Former Straw Hat Factory Silberberg & Mayer

The building belonged to a Jewish factory-owning family and was taken over by the City of Cologne in 1938. In 1940 the city exchanged it for land in the inner city with the Cologne Grammar School and Foundation Fund, which handed it to the Prussian State for the state-run Hildegardis girls' secondary school. From October 1943, a forced labor camp for around 120 workers from Ukraine was set up in the roof structure. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft Eisen und Metall organized the retraining of these workers there for metalworking firms in the Cologne area, teaching them their trade within a few weeks.

The building suffered heavy damage during the war. From November 1945 it also housed the re-established state Apostelgymnasium, which shared shift-based teaching with the Hildegardisschule; initially, factory operations continued in the attic and an adjacent building. From October 1946 the State Building Authority took over reconstruction, renewed the central heating, and rebuilt the glass roof over the light court, which from then on served both schools as a gymnasium and assembly hall. The Hildegardisschule used the left half, the Apostelgymnasium the right. Even afterward the building remained a stopgap solution: the schoolyard only had room for the lower and middle grades, while senior students spent their breaks in the corridors with the windows open. In autumn 1961 both schools moved into new buildings.

Afterward, parts of what would become Cologne University of Applied Sciences took over the building. Today it is used, among others, by the Rhenish Music School of Cologne, the Köln-Sülz regional school, and artists working in the Ateliers Lichthof. From February 2016 to July 2025, the Schiller-Gymnasium Köln taught its senior classes here. In May 2018, a Stolperstein commemorating Auguste Fuchs was laid in front of the main entrance.