Columbushaus

The Columbushaus was a striking nine-story office and commercial building on Berlin's Potsdamer Platz that stood from 1932 to 1957. Designed by architect Erich Mendelsohn, the building stood out sharply from the surrounding late-19th-century buildings with its modern, horizontal facade. Thanks to an innovative steel-frame construction, the office floors had almost no supporting columns and could be divided up flexibly; the building was also home to the first mechanical ventilation system in Germany. In the first years after its completion, however, the high-rise stood almost empty, as the economic situation following the Great Depression made it hard to find tenants. Only with the arrival of the Woolworth variety store and, later, other well-known companies such as Büssing NAG and Deutsche Edelstahlwerke did the building gradually gain in importance. During the 1936 Olympic Games it housed the information office of the organizing committee, and in the 1930s the German Fashion Bureau and, for a time, front organizations for the Nazi "Aktion T4" euthanasia program also kept offices here.

In World War II, the Columbushaus suffered heavy damage when it burned out completely in an air raid in February 1945. Despite the destruction, the load-bearing structures remained largely intact thanks to the modern construction method. After the war, the building lay in the Soviet sector and, after the original owner was expropriated, was taken over by the state retail organization HO. Renovation was limited to the lower floors, where a department store and a police station moved in, while the upper floors remained unused and damaged. The building met its end on June 17, 1953, when it was stormed and set on fire during the popular uprising. Film footage of files being thrown out of the windows of the People's Police office became famous. The ruin was demolished in 1957, and the steel frame was dismantled and reused. Today the site is occupied by the Beisheim Center with several hotels, part of the redesigned Potsdamer Platz.