Haus des Glockenspiels

Haus des Glockenspiels stands on Böttcherstraße in Bremen, among red-brick buildings shaped by the street’s distinctive architectural style. Neo-Renaissance façades surround a former office building created from two warehouses in 1922. Eduard Scotland and Alfred Runge designed the conversion for Bremen America Bank, led by coffee merchant Ludwig Roselius.

Thirty Meissen porcelain bells form the carillon added in 1934, continuing a medieval musical tradition. When the bells sound, ten wooden panels rotate inside the tower with reliefs of seafarers and aviators. Christopher Columbus and Charles Lindbergh appear among the figures designed by Bernhard Hoetger and carved by Zdzislaus Victor Kopytko.

Fire damaged the building in 1944, while the wooden panels survived and later received restoration in 1991. White porcelain bells replaced the earlier carillon, preserving the building’s most recognisable feature. Together with neighbouring structures, the house forms part of Böttcherstraße’s Gesamtkunstwerk, where architecture, sound and moving reliefs meet.