Europaplatz (Freiburg im Breisgau)

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Europaplatz in Freiburg with a view of Kaiser-Joseph-Straße, on the left the former Karlskaserne with the victory monument

The Europaplatz in Freiburg im Breisgau is a traffic junction and square at the northern end of Kaiser-Joseph-Straße and thus on the northern edge of the pedestrian zone in the old town on the border with Neuburg . At the beginning of the 1960s and from 2013 to 2018 it was fundamentally redesigned. Officially, the square, which was nameless for many years, has been called Europaplatz since 2018 . It is shaped in the east by the rebuilt west wing of the former Karlskaserne , in front of which the victory monument rises. Since when it was set up in 1876, Kaiser Wilhelm I.was present, the local council decided that in his honor the square should be called Kaiser-Wilhelm-Platz , or Wilhelmsplatz for short . That never caught on, because the adjacent buildings belonged to Kaiserstraße (today Kaiser-Joseph-Straße), which at that time extended northwards across the square to Albert- and Ludwigstraße (today Habsburgerstraße). In addition, the stop of the tram line , which opened in 1901, was called the Victory Monument from the beginning and until the timetable change in spring 2019 . The largest Christmas tree in town is traditionally located here during Advent and Christmas.

History of the place

Europaplatz 2015 with Schunck House (right)
Europaplatz with stops and Karlskaserne

Space design

In the Middle Ages, the area of ​​today's Friedrichring between Merianstrasse and the former Karlskaserne formed the border area between the old town and the suburb of Neuburg. The old town wall ran roughly in the course of the southern Friedrichring. After the conversion to a French fortress, the area lay between two bastions, the wall ran to the south and the moat to the north.

For the bridal procession of the future French Queen Marie Antoinette on May 4, 1770, the city built a triumphal arch made of wood and stucco for the Dauphine at the Karlskaserne .

After the fortress was razed, the area west of the barracks was transformed into a garden and vineyard, which existed until the 1860s with a difference in level between the wall and the moat. It was not until the following decades that the remains of the trench were filled in and built on in the eastern area. The area formed an elongated triangle and was bordered by Friedrichstrasse in the north and Ringstrasse in the south. Today both are called Friedrichring . The buildings around the square were badly damaged in the bombing raid on November 27, 1944 .

After the Victory Monument was moved to the west in 1962, the square could be converted into a roundabout as part of the new Old Town Ring. Inside the roundabout, roofed tram stops for line 2 were created, which pedestrians could reach from all four directions through underpasses. Level crossings were also created later. Between the tram stops and the Victory Monument, a small operating building for the Freiburg transport company (today VAG) with a kiosk was built, to which the bus stops were connected. In 1969 the Altstadtring was completed with the Schlossbergring. In November 1973, most of the old town within the ring was closed to private traffic and only paved from 1976 to 1980. Later, following the general trend, people stopped banning pedestrians underground, and so the underpasses, which were rarely used and neglected, were closed. From 2003 to 2015 there was a youth culture center in the former underpass.

With the start of construction on a new, 1.9-kilometer-long urban railway line in March 2015 from Kronenstrasse via Kronenbrücke , the square of the Old Synagogue and Rotteckring to Europaplatz, a four-year construction phase began to redesign the city center, including the - as yet nameless - Europaplatz got a new face. Once again, the tram line that crossed the square from north to south was given another siding to the west, which was removed during the last renovation in 1962. Now the train and bus stops have been included in the pedestrian zone so that they can be reached from Kaiser-Joseph-Straße without having to cross the motorways. A futuristic-looking pavilion with social rooms for VAG staff and a restaurant with outdoor seating was created between them and the southern row of houses. Last but not least, the victory memorial found its place again in front of the Karlskaserne.

The tram line 4 runs from the northern city limits ( Gundelfingen ) via Europaplatz and Kaiser-Joseph-Straße to the exhibition center . Since March 16, 2019, tram line 5 has been running from its terminus at Europaplatz via Haslach to Rieselfeld . Herdern can be reached with bus route 27 from Europaplatz. Coming from Leopoldring in the east, motor vehicle traffic touches Europaplatz in the north, where it joins with Bundesstraße 3 from Habsburgerstraße and continues over Friedrichring to the main train station .

Christoffeltor

Remains of the Christoffelbastion 2017

Around the southern end of the square was the medieval Christophstor or Christoffeltor, which was demolished after the Thirty Years' War in 1648. After the conquest of Freiburg by France in 1677, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban built a gate of the same name further north as part of his fortress construction, which was demolished in 1826. When the building was demolished, the clock and bell tower became the property of the city. In the same year the Karlskaserne received the triangular gable with the clock of the Christoffeltor at the front. The wrought-iron suspension of the bell was also attached above the gable. Remnants of Vauban's bastion were discovered during the reconstruction of the square in 1962 and 2017 and left in the ground.

