Yenidze Cigarette Factory in Dresden

There are a number of Islamic-type buildings in Germany influenced by the growing interest in Orientalism in 19th century. The most famous example is the water-pumping station at Potsdam (1841-5) built in the form of an Egyptian Mamluk mosque. Perhaps a more surprising example is the Yenidze tobacco factory at Dresden where the minarets are used as factory chimneys. In those days the Balkan provinces provided the tobacco like Yenice, with competition from Latakia (now Syria).
Mavi Boncuk |
Former Yenidze Cigarette Factory

The name "Yenidze" derives from the tobacco cultivation area of Yenice, a place in the Grecian part of Macedonia today known as Giannitsa. "Yenidze" was also the name of the tobacco importing company that built the factory. At the time of the construction, the factory was under the Turkish administration and wanted a factory for their imported eastern tobacco to include Near-Eastern design elements. The importer for the company, Hugo Zietz, wanted the factory to be built near the railway route near the Dresden city center.

Designed by Martin Hammitzsch [1] it was built sometime in the years of 1908-1909 as the first reinforced concrete multi storey buildings in Germany for the tobacco importer/manufacturer Hugo Zietz in the style of an Arab mosque. The style irritated the architectural community used to the buildings of baroque of the Saxonian kings in Dresden, he was removed from the rolls of Reichsarchitektenkammer/the Association of Architects.


Dresden during the 30's became the tobacco center of Germany, with 40 factories producing over 60 per cent of all smoke goods. The Yenidze Factory was the largest in Germany. It was (like most of Dresden) heavily damaged in 1945. During the East German regime it was used as a storage facility for a manufacturing plant. It is now restored for business and office uses. The dome is glass and is lit from within at night and is being used very creatively to tell childrens stories under.

Note for the curious:

[1] Martin Heinrich Hammitzsch ( b. 22. May 1878 in Plauen near Dresden; d. of a suicide 12. May 1945 near Kurort Oberwiesenthal) was a Gerrman architect. He was the second husband of Angela Hitler (July 28, 1883 - October 30, 1949) the elder half-sister of Adolf Hitler. Her first husband Leo Raubal died on August 10 1910. Angela moved to Vienna and after World War I became manager of Mensa Academia Judaica, a boarding house for Jewish students where she once defended her charges against anti-Semitic rioters. Angela had heard nothing from Adolf for a decade when he re-established contact with her in 1919. In 1928 she and one of her daughters, Geli moved to Obersalzberg where she became his housekeeper and was later put in charge of the household at Hitler's expanded retreat in Berchtesgaden. Adolf Hitler began a relationship with Geli who committed suicide in 1931. She eventually left Berchtesgaden as a result and moved to Dresden. Adolf Hitler broke off relations with her and did not attend her wedding to Prof. Martin Hammitzsch.