Villa Brehme is enthroned in an exposed location above the town, on the edge of the town forest. Visible from many points in the city, it is one of the most magnificent buildings in Gera and bears witness to the expanding industrial aristocracy at the end of the 19th century in what was then the most important city in Thuringia.
The current owners and residents of the impressive villa's Beletage acquired the palace in 2011 and have successively converted it into four spacious condominiums.
Three of the condominiums (between 157 and 202 square metres) have already been sold to a head physician of the Waldklinikum and her family, a family of professors from Jena and a family of entrepreneurs.
The most beautiful, largest and most prestigious maisonette flat, which forms the centrepiece of the villa, is now to be sold
Location
Villa Brehme is located in the popular district of Debschwitz, right next to the city forest and not far from the SRH Clinic in Gera.
There are numerous other magnificent villas in the immediate vicinity, including the last building erected by Henry van de Velde in 1914, Haus Schulenburg.
Below the Villa Brehme is the former garden city of Heinrichsgrün, which also has a number of notable listed buildings from the Bauhaus period, including some by Thilo Schoder. Heinrichsgrün is a popular residential area for families due to its proximity to the city centre, its location next to the city forest and its playgrounds.
It is a 15-minute walk from the villa to Gera-Süd railway station, from where you can reach Erfurt or Leipzig in an hour by regional train. Jena is also only 30 minutes away.
By car, you can quickly drive to Jena, Weimar, Erfurt, Zwickau and Chemnitz via the A4 motorway. The Hermsdorf junction, where the A4 and A9 motorways meet, can be reached by car in 15 minutes. Leipzig is only 70 km away.
Numerous shopping facilities, doctors' surgeries, kindergartens and schools are also within walking distance, but the city centre/old town is also only a 15-minute walk away.
Gera has a 5-division theatre, a House of Culture, numerous museums - the large Otto Dix exhibition was recently opened - as well as cabarets, the Metropol cinema, an art association and the Häselburg cultural centre, which also houses the youth art school.
Building history
In 1896-97, the master baker and building contractor August Brehme, who was successful in Gera, had the ‘Schlösschen’ built by the then well-known Gera architect Fritz Köberlein - presumably on the remains of some of the walls of the Pöppelner Rittergut. He opted for a historicising architectural style using an eclectic formal language (‘confectioner's style’): As was common for the time, stylistic elements of neo-Gothic and neo-Renaissance were combined with Wilhelminian carefreeness, giving the villa the appearance of a small castle, which is why the Gera vernacular still speaks of the Waldschlösschen to this day when describing the villa.
The owners endeavoured to follow the design ideas of the architects Lossow & Kühne in all parts of the villa and to restore the villa to its original state as far as possible: Lossow & Kühne turned away from the ornamental, historicist architectural style of the Wilhelminian era. At the behest of the client, they merged the two flats on the 2nd and 3rd floors of the villa and connected them with a spacious internal staircase. The result was not only the prestigious, high and above all bright entrance hall in the new pre-modern architectural style, which still characterises the appearance of the villa's interior today, but also a maisonette flat (DIN 277) measuring approx. 440 m² with a total of nine rooms, two bathrooms, two large terraces and four balconies.
Interior design from the period of construction
Not only the location and the exterior façade are impressive, but also the interior of the villa. Just 15 years after its construction, the new owner Friedrich Mey had the villa remodelled. He commissioned the Dresden architects Lossow & Kühne, who had already made a name for themselves with the Leipzig Central Station and the Dresden Theatre and who were also renovating Gera Castle at the time, to carry out the extensive remodelling.
The real wood doors on the lower floor were installed in the course of this renovation, and panelling and new stucco were added.
The rooms on the entrance floor in particular are decorated in the style of the Dresden workshops of the 1910s. Not only the large, stylish staircase, but also the parquet flooring, the wooden panelling and ceiling, the buffet and the large, plain doors, all of which have been refurbished in line with listed building requirements and lead to the conservatory, have been preserved from the original construction period.
The remodelling in 1910-15 not only involved a stylistic redesign, but also the enlargement of many rooms: For example, partition walls of three previous rooms in the current salon were torn out, so that the salon on the north side of the villa extends from the west to the east façade. Like the vestibule, the salon was fitted with simple rectangular wood panelling and small wooden capitals as well as fixtures. While a marble fireplace was installed in the vestibule, the north front of the parlour was fitted with a buffet.
The interior remodelling also inevitably led to changes to the windows on the west façade, which were combined to form a monumental window overlooking the two residential floors. While the main floor, i.e. the entrance area and the lower floor, is designed in the pre-modern style, the upper floor is in the formal language of the Wilhelminian style.
During the renovation work, the current owners took care to restore the original character of the villa, while still emphasising contemporary living and adapting it to today's needs. For example, the original painting of the Wilhelminian-style ceiling in the main bathroom was restored, but combined with a modern bathroom design.
Room sequence
The representative entrance hall, which has been preserved in its original state with its wood panelling and stucco ceiling ornaments, provides access to all areas of the flat: the master bedroom, ladies' room and kitchen can be reached from the entrance hall, as can the almost 75 m² salon with conservatory on the first floor and the bedrooms on the upper floor.
The kitchen, which the current owners have moved to its former location, is also directly accessible from the lounge. The conservatory is connected to the lounge by three large double glazed doors.
The beautiful, bright conservatory not only offers a wonderful view over the neighbouring 2-hectare biotope, the lower garden with garden pond and fruit trees, but also over the town to the town hall.
The landing on the upper floor of the entrance hall, where the current owners display contemporary art, leads to the bedrooms, the dressing room and the two children's bedrooms.
Energy-efficient refurbishment
The building underwent extensive refurbishment between 1994-1996 and 2012-2020.
The main aim of the refurbishment was to transform the property into modern, bright condominiums with the lowest possible energy consumption.
Where possible, walls were insulated from the outside. Some of the walls were insulated on the inside in keeping with the building's listed status.
The listed wooden windows from the 1990s were fitted with triple glazing. All doors were fitted with milled seals.
The heating consumption in the years before the Ukraine war was significantly less than 1 euro per square metre per month. The housing allowance including heating is currently 440 euros per month.
Statics/fire protection have been completed in accordance with the current authorisation and have been approved.
The electrical wiring was installed to a very high standard for the Allianz insurance company, which was the tenant from 1996 to 2006.
Most of the radiators have been or will be newly installed.
Each floor has its own heating control/pump so that its consumption and heating behaviour can be determined by programming the heating itself.
The hot water is not stored but prepared in the respective bathroom by electric instantaneous water heaters.
The consumption certificate shows an energy efficiency class of C.
