IG Farben Building

The site The IG Farben Building was developed on land known as the Grüneburggelände. In 1837, the property belonged to the Rothschild family. It was part of the "Affensteiner Feld", an area in the north of today's Frankfurt Westend District. The name Affenstein derives from an ancient Christian memorial that once stood here on the road outside Frankfurt. It was known as the "Avestein" as in Ave Maria but in the local Frankfurt dialect it was called the "Affe Stein". In 1864, the city's psychiatric hospital was erected on the site. In August 1928, Professor Hans Poelzig won a limited competition to design the building, among five selected architects, notably beating Ernst May, the then Head of Urban Design for Frankfurt. the company nonetheless remained a large government contractor under Nazi Party rule. During World War II, the surrounding neighbourhood was devastated, but the building itself was left largely intact as it was planned to be used by occupying forces. Until occupied by US forces, the building was inhabited by the homeless citizens of a bomb-ravaged Frankfurt. In March 1945, Allied troops occupied the area and the IG Farben Building became the American headquarters of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Consequently, the publicly accessible adjoining park became part of a restricted military zone which also included the military living quarters and work areas at the rear of the building. Recent years Following German reunification, the US government announced plans to fully withdraw its troops from Frankfurt by 1995, at which time control of the entire site would be restored to the German Federal Government. and were handed over to the university. The complex now houses the Westend Campus of the university, which includes the departments of Philosophy, History, Theology, Classical Philology, Art and Music, Modern Languages and Linguistics, Cultural and Civilization Studies, the Center for North American Studies and the Fritz-Bauer-Institute. Renaming controversy Even in 1995 the association of the building with Nazism had been hard to shake off, despite its outstanding 1920s architecture. Only with the departure of the Americans, the subsequent renovations, and the use of the building by the university has the building's association with Nazi Germany in the popular consciousness receded. The university's tenancy of the building sparked a debate regarding the name of the building. Former University President Werner Meissner had started the controversy by proposing to name it the "Poelzig-Ensemble" (Poelzig-Complex). Members of the university insisted on confronting the building's history by retaining its original name, the "IG Farben Building". Meissner's successor, Rudolf Steinberg, upheld the decision to retain the name, but he did not enforce a uniform nomenclature within the university's administration. The university's senate finally settled the discussions in July 2014 by keeping the official name "I.G.-Farbenhaus" (IG Farben Building). By 2004 the university set up a permanent exhibition inside the building, and a memorial plaque, for the slave labourers of IG Farben and those who had been murdered with Zyklon B gas, was installed on the front of the building. Future Behind the IG Farben Building, the state of Hessen intends to build "Europe's most modern campus" to accommodate the remaining departments of the University's old Bockenheim campus, law, business, social sciences, child development, and the arts. As of 2018, there are several new buildings finished. Construction of the student union building and of the faculty building for linguistics, cultures, and arts has begun. The last step to complete the new university campus will be the relocation of the main library within the 2020s. ==Building==

In 1928, IG Farben was the largest chemical company in the world. Georg von Schnitzler, IG Farben Director, 1930. The 250-metre long and 35-metre tall building has nine floors, but the height of the ground floor varies (4.6–4.2 m). This variation is reflected in the roof line which looks taller at the wings than the spine. The volume of the building is 280,000 m3, constructed from 4,600 tonnes of steel frame with brick infill and floors constructed of hollow blocks to provide over 55740 m2 of usable office space". The façade is clad with 33,000 m2 Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt Travertine marble, punctuated in bands of windows decreasing in height with each storey. Only at the corners are the glazed strips interrupted for emphasis. The top storey is lit from skylights rather than banded glazing and has a very low ceiling height. It forms a clear building conclusion. In the mid-'50s, this upper storey housed a military affiliate radio station (MARS). Until the 1950s, the building was the largest and most modern office building in Europe. The main entrance is at the axial centre of the building, comprising a temple-like portico standing in front of the doors—a relatively common motif of administration buildings of the time. The entrance arrangement is regarded by some people as slightly pompous: the entrance and lift doors are of bronze, and the ceiling and walls of the porch are clad in bronze plate and copper friezes. The inner lobby has two curved staircases with a sheet aluminum treatment, and marble walls with a zigzag pattern. The axial centre at the rear of the building has a round glazed façade; here, the view of the buildings at the rear of the site (the "casino") is maximised by the curved walls that afford vistas to the subsidiary buildings 100 m distant, separated from the main building by parkland and a pool. During the American occupation of the building, this rotunda housed a small kiosk; later, it was used as a conference room. Nowadays, it is called the Dwight D. Eisenhower room and accommodates a café. The paternoster lifts that serve the nine floors are famous, and are popular with the university students. After the recent restoration, the university has pledged to preserve them in perpetuity. Behind the rotunda is an oblong pool with a Nymphenskulptur (German:Nymph sculpture) at the water's edge created by Fritz Klimsch entitled "Am Wasser". Behind it stands a flat building on a hill with a terrace—the casino of IG Farben and the Officers Club of the US Army ("The Terrace Club"), which now houses a refectory and lecture-rooms. ==Rumours==

A number of unconfirmed rumours concern the complex: • Hans Poelzig was not favoured by the Nazi regime and was banned by IG Farben from entering the building after its completion. • Two or three basements were under the Poelzig building, which were sealed and flooded. In fact, the building only has one basement level. • There were rumors about a tunnel connecting the building with Frankfurt's main railway station. In fact there was no tunnel to the station, but a service tunnel to connect the dining facility to the main building's heating system, which was filled up during the 1996–2001 renovation. • At the reflecting pool behind the building, the "Am Wasser" sculpture of a naked water nymph was moved during the American occupation. The nymph was moved to the Hoechst chemical company in Frankfurt/Hoechst at the request of Mamie Eisenhower (the general's wife), who deemed it inappropriate for a military installation. The statue has since been returned to its original location. ==References==