Fire station building

Historical Monuments

Description

The building of the fire brigade is one of the two, next to the former seat of the bank (German: Sparkasse) at Piastowska Str., existing until now in the Bauhaus era in Gubin. This large, four-part building was made of burnt red brick and closed with white, large-area windows, typical of modermism. The central, two-storey frontal part with seven entry gates for fire trucks, bordered by two four-storey towers with administrative and technical functions. Vertical, simple decorative motifs have been incorporated into the face of the walls of both towers. Right behind the row of the three above-mentioned buildings, a third tall tower was built to dry fire hoses at that time. There are a few additional auxiliary buildings on the plot in a simpler, more economical form. The function of the building complex and the architecture itself were to correspond directly to the basic principle introduced by the Bauhaus school, indicating the superiority of social factors over aesthetics and technology.

Currently, it houses the Volunteer Fire Brigade and the Gubin Rescue and Fire Fighting Unit.

Historical background

The dynamic economic development of Guben, fueled by the rapidly advancing industrialization in the 19th century, brought about a period of prosperity that lasted almost until the end of World War II. One of the characteristics of cities endowed with this fate was that their authorities and the most influential community followed the latest urban planning and architectural trends. Apart from innovative spatial structure, these ambitions were also reflected in newly constructed residential, service, and public buildings. The fire brigade building, designed based on the Bauhaus school in Weimar, belonged to the latter category. The building was designed by the city architect (Ger. Stadtbaumeister) Johaness Römmler, who designed, among others, the crematorium in Gubin and the Bismarck tower in Spremberg in 1902.

Interestingly, the world-famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who also designed the Wolf's Villa in Gubin in 1932, was the headmaster of the Bauhaus school in 1930–1932. It is therefore possible that Römmler, who previously created buildings combining historicism with modernity, was inspired by Mies's work for the Wolf family in creating the design of the fire brigade building.