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my Name is Nicolai Baehr from baehr-rödel necologix architects
I have made a discovery of a lost project by Mies van der Rohe
which was destroyed during the second world war
I discovered it,
when I was on my way to Brno (Czech republic)
where I visited "Villa Tugendhat"
and sent my grandmother a postcard from there,
which showed the panoramic windows
of the "Villa Tugendhat"
with the view over the City of Brno
when she received the postcard she immediately remembered,
that she knew such a kind of window,
which could be lowered into the basement
of which they had pieces in their own garden.
what's the story about?
my grandmother must have admired
in Essen
already during the years of the war
the beauty of Haumannshof
(a green parc area of villas)
where she had taken a photo during a Promenade with her friend,
where you can see in the background a villa behind tennis courts.
This was the Villa of Ernst Henke, who was president of RWE in Essen.
His villa had a private "art collection and museum"
and on the gardenside he let a wintergarden be built
by Mies van der Rohe
She had only this photo of the Villa from her promenade,
which I mirrored
to show the actual size of the villa
so you can imagine how the Villa must have looked like
so you can imagine how the Villa must have looked like
before the bombs dropped.
it must have been an airmine as my grandmother described it
because nothing standing out of the ground was left over
and everything was leveled beside
what was in the ground.
Only the cellar, that was built into the soil
of the garden and
a little garden water basin,
that my grandparents used later in their
own garden.
When my grandfather had built
his first house at the corner of Virchowstreet and Schönleinstreet,
(in the city of Essen 1955)
the brother-in-law of Mr. Henke admired the fast rising of the building and comissioned
my grandfather as an architect to build his half on the ruins
of the former villa Henke.
When Mr Henke wasn't interested anymore in continuing to build
the other half of the house
my grandmother was interested in buying this plot
to build on this half
their architecture office and private home.
That's how they turned into being the owner
of Virchowstreet 124
where they discovered the wintergarden of Mies van der Rohe
with the hidden cellar of the technical gadgets
to lower the huge windowscreen.
to lower the huge windowscreen.
my grandmother would have loved together with my grandfather
to safe the machinery and reconstruct the wintergarden, but it was way to expensive.
Already in the 1930's this annex had cost as much a
single family home.
But they could at least save the Travertin plates
and build into their own house.
They turned the former wintergarden into a
gardenterrace.
At the edge of the gardenterrace it is still visible, that there was a rail
of the window,
which could be lowered.
Then there ist still the water basin
which can be seen on the photos,
which wasn't destroyed during the bombing.
What I was still missing was a document,
which showed how the wintergarden of Mies van der Rohe looked like.
By coincidence I got to know through the cultural forum of Starnberg
professor Dr.Tegethoff.
professor Dr.Tegethoff.
He showed me at the central Institute of art history in Munich
some documents,
which showed a long correspondence between Mies van der Rohe
and Mr Henke, but also
the former wintergarden
That's how today we can see
a project by Mies van der Rohe, which unfortunately doesn't exist anymore.
But when you compare the images
But when you compare the images
of the "Villa Tugendhat"
you can imagine, what was the impression
to be sitting behind a seven meter sized window
with view into the garden
of the Virchowstreet
number 124.