Köpkenstift

Köpkenstift stands in Bremen, also known as the Senator Heinrich Köpken Foundation. Its story begins in the sixteenth century.

Johann Using established the foundation through his will to provide shelter for poor people in Bremen. The first residents lived in small Gottesbuden.

These simple dwellings offered free accommodation, often beside larger buildings, before the foundation changed its social focus. By the late seventeenth century, it supported poor older women.

Flooding shaped the foundation’s later history and led to a new site on Köpkenstraße. A new building appeared there in 1838.

The building remains a protected historical monument, a status it received in 1973. Since 1992, the foundation has provided affordable housing mainly for women in education.

The housing particularly serves students from the University of the Arts in Bremen. A board manages the foundation and maintains its educational focus.

The foundation also carries Bremen’s long record of organised support for people facing poverty. Its surviving nineteenth-century building gives that social history a clear architectural setting.