Second Romanesque House (Berlin)

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New Romanesque House, view from Kurfürstendamm from the west (around 1900)

A neo-Romanesque residential and commercial building on Auguste-Viktoria-Platz (today: Breitscheidplatz ) in Berlin-Charlottenburg was called the Second Romanesque House , contemporary more often New Romanesque House or Romanisches Haus II . It was built between 1900 and 1901 and largely destroyed by incendiary bombs in World War II in 1943. Its ruins - like most of the heavily damaged buildings in the immediate vicinity - were torn down a few years after the end of the war. The building became particularly important for Berlin's cultural history because it housed the Romanisches Café on its ground floor , one of the most famous artist bars in the city.

History and architecture

The building was built according to a design by the architect Franz Schwechten , who also built the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on the square between 1891 and 1895. After fourteen months of construction, it was opened on April 1, 1901. The property east of the church - opposite its choir - was south on Tauentzienstrasse (house number 12b) and north on the northeast section of Kurfürstendamm (house number 238), which was renamed Budapester Strasse in 1925.

As was the case with the (“old”) Romanesque House I on the west side of the square in front of the church tower, the most striking urban development buildings were to be designed in the neo-Romanesque style to match it. The ensemble of the church, the two residential and commercial buildings and the Wilhelmshallen built at the beginning of Hardenbergstrasse 1905–1906 is often referred to in retrospect as the “Romanesque Forum”.

Ground floor plan

After its completion, the building on the ground floor on the Kurfürstendamm side housed a deposit box of the Dresdner Bank , on the square side with an outdoor dining terrace the café and pastry shop "Kaiserhof" of the Berlin hotel company (as a kind of branch of the famous Hotel Kaiserhof ) and three smaller shops on Tauentzienstrasse. While the windows of the café-pastry shop were labeled Conditorei Kaiserhof on the photos of the house published in autumn 1901 , the Berlin address book for 1902 already mentions the Romanisches Café , which later became the most famous artists' meeting in Berlin under the direction of “café animal” Bruno Fiering has been. Eight apartments were housed on the upper floors, but all of them were of different sizes and tailored to wealthy tenants - as in the entire neighborhood.

Two tower-like corner buildings with pyramid roofs and bay windows and a round bay window in the middle of the main front were decisive for the shape of the house . The facades were made of ashlar , the base in Niedermendiger basalt lava , above it in Silesian sandstone , Cotta sandstone and Rhenish tuff . The Berlin sculptor Gotthold Riegelmann (1864–1935) created all of the models for the plastic decoration of the facades and the stucco decorations in the café-confectionery .

During the Second World War , the building burned down completely in a bomb attack on Sunday night on November 21, 1943. Wolfgang Koeppen wrote in 1965: “[…] the city blazed above us, the firestorm roared, I climbed out of the shaft, the tower of the church was shattered, and the Romanesque house with the Romanesque café glowed as if the oriflame of a secret one was glowing in victory Fatherland. "

The property remained undeveloped for a long time, the rubble was only removed in 1959; From 1963 the Europa-Center was built on it and officially opened on April 2, 1965 by the Governing Mayor Willy Brandt .

Web links

Commons : Second Romanesque House  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Bruno Möhring : The new Romanesque house. In: Berliner Architekturwelt , 4th year 1901/1902, issue 6 (September 1901), pp. 193–204.
  2. ↑ a b c Berlin address book 1914 (part of the street, Kurfürstendamm 238 and Tauentzienstrasse 12b)
  3. ^ Romanisches Forum on berlin.de , accessed on February 12, 2019
  4. ^ Berlin address book 1902 (part of the street, Kurfürstendamm 238 and Auguste-Victoria-Platz without house number)
  5. ^ A b Edgard Haider: Lost splendor. Stories of destroyed buildings. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2006, ISBN 3-8067-2949-2 , pp. 162-167.
  6. ^ Wolfgang Koeppen : A coffee house . In: Klaus Wagenbach (Ed.): Atlas. German authors about their place . 1st edition, 1965. / Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-8031-3188-X , p. 95.