History
Where the Romanesque Café once stood as a meeting place for the literary world, after the war, as one local newspaper put it, the "shame on Berlin's calling card" spread. "I also walked past it often enough", recalled Karl Heinz Pepper - "I was annoyed like all Berliners." In 1961, he finally decided to remedy the situation, and he actually succeeded in persuading the individual landowners and a number of investors of his project.
The construction of the Europa Center according to the plans of Professor Helmut Hentrich and Dipl.-Ing. Hubert Petschnigg began in 1963. The team of architects received artistic advice from Professor Egon Eiermann, who had also completed the construction of the new Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in 1961. On April 2, 1965, the time had come: the 103 metre high complex made of glass and aluminium was inaugurated by the Governing Mayor Willy Brandt (SPD).
Until 1979, the Europa Center even had its own artificial ice rink. However, it had to give way in the second conversion and modernisation phase of the Europa Center for reasons of cost and efficiency. Today, the terrace café Tiffany's and the fountain are located here.
The Europa Center has a total area of around 80,000 square metres. It consists of the shopping centre with around 70 shops, numerous restaurants, the cabaret "Die Stachelschweine", the office tower with 13,000 square metres of office space - on 21 floors - and the Hotel Palace. 1,100 parking spaces are available in the adjacent parking garage. Around 25,000-40,000 people visit the Europa Centre every day.
The builder of the Europa Center, Karl-Heinz Pepper, passed away in October 2003. Until his death, he kept giving the building, which is now a listed building, new impulses through numerous modernisations, conversions and extensions. His son, Christian Pepper, stayed true to this line.