Cremer & Wolffenstein

The architects Cremer & Wolffenstein was founded in 1882 by Wilhelm Cremer and Richard Wolff stone and existed until the death of the two founders of 1919. In the emerging Berlin of the early years, the office specializes in buildings for trade and transport, and built numerous business and upscale residences with hotels and villas. The other hand, mass residential and school buildings are entirely absent in the work of the two private architects.

A specialty of the office was the building of synagogues, perhaps favored by the Jewish origin of Wolff stone. The two architects are considered the main representative of the synagogue building in the early days. They were based on the Dresden Synagogue, Gottfried Semper only executed Sacred architecture, with its simple, square basic shape and cube-shaped arrangement of the building mass. They used for the facades next to Semper Romanesque Revival forms other styles of eclectic historicism. The commonly prevailing in the synagogue of time the Moorish- oriental forms, such as the New Synagogue in Berlin, they were rather hostile. All eight of eleven planned executed synagogues were destroyed in the Kristallnacht in 1938 and thus suffered the same fate as the model in Dresden.

The architectural firm was known for simple and functional floor plans. Initially, the two architects preferred the new renaissance, but later used all styles of historicism. The residential and commercial buildings for the breakthrough of the Kaiser- Wilhelm-Straße were among the first neo-baroque buildings of Berlin. In later works, there are already Jugendstilanklänge.

Buildings and designs of Cremer & Wolffenstein (selection)

Interior facade of the synagogue on Linden Street

Office building at Oranienplatz corner of Orange Street

Banquet hall in the house of the social association of the Society of Friends