The Columbushaus was a nine-storey modernist

Modern architecture

Modern architecture is generally characterized by simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building. It is a term applied to an overarching movement, with its exact definition and scope varying widely...

 office and shopping building in Potsdamer Platz

Potsdamer Platz

Potsdamer Platz is an important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin, Germany, lying about one kilometre south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag , and close to the southeast corner of the Tiergarten park...

 in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, designed by Erich Mendelsohn

Erich Mendelsohn

Erich Mendelsohn was a Jewish German architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas.-Early life:...

 and completed in 1932. It was an icon of progressive architecture which passed relatively unscathed through World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 but was gutted by fire in the June 1953 uprising

Uprising of 1953 in East Germany

The Uprising of 1953 in East Germany started with a strike by East Berlin construction workers on June 16. It turned into a widespread anti-Stalinist uprising against the German Democratic Republic government the next day....

 in East Germany and subsequently razed because it stood in the border strip; the site was occupied by activists shortly before the fall of the Berlin wall

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...

.

Architecture

The Columbushaus has been described as a "little skyscraper". It was a horizontally detailed steel-frame building, the alternating bands of windows and spandrels on the upper floors prefigured by a conceptual sketch of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....

. (Mendelsohn later claimed that he had to include masonry courses to allow for neon signs, and would otherwise have used only metal and glass.) The client required the façade to curve to follow the line of Friedrich-Ebert-Straße and also specified that the floor plans be flexible to allow for future use as a department store; Erich Mendelsohn

Erich Mendelsohn

Erich Mendelsohn was a Jewish German architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas.-Early life:...

's solution was to have the window frames of the outer walls bear much of the load on the upper floors in order to greatly limit the number of internal supports and enable configuration of spaces at will by means of partitions. On the lower floors, with their continuous glazing for retail use, the load was shifted to interior supports using cross girders and cantilever girders. It was the most advanced office building in Europe, and the first building in Germany to have ventilation equipment.

Stylistically, it was "perhaps the most pronounced and rigorous example of modern office building design in Berlin." It was conceived as a real piece of urban progressivism, in contrast to the fantasy world epitomised by Haus Vaterland

Haus Vaterland

Haus Vaterland was a pleasure palace on the southwest side of Potsdamer Platz in central Berlin. Preceded by Haus Potsdam, a multi-use building including a large cinema and a huge cafe, from 1928 to 1943 it was a large, famous establishment including the largest cafe in the world, a major cinema...

, on the opposite side of the square.

Columbus Haus serves as an object of redemption, a spatial synthesis through which the path to pure reason can be rediscovered. It is the ultimate object of negation, conceived in rejection of the degeneration that obsessive consumption has caused to the culture. Its presence attempts to break the conspiracy between architecture and the persistence of the memory of Rome, the dangerous and uncontrollable evocation of ancient gods and mysteries. It is as if architecture had become naked, shedding all deception to purify itself and the city.

"Dedicated to an idealist version of America", it was intentionally revolutionary, its height and modernity in sharp contrast to the other buildings in the square, which were predominantly classical in detailing and many of which dated to the Gründerzeit

Gründerzeit

' refers to the economic phase in 19th century Germany and Austria before the great stock market crash of 1873. At this time in Central Europe the age of industrialisation was taking place, whose beginnings were found in the 1840s...

of the last quarter of the 19th century. It was to have been part of a reconfiguration of Potsdamer Platz and the adjacent Leipziger Platz

Leipziger Platz

Leipziger Platz is an octagonal square in the center of Berlin. It is located along Leipziger Straße just east of and adjacent to the Potsdamer Platz...

 as modern spaces which was planned by Stadtbaurat Martin Wagner

Martin Wagner (architect)

Martin Wagner was a German architect, city planner, and author, best known as the driving force behind the construction of modernist housing projects in interwar Berlin.- Germany :...

; as a result of the Depression, the Columbushaus was the only part of the project built. Mendelsohn planned the Columbushaus as part of a wall of skyscrapers around the reformed square; first, in 1928, proposing to combine both squares and in a second conceptual sketch, in 1931, making an octagonal plaza separated from Potsdamer Platz proper. Although no other buildings were built to place it in the intended context, the "last masterpiece of Mendelsohn's German period" was highly influential.

