wroclaw delegate for Brandenburg and Pomerania , and the papal nuncio Eugenio Pacelli , 1924

The five-storey office building in steel frame construction was built between 1907 and 1908 according to plans by the architect Otto Stahn . After various renovations, the forerunner of the Vox record company acquired the house in 1920 and in 1921 applied for approval to erect two transmission antenna masts. The Swiss architect Otto Rudolf Salvisberg carried out the renovation of the Vox on the ground and first floors as well as the conversion of the fourth floor into a sound recording complex. At the beginning of 1923, the first permanent radio transmission equipment was installed. The history of broadcasting in Germany began on October 29, 1923 , when the Berlin radio hour began regular broadcasting on a wave of 400 meters (= 749.5  kHz ) in an attic of the Vox building.

The Vox house was damaged in the Second World War and re-let after repairs. Because of its location near the Berlin Wall , it was blown up on March 22, 1971 and the property cleared.

See also

• History of radio

Web links

• The building of the Federal Council in the Berlin cityscape 1904 to 2004: Vox-Haus ( Memento from July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (Scroll down! The page layout is a little unsuccessful.)
• Wumpu's world of old radios
• Vox-Haus transmitter 1923 (PDF)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Brigitte Baetz: The first radio station in Germany goes into operation. In: Deutschlandfunk , October 28, 2013, accessed on July 9, 2020.
2. ↑ Between 1900 and 1937 the property had house number Potsdamer Straße 4. In the section with the old house numbers 1a – 17 (north-west side) and 131–141 (south-east side) the street of the northeastern former Potsdamer Straße is now called 'Alte Potsdamer Straße'.
3. ↑ Conversion of radio and light waves in a vacuum

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 31.8 "  N , 13 ° 22 ′ 30.2"  E