Building on tradition to create a better future.
Our company’s eventful history began on 28 May 1871 with the founding of a brewery located in and named after Berlin’s KÖNIGSTADT district, today’s Prenzlauer Berg. In the wake of years of crisis and commodity rationing after the First World War, the company shifted its focus in 1921 to property acquisition and management, as well as industrial company stakeholding. This was a painful but prudent decision. Even then, in a far-sighted move, profits were invested in a portfolio of real estate.
Those years of success were followed by difficult times. Much of the company’s portfolio of property was destroyed in the Second World War. The post-war period was a time of reconstructing and refurbishing the remaining properties. KÖNIGSTADT also launched a major development project on its plot at the corner of Kurfürstendamm and Grolmanstrasse. ‘Haus KÖNIGSTADT’, as it was known, was finished in 1955, one of the first new commercial properties built in Berlin’s inner city after the war.
In 1951, KÖNIGSTADT suffered another severe blow when the East German government expropriated all the company’s real estate and business assets in East Berlin – including the original company premises in Schönhauser Allee. But neither these setbacks nor the Berlin Wall going up in 1961 could dampen our enthusiasm for real estate and our belief in Berlin’s future.
On this basis and under Dr. Alfred Lottberg, KÖNIGSTADT’s long-serving Executive Chairman, the company took the shape it has today. We are a modern property management company with a long tradition in the Berlin market, dedicated to sustainable economic success, and built on the twin pillars of responsibly and philanthropy.