Background and construction

The site at the corner of Friedrich-Ebert-Straße and Bellevuestraße, at one corner of what was known as the 'Lenné triangle' (between Bellevuestraße, Friedrich-Ebert-Straße and Lennéstraße), had been occupied by the Grand Hotel Bellevue, built in 1887/88. A consortium of German investors planned to build a branch of the French department store Galeries Lafayette

Galeries Lafayette

- History :In 1893 Théophile Bader and his cousin Alphonse Kahn opened a fashion store in a small haberdasher's shop at the corner of rue La Fayette and the Chaussée d'Antin, Paris. In 1896, the company purchased the entire building at n°1 rue La Fayette and in 1905 the buildings at n°38, 40 et...

 on the site and engaged Mendelsohn to design it because of his prestige as a modernist. However, the owners of the Wertheim

Wertheim (department store)

Wertheim was a large department store chain in pre-WWII Germany. It was founded by Georg Wertheim and operated four stores in Berlin, one in Rostock, one in Stralsund , and one in Breslau....

 department store in Leipziger Platz immediately bought the adjacent land. Since part of the site was to be used to widen the street as part of Wagner's traffic improvements, the building had to be very tall. Mendelsohn submitted plans to the city for a 15-storey building, stepped down at both ends. There was to have been a two-storey rooftop restaurant, and large letters spelling out the name of the department store around the edge of the roof, and the foyer was to have also served as a subway entrance. When approval seemed likely, the hotel was demolished late in 1928 and he had a 20-metre-tall advertising hoarding built following the contours of the old building, with shops at the base. The hoarding advertised the forthcoming department store and also carried paid advertising, which defrayed some of the landowners' costs. However, in February 1929 the design was rejected as likely to exacerbate the traffic problems; instead, permission was given for a nine-storey structure, and in June that year, the start of construction was announced for September or October. However, in August the investors decided to build elsewhere, and then were prevented from doing so by the onset of the Depression. Almost two years later, in August 1931, they announced that they would instead build the 10-storey Columbushaus on the Potsdamer Platz site. This version of the project Mendelsohn designed for Wertheim, and it was built in 1931–32.

Uses

Mendelsohn designed the building for maximum rental income. The ground floor was occupied by various shops, including a branch of Woolworth's

F. W. Woolworth Company

The F. W. Woolworth Company was a retail company that was one of the original American five-and-dime stores. The first successful Woolworth store was opened on July 18, 1879 by Frank Winfield Woolworth in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as "Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store"...

. There were café restaurants on the first and ninth floors. The remaining floors in between were offices. Initially, the building included a travel agency, the Büssing

Büssing

Büssing was a German bus and truck manufacturer established by Heinrich Büssing at Braunschweig in 1903. Büssing's first truck was a 2 ton payload machine powered by a 2-cylinder gasoline engine and featuring worm drive...

 bus and lorry company, Deutsche Edelstahl and other well known companies and organisations. A large neon sign advertising the Nazi newspaper Braune Post was mounted on the roof. During the 1936 Summer Olympics

1936 Summer Olympics

The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona, Spain on April 26, 1931, at the 29th IOC Session in Barcelona...

 in Berlin, the Olympic Organising Committee's information centre was housed in the building.

Columbus Haus' central location, the car park in the rear, and the flexible layout also facilitated secret uses. The SS

Schutzstaffel

The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...

 prison, called Columbia, with some 300 to 400 inmates and a Gestapo torture-chamber, was possibly located on the upper floors beginning in March 1933, although it was later at Tempelhof airport. The secret archive of the Leninist resistance organisation Neu Beginnen

Neu Beginnen

Neu Beginnen was a fringe opposition group on the socialist wing of SPD, which was greatly influenced by the ideas of Lenin. It was formed in 1929. After the Machtübernahme in 1933, the members of the small group discussed what the future of Germany should be after the National Socialist movement...

 was in the building. On 1 December 1939, Richard von Hegener rented three or four offices in the building for a cover organisation founded to carry out the programme of execution of the physically and mentally unfit, which became known as Action T4

Action T4

Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...

 after the nearby address Tiergartenstraße 4 to which its headquarters moved in the spring of 1940.

The building was damaged in the battle for Berlin in the closing days of the Second World War, but thanks to its modern construction, not destroyed.

Located in Mitte

Mitte

Mitte is the first and most central borough of Berlin. It was created in Berlin's 2001 administrative reform by the merger of the former districts of Mitte proper, Tiergarten and Wedding; the resulting borough retained the name Mitte. It is one of the two boroughs which comprises former West and...

