Bläß'sches Palais
The Bläß'sche Palais in Heilbronn was built from 1756 to 1758 as a municipal orphanage , breeding and workhouse and from 1803 served as the palace of the Duke and later King Friedrich I of Württemberg. The building was named after the Heilbronn entrepreneur Carl Bartholomäus Bläß, who bought the building in 1828 and ran a vinegar and white lead factory. After being damaged in World War II, the ruins were put out to tender in 1951 for demolition.
history
Orphanage, breeding and workhouse
In Heilbronn were to the 18th century orphanage in the Katharinenspital located Seelhaus housed. This accommodation in an old and narrow building, in the immediate vicinity of the elderly and the infirm, had many disadvantages, which, however, only came to the attention of the city welfare in the course of the Enlightenment . In neighboring Wuerttemberg , after the model of the Frankfurt orphanage, facilities were built in Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg in the early 18th century , in which orphans, children and the poor were housed and worked in a factory . The Heilbronn council and master builder and later mayor Georg Heinrich von Roßkampff (1720–1794) visited the two houses in Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg and reported to the Heilbronn council verbally on February 28, 1756 and again in writing on March 4. Within a few days, the decision was made to create such a facility in Heilbronn at Bollwerkplatz. Master builder Roßkampff submitted an elevation of the building and a first cost estimate on March 18, 1756.
On March 20, 1756, the city council passed a funding plan for the facility. Half of the construction was to be financed by the citizens and half by a collection from external agencies. For this purpose, one turned to numerous imperial cities, most of which, however, refused to share the costs. Subsidies for the construction project came from Augsburg , Dortmund , Frankfurt am Main , Giengen , Hall , Hamburg , Leutkirch , Memmingen , Nuremberg , Regensburg , Überlingen , Ulm and Weißenburg in Bavaria . The future maintenance should be covered by the maintenance of the manor, the morning and afternoon church collections and the hospital maintenance . After further reports came in from Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg, a Stuttgart applicant was offered a position as a “Wayssenvatter” on April 1st and he was promised that he would initially be able to take up his job in an empty parsonage until the planned new building was completed.
On May 15, 1756, instead of the originally planned location at Bollwerkplatz, the decision was made to move to a location at Sülmertor. Master builder Georg Philipp Wenger from Neckarsulm created the construction plans and a cost estimate . The construction supervision was given to the "Wayssenvatter".
The foundation stone for the building was laid on June 5, 1756. The building materials used were stones from the Altböckinger Church and the Latent Tower, as well as the stones from the broken-off Jacob's chapel and the special hospital, as well as stones from the former Carmelite monastery and stones brought from Neckargartach . For the construction work, offenders were also used for forced labor . The topping-out ceremony was held on October 11, 1756 . After completion and furnishing, the house was occupied on October 27, 1758.
For the administration of the facility, the city created the orphanage care, which was given its own seal in 1760 and in 1761 jurisdiction for offenses committed in the house. With the latter regulation one wanted to relieve the city court above all from the clarification of brawls between home residents. The orphanage care consisted of two carers, who in turn came from the city council. One of the keepers was Georg Heinrich Roßkampff until his death in 1794. The church was cared for by the parish church in Heilbronn , and medical care was provided by the city doctors, including Eberhard Gmelin and Friedrich August Weber . A school for school-age children was set up in the building, and there was a "tobacco room" for older inmates in which tobacco and alcohol could be consumed. The staff included the administrator ("Wayssenvatter"), a schoolmaster ( preceptor ) with a provisional , first one then several overseers, a cook and a house tailor. The household chores were taken over by the inmates. The food was grown in the gardens belonging to the institution or delivered by the Katharinenspital.
The administrator, who had been hired almost unseen from Stuttgart, was warned by the council in 1760, among other things, for an emergency breeding crime and sentenced to a fine. After further offenses, he was fired in 1761. His successor was a Heilbronn forest secretary who died after four years in office. The administrator who succeeded him managed the facility until it was closed, but was also noticed by mistreatment. Even after a two-year search, no applicant from Heilbronn was found for the schoolmaster's position, so that in 1761 a Justus Dietrich Koch from Weißenbrod was hired. It is said that he had the wine to which he was entitled paid out in cash and that he was therefore probably not a drinker. There are, however, numerous complaints about the breeders' overseers (“Zuchtknechte”). Some of them were drinkers, some of them negligently or not at all, so that there were numerous dismissals and measures.
The approximately 30 orphans housed in the house led a comparatively good life under Preceptor Koch. The food was sufficient, the house was large and the clothes required were made in-house. The orphanage school enjoyed a good reputation that extended beyond the city, so that soon some citizens asked to have their children admitted there, which was also granted to a small extent.
The inmates of the prison section were people who had been interned by the council, usually beggars , drinkers and work-shy . People who had committed minor offenses were also temporarily admitted to the workhouse. If the inmates came from Heilbronn, their relatives had to take care of their meals, only inmates from outside were fed in the house. The inmates of the prison made up the smaller part of the house, at most about 10 people each, and were initially used mainly for their own construction work. In 1761 z. B. built a laundry room and a vegetable cellar. You have the inmates then used for construction work outside the workhouse, but it came thereby numerous escape attempts, one that employment of inmates homework resumed. In 1760 hemp was processed and later a spice mill. In 1762 cotton weaving was started on a trial basis. Various craftsmen also asked to be admitted to the workhouse in order to B. pursue wool spinning or stocking weaving.
