Foto: David von Becker

After protracted negotiations, the Hamburger Bahnhof is secured as the location of the National Gallery Berlin. According to an agreement between the federal government and the Austrian real estate company CA Immo Deutschland, a rental agreement with an option to extend is to be concluded for the Museum of Contemporary Art for an initial period of 25 years. After approval by the Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation as the umbrella organization of Berlin’s state museums, the contract is to be signed in the next few days.

Negotiations between the federal government – represented by the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks – and CA Immo have been ongoing since mid-2021. Regardless of this, the State of Berlin is still negotiating with CA Immo about the acquisition of the Rieckhallen through a property swap.

The Hamburger Bahnhof has thus received a huge delay for its Rieckhallen. The memorandum of understanding, according to which an exchange property for CA Immo was to be found, was originally scheduled for the end of June. In the last few days, resistance had formed against the proposal submitted to the main committee by Senator for Culture Klaus Lederer.

According to this, CA Immo would not only have gotten the north-west corner of the Humboldthafen in exchange for the Rieckhallen, but also the state-owned property at Invalidenstraße 60. That seemed too much to some politicians, since the property offers up to 60,000 square meters of development space for their own authorities .

The nail-biter for the Hamburger Bahnhof is not over yet. A rental agreement for the main building of the Hamburger Bahnhof still has to be negotiated. Twenty years are initially envisaged in order to then continue to negotiate the sale. The former Minister of State for Culture, Monika Grütters, had always pointed out that the deal also included securing the main building.