, the building was in the Soviet sector of occupied Berlin. Wertheim used some space on the ground floor for sales and on upper floors for offices. In 1948 the East Berlin council, the Magistrat, seized the property; the sales space was taken over by the national retail organisation, Handelsorganisation

Handelsorganisation

The Handelsorganisation was a national retail business owned by the central administration of the Soviet Zone of occupation in Germany and from 1949 on by the state of the German Democratic Republic. It was created in 1948...

 or HO, and the People's Police

Volkspolizei

The Volkspolizei , or VP, were the national police of the German Democratic Republic . The Volkspolizei were responsible for most law enforcement in East Germany, but its organisation and structure were such that it could be considered a paramilitary force as well...

 opened a police station in the building. During the East German workers' revolt on 17 July 1953

Uprising of 1953 in East Germany

The Uprising of 1953 in East Germany started with a strike by East Berlin construction workers on June 16. It turned into a widespread anti-Stalinist uprising against the German Democratic Republic government the next day....

, the Mayor of Kreuzberg

Kreuzberg

Kreuzberg, a part of the combined Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte since 2001, is one of the best-known areas of Berlin...

, Willy Kressmann, urged the police to offer no resistance, and they threw their uniforms from the windows and hung out a white flag, but the enraged crowd nonetheless set the building on fire. In 1957 the ruin was demolished and the site cleared. The steel was salvaged and reused.

Aftermath

When the Berlin wall

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...

 was erected in 1961, it continued the line of Friedrich-Ebert-Straße and the Lenné triangle lay outside it, separated from the West only by a fence with concrete posts; this saved building materials and gave better sightlines over the waste land, but occasionally Westerners would cut the fence. In 1986, East German authorities arrested Wolfram Hasch there for making political graffiti on the wall. In March 1988, an agreement was reached to exchange 16 small pieces of land between East and West Berlin, including the Lenné triangle, to enable the building of an autobahn extension; West Berlin also paid 76 million Deutschmarks to the East. The Lenné triangle then became part of the Tiergarten

Tiergarten

Tiergarten is a locality within the borough of Mitte, in central Berlin . Notable for the great and homonymous urban park, before German reunification, it was a part of West Berlin...

 district. However, before the exchange took effect on July 1, environmentalists occupied it, built an encampment, and declared it an extra-legal zone, the 'Norbert Kubat Corner', named for a young man who had taken his life in gaol. Protesters were drawn to the site from all over the Federal Republic and in some cases from abroad; a radio station was established, and there was regular press coverage including foreign TV; the number occupying the site grew to about 600, and after the West Berlin Senate

Senate of Berlin

The Senate of Berlin is the executive body governing the city of Berlin, which at the same time is a state of Germany. According to the Constitution of Berlin the Senate consists of the Governing Mayor of Berlin and up to eight Senators appointed by the Governing Mayor, two of whom are appointed ...

, having failed to obtain help from either the British or the Russian occupying forces, tried first to fence off the area and then to have the police disperse them (playing loud music at night among other tactics), they fortified the encampment and threw stones at the police. Police responded with tear gas, the squatters with slingshots, fireworks and Molotov cocktails. Early in the morning of July 1, when the police moved in, the 180–200 people still occupying the site fled over the wall, in "the first mass flight over the wall from West to East". The East German border police assisted them over, with their dogs, bicycles and other possessions, and the authorities fed them breakfast, took them into the Friedrichstraße station at the border via the diplomatic entrance, and gave them tickets so that they could travel back to West Berlin without being caught by the West German police, who had tightened ticket checking in anticipation.

Since German reunification

German reunification

German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...

, Potsdamer Platz has been entirely redeveloped. The Lenné triangle is now occupied by the Beisheim Center, which includes Marriott

Marriott International

Marriott International, Inc. is a worldwide operator and franchisor of a broad portfolio of hotels and related lodging facilities. Founded by J. Willard Marriott, the company is now led by son J.W. Marriott, Jr...

 and Ritz-Carlton

Ritz-Carlton

The Ritz-Carlton is a brand of luxury hotels and resorts with 75 properties located in major cities and resorts in 24 countries worldwide...

 hotels among other facilities and was funded by Otto Beisheim

Otto Beisheim

Otto Beisheim is a German businessman and founder of Metro AG.In 2010, his net worth was estimated at US$3.6 billion; he is #249 on the Forbes list of billionaires.-WWII:...

and other investors. In preparation for construction, which began in 1995, an approximately 30-year growth of woodland on the site was felled.

Sources

• Columbushaus: Geschäfts- und Bürohaus, am Potsdamer Platz, Bellevuestrasse, Ecke Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse, Berlin. Berlin: Bellevue-Immobilien-AG, 195-. OCLC 83346681
• "1931–1932 Columbushaus". Bruno Zevi. Erich Mendelsohn. 1982, Translated ed. New York: Rizzoli, 1985. ISBN 9780847805556. pp. 122–27.

External links

• Columbushaus at Potsdamer-Platz.org