Banki Rzeszy na Pomorzu i Wielkopolsce po 1910 roku - Kołobrzeg, Kostrzyn i Poznań

Abstract

Reichsbanks in Pomerania and Great Poland after 1910 - Kołobrzeg, Kostrzyn, and Poznań

Very rapid development of the Reichsbank, an institution established in 1876, resulted in a great number of investments and led to creating the Construction Bureau of the Reichsbank. There, the projects of construction and development of new branches of the Bank were created. Initially, the forms applied were extremely varied. The edifices taken over from The Prussian Bank alluded to the concept of Italian palazzo, e.g. in Wrocław or Bydgoszcz. Later creations referred the head office of the Reichsbank at Jagerstrasse in Berlin; it was created between 1869 and 1872 by Friedrich Hitzig (1811-1881). The most popular scheme at that time was an edifice having compact mass; high, rusticated ground floor, large arched windows, intensified by the central rislait and grand portal. The purpose of the particular sections of the interior was clearly defined; the operating room was situated on the first floor and the remaining floors were designed for dwelling purposes. This mode was employed in the edifices in Koszalin (1890) created by Julius Emmerich (1834-1917); in Gdańsk (1905) developed by Max Hasak (1856-1934); and in Toruń (1906) designed by Julius Habicht (1874-1912). The last two cases were characterized by freedom of exploration, and a distinct distance from the original works. In the second decade of the 20th century new investments were no longer so numerous. After 1910 only three branches of the Bank were built on the territory of today Poland: in Kołobrzeg, Poznań, and in Kostrzyń. The head branch built in Poznań in 1911 and designed Julius Habicht, Philipp Nitze, and Hans Korth was the grandest one. In was erected in Neo-Classical style with the application of great order. The ancillary branches did not posses this magnificence. They did not resemble a palace or an apartment building. They joined the features of a public utility edifice and a villa; this was connected with their two primary functions: residential and depository one. The Kołobrzeg branch designed by Julius Habicht in 1911 was created as a two-storey detached building, on the base of rectangle, crowned with a high, hipped roof with lucarnes. Several elements, e.g. panels, single garlands, or antique-like capitals, belong to old Baroque ornamentation and slightly disturb utilitarian form of the building. The most recent of the edifices, the bank in Kostrzyń (1914-1918), designed by Hans Korth, differs from the remaining ones with a one-storey vestibule added to the main, two-storey, body. Despite simplified mass, the elevation was decorated with historic-like elements and garlands referring to the earlier stylistics of the Reichsbank. Simplifications, resignation from the arched windows, limiting the amount of details proves that the edifices of Reichsbank evolved towards modernity. The instance of Poznań branch references to Antiquity show a new direction of exploration, processed Neo-Classicism of the second decade of the twentieth century. Translated by Edyta Krajewska