Villa La Collina – Wikipedia

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Die Villa La Collina (2012)

The Villa La Collina (German “Villa Hügel”) is a historic villa building in the village of Cadenabbia near Tremezzo on the western bank of Lake Como in Italy. It became known as Konrad Adenauer’s holiday domicile, the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, who spent many of his summer vacations there from the late 1950s to the mid -1960s. The villa with its 2.7 hectare park has been used as an international meeting place by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation since 1977. In 1990 she was around the Accademia Konrad Adenauer Expanded and serves as a conference location for guest events and as a hotel.

In 2004 the Villa La Collina was used by a Bundestag committee Memory of national importance Classified and has been the only reminder of Germany outside the German territory since then.

The villa building built in 1899 is located high above the village of Cadenabbia, which also explains the name “Villa Hügel”. The town of Cadenabbia directly on the Comer See belongs to the municipality of Griante and represents its tourist center. The park surrounding the villa directly borders on the Villa Arminio , in which Konrad Adenauer was a guest in 1957 – on one of his first vacation stays in Cadenabbia. [first] [2]

The property has been owned by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) since 1977. In order to enable the area to operate the area as a modern conference center, the KAS built a guest and farm building in 1990 below the villa on the park site that Accademia Konrad Adenauer . The villa was also rebuilt and modernized. Currently (2015) the facility for conferences, family celebrations or hotel guests offers event and accommodation options for up to 60 people in 34 rooms, of which there are 22 rooms in the new building. In addition to 12 guest rooms, the villa has dining room, fireplace, library and a terrace with a lake view. In addition, the conference or holiday guests have a restaurant with a covered terrace, a conference room with a simultaneous mechanism system, two Boccia tracks, a garden swimming pool and the 27,000 square meter park. [2] [3]

The site was shown as a landscape protection zone in the 1990s, which makes further new buildings and extensions impossible. [4]

At the recommendation of Heinrich von Brentano, who was Foreign Minister under Adenauer from 1955 to 1961 and had family roots in Tremezzo, Italy, Adenauer visited the area for the first time in spring 1957. After stays with vacation in Cadenabbia in the Villa Rosa and the Villa Arminio Adenauer first moved into the Villa La Collina on his summer vacation in 1959 from August to September. A total of 18 times the former Chancellor stayed in the small Italian village and, until his death in 1967, stayed twice a year in Villa La Collina, most recently in the summer of 1966. [first] [2]

Adenauer’s former Chancellor portraits of Graham Sutherland and Oskar Kokoschka were both made in the Villa La Collina. [first]

The villa was acquired by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in 1977 by a German building contractor and is now being seen as S.R.L. operated what a German GmbH is close to. In the 1990s, 8.3 million DM federal funds were assigned as funding, of which DM 5 million was built on the construction of the conference center and DM 3.3 million. However, the facility was not economically operated as a pure educational institution, the effort for the maintenance of the property and the company, including the personnel costs, led to 700,000 DM in the early years. [4]

The KAS only reached cost recovery from the mid -1990s by “third -party events from other non -profit organizations” and “more tourist visits”. From 1998, the Federal Audit Office complained about this practice and complained that Villa La Collina was mainly managed as a “hotel operation with tourist-commercial use” and that the educational institution was used in particular. The KAS then repeatedly tried to sell the property. From then on, the Court of Auditors requested a minimum share of the revenue from the 80 percent conference, otherwise the repayment of the total funding amount for abuse of funding. Finally, in 2004 the villa was as Memory of national importance classified in which the federal government should also participate. The Ministry of the Interior then waived the recovery of the funding for the purchase and expansion of the property. Only a part of the grant for expansion and operating costs of 244,000 euros was rejected by the KAS due to “non -functional” use. [4] [5] [6] [7]

The federal government’s promise remained unaffected to bear up to 40 percent of the operating costs in accordance with the average annual share of political education in the villa. For this purpose, the KAS has received an average of around 100,000 euros from the federal government since 1994 and, according to status in 2005. The total amount of public funding grants for the villa in 2005 was 5.3 million euros. However, the system of political foundations in Germany and its public funding repeatedly came into criticism from the public and the media, whereby both the public grants to Villa La Collina and its “construction” were discussed as a “national memorial on foreign soil”. [6] [7] [8]

The Villa La Collina is operated by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation as a “international meeting and conference center for politics, economy and culture” and advertised as a “individual conference or holiday location”. [3]

  • Verónica Reisenegger (ed.): Cadenabbia and Lake Como. Adenauer’s Villa La Collina – Cultural Scene meeting place of European charisma. Enjoy, hike and relax (= Merian – the desire to travel ). Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Sankt Augustin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939826-68-2.
  1. ↑ a b c Adenauer in Cadenabbia. In: Website der Villa La Collina (www.kas.de/villalancolina). Konrad Adenauer Foundation, February 6, 2007, accessed on May 8, 2015 .
  2. ↑ a b c Sven Felix Kellerhoff: Where Konrad Adenauer learned the Boccia game. Chancellor privately. In: The world (online edition). WeltN24 GmbH, 21. September 2013, accessed on May 8, 2015 .
  3. ↑ a b See. Villa La Collina. Lake Como. In: Website der Villa La Collina (www.kas.de/villalancolina). Konrad Adenauer Foundation, May 5, 2015, accessed on May 8, 2015 .
  4. ↑ a b c Franz Schmider: Villa La Collina: Adenauer’s second Bonn is to be sold for 11.5 million. In: The Tagesspiegel (online edition). Verlag der Tagesspiegel GmbH, July 17, 2000, accessed on May 8, 2015 .
  5. ↑ NN: Where Adenauer Boccia played. Foundations . In: The mirror . No. 1/2000 , January 3rd 2000, S. 18 ( Spiegel.de [accessed on May 8, 2015]).
  6. ↑ a b NN: Misused Adenauer-Villa . Foundations. In: The mirror . No. 22/2005 , 30. May 2005, S. 18 ( Spiegel.de [accessed on May 8, 2015]).
  7. ↑ a b Martin Lutz, Uwe Müller: The Cartel of the State Screens. Political foundations. In: The world (online edition). Weltn24 GMBH, 10. OCTOBER 2014, accessed on May 8, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Martin Lutz, Uwe Müller: The foundation system . Titel topic. In: Welt am Sonntag . 5. October 2014, S. 40 ( welt.de [accessed on May 8, 2015]).

45,99196 9.23642 Coordinates: 45 ° 59 ′ 31 ″ N , 9 ° 14 ′ 11 ″ O