From 1766 a factory-like cotton mill was finally built in the courtyard of the building, in which the orphans also had to work. The factory was given to various foreign businessmen, for whom their own factory owner's house was built. The factory was probably never economical, so that production came to a standstill by 1785. A specially built bleaching plant was rented to Heilbronn merchants that year, and in 1792 the weaving mill, in which a vinegar factory was established in 1793, was also rented out. The Royal British Minister Christoph Wilhelm von Knobel moved into the factory building in 1789 .
After the death of the founder Roßkampff, his position as a carer was filled in July 1794 by Eberhard Ludwig Becht , who had already reprimanded abuses in the orphanage and workhouse in 1782. Immediately after Becht started taking care of the orphanage, considerations began to dissolve the facility. The orphans were gradually given into private households from February 1796. The orphanage maintenance itself remained in place to support the orphans and was topped up by a foundation.
Changing use
After the orphanage moved out, the building was initially rented to a dance master who gave dance lessons there. The Austrian military moved into the building from April to June. During the First Coalition War , the building then served as a military hospital. In 1797 the Swabian Industrial Comtoir offered to buy or lease the building, but the city continued to prefer it to be used by the military.
Palace of the Württemberg Duke Friedrich
After the mediatization and the transfer of the city of Heilbronn to Württemberg, Duke Friedrich von Württemberg acquired the building in 1803 for 36,000 guilders. Friedrich commissioned his court architect Nikolaus Friedrich von Thouret to convert the building at Paulinenstrasse 2 into a palace and to create a park. The extensive renovation took place until 1806. But this house was also too big for Württemberg and therefore the royal finance chamber sold it in 1828 to the Heilbronn entrepreneur Bläß. When the city of Heilbronn sold it in 1803, initially only 4,000 guilders of the purchase price had been paid. The remaining balance was not paid until 1836/37, when the building had long since ceased to be owned by Württemberg.
Bläß vinegar and white lead factory
Carl Bartholomäus Bläß (1800–1871) had acquired the building from the Württemberg court chamber in 1828 and had a vinegar and white lead factory built in the outbuildings of the palace while he lived in the palace himself with his family. Bläß also operated sheep's wool spinning mill from 1824, and in 1827 also the natural bleaching of canvas. In 1839 Bläß and GF Rund, where Bläß previously worked, produced most of the vinegar production in Württemberg, and Heilbronn was also the largest bleaching site in the state.
From 1860 to 1864 Bläß took the theologian David Friedrich Strauss in with his two children. His company was converted into a limited partnership in 1871 . In 1904 Theodor and Julius Mertz, the partners of the G. F. Rund company , acquired the Bläß'sche company, while the building came into the possession of the city of Heilbronn in 1906.
Use in the 20th century
After the city bought the area in 1906, it went through another eventful history. The city initially furnished apartments in the building. City doctor Ludwig Heuss (brother of Theodor Heuss ) and his family moved into one of them. In 1929 the building was under discussion as the central museum for the Heilbronn museums, which were spread across different locations . In 1938/39 the interior of the palace was rebuilt and the building was left to the NSDAP district leadership . Badly damaged in the Second World War, the southeast corner of the palace collapsed on February 5, 1948, whereupon on October 5, 1951, the gazette announced that the palace should be demolished.
literature
- Wilhelm Steinhilber: The health system in old Heilbronn 1281–1871 , publications of the archive of the city of Heilbronn, issue 4, Heilbronn 1956, pp. 318–335.
- Alexander Renz: Chronicle of the city of Heilbronn . Volume VI: 1945-1951. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 1995, ISBN 3-928990-55-1 ( Publications of the Heilbronn City Archives . Volume 34).
- Werner Heim: Heilbronn. The city in the Biedermeier period. 36 lithographs by the Wolff brothers. Heilbronn printing and publishing company, Heilbronn 1970 ( series on Heilbronn. Volume 4)
- Helmut Schmolz, Hubert Weckbach: Heilbronn with Böckingen, Neckargartach, Sontheim. The old city in words and pictures . 3. Edition. Konrad, Weißenhorn 1966 ( publications of the archive of the city of Heilbronn. Volume 14)
- Christhard Schrenk, Hubert Weckbach: "... for your account and risk". Invoices and letterheads from Heilbronn companies . Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 1994, ISBN 3-928990-48-9 ( Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives. Volume 30).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dürr: Heilbronner Chronik, Part I, 1926, p. 295.
- ^ Home: Heilbronn. The city during the Biedermeier period , p. 15 [The former royal. Palace]
- ↑ Christhard Schrenk, Hubert Weckbach: "... for your account and risk". Invoices and letterheads from Heilbronn companies . Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 1994, ISBN 3-928990-48-9 ( Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives . Volume 30), p. 28
- ↑ Schrenk / Weckbach: "... for your account and risk" , p. 28 [C. B. Bläß - invoice issued on June 27, 1902]
- ↑ Renz, Chronik Heilbronn… 1945–1951 , p. 225 and p. 535
Web links
- Berliner Platz 12: The orphanage, breeding and workhouse at stadtgeschichte-heilbronn.de
Coordinates: 49 ° 8 ′ 45.2 ″ N , 9 ° 13 ′ 18.7 ″ E