The Rudolf Mosse Publishing Building

The publisher Rudolf Mosse founded the Berlin Tageblatt newspaper in 1871. The architects Cremer & Wolffenstein drafted the publishing building in the so-called ‘Newspaper District’ in Berlin-Mitte (Downtown Berlin) between 1901 and 1903. During the Spartacus Uprising in January 1919 the building was heavily damaged especially at the main entrance on a street corner.
Mosse’s son-in-law, Hans Lachmann-Mosse asked Erich Mendelsohn to oversee the conversion and extension to the building. Mendelsohn defined the converted segment of the building in opposition to the remaining old part of the structure through a horizontal accentuation, a wide overhanging canopy roof over the front entrance, windows in a row and a staggered top floor. The added wedge-like corner extension towers of the original structure by two to three floors thus creating a ship-like bow structure. This resulted in contemporaries comparing the building to “the ship Mauretania entering the West Docks of Berlin”.
The building – heavily damaged during the War – was rebuilt in a simplified manner. Only during the fresh reconstruction of 1995, was the original Mendelsohn design of the corner entrance approximately recreated.