Today’s walk through the city of Heidelberg will be a bit personal and even nostalgic. No doubt, after many years of working at Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, my heart has also stayed forever in this city, as sung in a famous local song.

I visited this beautiful city for the first time in the summer of 1998. These days, I was among dozens of new employees that Heidelberger Druckmaschinen had recruited to set up new branches and representative offices in various CIS countries. There is no doubt that we were the first, and I am proud that we were able to do so much to promote new modern technologies at the beginning of the 21th century.

This is us in July 1997: Sergey Chefranov (St. Petersburg), Dmitry Ermakov (Ekaterinburg), Sergiusz Woropaj (Minsk, Belarus), Rinat Adiatullin (Kazan), Oleg Lovkachev (St. Petersburg), Zulfiya Mashanlo (Aliati, Kazakhstan), Bakhtier Dzhanzakov (Tashkent, Uzbekistan), Andrey Kurusov (Rostov-on-Don).

 

Since then, we have brought clients here many times, come here for training. The city was changing before my eyes. I can’t escape the feeling that I have lived in Heidelberg for a significant part of my life. There is definitely something about this city that keeps me coming back.

It’s been a long time, but everything about Heidelberg and the city of romanticism is still a big part of my life. Whether it’s while checking out printing equipment, or just when I’m driving by, I make sure to stop by this city for a couple of hours to once again feel its charm. Today we can walk through familiar places to see how the city has changed and how we ourselves have changed.

Let’s start with the small and cosy train station. In the central square, just like 25 years ago, there is a huge bike car park. There is no McDonald’s anymore, but the Ibis Hotel, which used to house the service staff, is still there.

Inside the station, everything is still as we remember it. The well known bas-relief on the wall is still in its old place, and it even appears to have been restored.

The Print Media Academy building located at the address Heidelberg, Kurfürsten-Anlage 52-60 was beyond the means of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG. Probably every visitor to the headquarters in the early 2000s has in his collection his own photo at the horseshoe of a printing horse with three legs.

The 50 metre high building was built between 1998 and 2000. It served for company training and events and was inaugurated by Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on 14 April 2000. It has an area of 37 by 37 metres and cost almost 80 million German marks to build. In the front courtyard of the building stands the S-Printing Horse, one of the largest horse sculptures in the world, by Jürgen Goertz.

In 2020, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen withdrew its last employees from the city of Heidelberg. As a result, no more company employees worked at the Print Media Academy after the withdrawal from the city. In February 2021, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen announced the re-sale of PMA to an unspecified Luxembourg investment company. Nevertheless, until now, the building shows no signs of life…

The design of the building meant that it would be surrounded by a water track around its perimeter to symbolise the dampening process of offset printing. As you can see, the river has dried.

And inside the lobby you can see a huge drop of paint, inside which is a conference room.

The Academy of Print Media had 26 seminar rooms and an auditorium for 200 people, which could be rented for events and congresses. On floors 6 to 10 were offices. The last floor, the 12th floor, was home to the Schwarz restaurant from 2003 to 2014. After that, ‘Level 12’, an event space, was added there. As you can see, the old signs are still in place.

Right behind the PMA building, on the site of an old letterpress printing machine factory, are a residential neighbourhood with underground garages.

The building of the demonstration centre, which was built in the late 70s and early 80s, after the production of the machines was moved to Wiesloch, is now also closed. These walls still remember Hubert Sternberg and other famous company executives who once set the direction of the entire printing industry. Every visitor to the demo hall remembers this view.

The cement foundations for the demonstration printing machines can be seen on the floor, and the floor itself was an oak parquet in the form of cubes. It was extremely difficult to damage and so the parquet lasted longer than the demo hall itself. It wasn’t hard for me to walk over and take a few shots through the time-dusty glass.

I have a photo in my collection from the late 90’s when the letterpress crucible machine was still installed against the white wall.

Here’s another angle, we’ll save it for history. To this day, the architecture of the 70s is impressive and doesn’t seem outdated.

And this photo was taken at the place where many years ago all commemorative photos were taken of all visitors to the company’s headquarters. In my collection alone there are at least a dozen photos with my wonderful customers. The flags of the countries from which visitors were received were always displayed. They were updated daily.

Well, the spirit of the company still remains in the city, despite the fact that not a single employee actually works there anymore. Let us now walk through the streets of the old town and notice the pleasant little things that were once part of the visit for our visitors.

Life in the city of Heidelberg changed significantly almost instantly in the first part of the 2010s. The relocation of the US military headquarters from Heidelberg and the departure of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG led to a decent drop in property values. But, as the saying goes, ‘no place is empty’. The old students of the University community and the ubiquitous American soldiers have been replaced by a new crowd. The Heidelberg University with its infrastructure is still prestigious and popular. New buildings are being built in place of the old offices, and life seems to go on.

The Crown Plaza Hotel, where we used to accommodate visitors to the headquarters, is now occupied by a Hilton hotel. The last time I stayed at the Crowne Plaza was in the summer of 2021 during the easing of the bans after the coronavirus. I remember how at breakfast every bun, every cheese plate was sealed in transparent film. But the legend is gone. And how many funny stories about visitors this hotel remembers – can’t be counted. Maxim Rumyantsev, the general director of the Lubavitch printing house, wrote a whole book about them.

 

Bismarckplatz, familiar to anyone who has walked along the city’s longest street, Hauptstrasse. Unfortunately, the seven-storey department store Galeria Kaufhof on the square has been closed for many years. Apparently, its fate is still undecided, as well as what to do with the Heidelberger Druckmaschinen headquarters building. But you can find interesting photos on the fence erected around it. It turns out that the building was built in the late 50s as a Horten department store. Then it housed the Karstadt shop for a while, and then the well known Galeria Kaufhof opened.

Two photos taken from roughly the same angle. The photos were taken 63 years apart.

And this is what the square looked like in 1961

Even the pedestrian street changes. Some shops close, others open. My feeling is that the Hauptstrasse shops have become less sophisticated in recent years, and even the famous Kraus clothing shop, which for many decades maintained its independence and was a local landmark of the town, seems to have surrendered to mass merchandise. Only the monkey on the bridge remains at the same spot by the bridge over the Neckar, which is familiar to every visitor to the city.

But in spite of everything, the thing that has attracted people to Heidelberg since Goethe’s time remains a constant in the city – the romantic Elector’s Castle. The ruined castle reminds people that time passes and nothing lasts forever under the moon. The 175-year history of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG is also a clear proof of this.

And lastly, here we go again, more than a quarter of a century ago. Our friend Timur Rakhimov (Tashkent, Uzbekistan) joined us here. I know exactly the place where this picture was taken. It’s a restaurant right by the Alte Brucke Bridge, at Ob. Neckarstrasse 1.

That’s all for today, I hope you enjoyed it. And we are still available to help you inspect your printing machine if you have made the decision to purchase one. Order our detailed inspection before you pay money to the supplier for the equipment.

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