The Kommandantenhaus (Commandant's House), also called Alte Kommandantur (Old Commandantura), on

Unter den Linden Unter den Linden (, "under the linden trees") is a boulevard in the central Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany. Running from the City Palace to Brandenburg Gate, it is named after the linden (lime in England and Ireland, not rela ...

boulevard in the historic centre of

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

is the former headquarter of the city's

commandant Commandant ( or ) is a title often given to the officer in charge of a military (or other uniformed service) training establishment or academy. This usage is common in English-speaking nations. In some countries it may be a military or police ran ...

. It was built in 1654 and renovated from 1873 to 1874 in

Renaissance Revival style Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range o ...

. Damaged during the Allied bombing in World War II and later demolished, it was rebuilt from 2001 to 2003 as part of the

Forum Fridericianum The Bebelplatz (formerly and colloquially the Opernplatz) is a public square in the central Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany. The square is located on the south side of the Unter den Linden boulevard, a major east-west thoroughfa ...

. Since then, it has been home to a representative office of

Bertelsmann Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA () is a German private multinational conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is one of the world's largest media conglomerates, and is also active in the service sector and ...

.Bertelsmann in Berlin
Bertelsmann The Kommandantenhaus was the workplace of the French writer

Stendhal Marie-Henri Beyle (; 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal (, ; ), was a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels ''Le Rouge et le Noir'' ('' The Red and the Black'', 1830) and ''La Chartreuse de ...

, the German politician

Otto Wels Otto Wels (15 September 1873 – 16 September 1939) was a German politician who served as a member of parliament from 1912 to 1933 and as the chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1919 until his death in 1939. His 1933 sp ...

and the German Resistance member

Paul von Hase Karl Paul Immanuel von Hase (24 July 1885 – 8 August 1944) was a German career soldier and figured among the members of the resistance against Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime. Biography Hase was born in Hanover. He was the fifth child of Paul and ...

History

The Alte Kommandantur is a building in the historic center of

, which had been heavily damaged during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and destroyed in order to make room for the

Ministry for Foreign Affairs In many countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the government department responsible for the state's diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral relations affairs as well as for providing support for a country's citizens who are abroad. The entit ...

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In t ...

. The original building was in the

baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including ...

style, built by architect

Johann Gregor Memhardt Johann Gregor Memhardt or Memhard (1607 in Linz an der Donau – 1678 in Berlin) was a master builder, architect and politician. Life Memhardt emigrated from Linz to the Netherlands in 1622, where he probably learned the art of fortification. H ...

(b. 1607, d. 1678), and enlarged in 1795, and modified again in 1873 in a

neo-Renaissance Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range ...

style. In 1995, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of East Germany itself was demolished in order to recreate the Werderscher Markt area. The Alte Kommandantur was rebuilt by media conglomerate

and the

Bertelsmann Stiftung The Bertelsmann Stiftung is an independent foundation under private law, based in Gütersloh, Germany. It was founded in 1977 by Reinhard Mohn as the result of social, corporate and fiscal considerations. As the Bertelsmann Stiftung itself ...

foundation to become its joint Berlin liaison office with the prestigious address

1. Since no plan was available, the building was designed based on historic pre-war photographs and testimonies. The building was completed in November 2003. Critics of this reconstruction see it as an example of the Disneyfication of the center of Berlin.Reconstruction Doubts: The Paradox of Building in Schinkel's Name
-

Barry Bergdoll Barry Bergdoll is Meyer Schapiro Professor of art history in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and from 2007 to 2019 a curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, ...

- ''The Berlin Journal'' - Number Ten - Spring 2005 pp. 45-49

Notes and references

External links

Alte Kommandantur (in French)
Buildings and structures in Berlin Rebuilt buildings and structures in Berlin {{Berlin-struct-stub

History

Notes and references

See also

External links