Karlskaserne

Karlskaserne during the redevelopment of the square in 2017

The Austrians built the first barracks near the Christoffeltor when they expanded Freiburg into a military base in 1651. After the city was conquered by France in 1677, Vaubans had to give way to a modern fortress. At the same time, a new barracks was built, which, however, after Freiburg had become Habsburg again, was razed by the French in 1745 before they left the city. In 1773 the third barracks was built, named after Archduke Karl Ludwig Johann Joseph Laurentius v. Austria was called Karlskaserne . Expanded at the beginning of the 20th century, the building, now in civilian use, was badly damaged in the bombing raid on November 27, 1944, and only the west wing, slightly modified, was rebuilt in 1950/51 without the lance grille.

Headquarters

View from the north end of Kaiserstraße to the north with the commandant's office (left), tower of the Ludwigskirche and Merian-Sautierschem Haus (Schunck-Haus) by Gottlieb Theodor Hase before 1874

Opposite the barracks, the two-gabled commandant's house was built in the style of late classicism in 1827/30 according to plans by district builder Christoph Arnold. In 1871 the Royal Prussian Military Administration resided there and later, until it was destroyed in 1944, the district leadership of the NSDAP .

Schunck House

Schunck House, also Merian-Sautiersches House, 2018

According to plans by Christoph Arnold , a corner house was built north of the square in 1826 after the baroque Christoffeltor was demolished for the Basel factory owner and honorary citizen of Freiburg, Philipp Merian . In 1841 Merian sold his house to the wine merchant Gustav Kaltenbach, who in 1853 sold it to the merchant and benefactor Christoph Sautier. Its heirs kept it until the 20th century. From 1933 it has been the seat of the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (General Electricity Company) and is popularly known as the AEG House . Although the only remaining classical building in the Zähringer suburb burned down in 1944, it was rebuilt on Leopoldring in 1950. The originally five-axis facade on Habsburgerstrasse was extended in the 20th century by a three-axis extension with a gate. It has been owned by Oskar Schunck GmbH & Co. KG since 1984 and was restored to its original state a year later by the F 70 group of architects. Shops were installed on the ground floor and restaurants in the vaulted cellars, which had access to the underground pedestrian passage at the time, and arcades with shops and bars in the backyard.

Art Gallery

Kunsthalle, destroyed in 1944

During the First World War , at the confluence of Röderstrasse with what was then Friedrichstrasse (today Friedrichring), an art gallery was built for the Freiburg Art Association , for which trees had to give way, and on December 15, 1915 the dome was opened. It was destroyed on November 27, 1944. From 1948 to 1953, the youth welfare organization used the provisionally prepared ground floor before the art gallery was demolished.

Victory Monument

Victory Monument 2018 with Schunck House in the background

The Victory Monument, built according to plans by Karl Friedrich Moest in front of the Karlskaserne and inaugurated on October 3, 1876 in the presence of Kaiser Wilhelm I , is intended to commemorate Germany's victory in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. In 1962 it had to give way to the car-friendly conversion of the square and was set up again to the west at the site of the destroyed art gallery (see above), rotated about 90 degrees counterclockwise. At that time Viktoria looked at the Karlskaserne.

History of the name

Road sign with explanation 2018

Various Freiburg squares have already borne the name Europaplatz . First, in 1984, today's place of the Old Synagogue was named that way. When it was given its current name in 1996, the name moved to Karlsplatz, east of the Karlskaserne and Karlsbau. This renaming of the historic Karlsplatz (since 1797) was not well received by the population. In 2001 it became Karlsplatz again and the square in front of the New Fair was christened Europaplatz. Since the re-erection of the Victory Monument, a war memorial, was very controversial, the municipal council decided in 2018 to name the nameless square in Europaplatz, because “nothing embodies the process of peace and reconciliation between the former 'hereditary enemies' Germany and France better than the joint project of European unification. "

literature

  • Gerlinde Kurzbach, Peter Fäßler (Ed.): Freiburg on foot - 15 city tours through history and the present; VSA-Verlag, Hamburg, 1994, ISBN 3-87975-629-5 , pages 49; 218
  • Peter Kalchthaler, Walter Preker et al .: 875 years Freiburg. Freiburg biographies. Event program for the 875th anniversary , Promo-Verlag, Freiburg 1995, pages 102 ff
  • Peter Kalchthaler, Karl-Heinz Raach: Freiburg 2020 The official anniversary book of the city of Freiburg Promo-Verlag, Freiburg 2020, ISBN 978-3-923288-81-6 , pages 70 ff, 92 ff
  • Peter Kalchthaler: Freiburg and its buildings, an art-historical city tour . Promo Verlag, Freiburg 2006, ISBN 3-923288-45-X .
  • Peter Untucht : Freiburg and the region . DuMont Reiseverlag , Ostfildern 2007, ISBN 978-3-7701-7338-9 .
  • Wolfgang Herterich: Freiburg as a garrison town from 1866 to 1919. In: Freiburg Almanach. 45: 87-93 (1994).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Peter Kalchthaler: From Wilhelms- to Europaplatz: This is how Freiburg's northern old town has changed. Badische Zeitung, May 6, 2019, accessed on August 3, 2021 .
  2. ↑ Joachim Röder: Europaplatz stop from spring 2019. Badische Zeitung, March 25, 2018, accessed on June 27, 2019 .
  3. ↑ BZ editorial team: Christmas is getting closer. Badische Zeitung, November 20, 2018, accessed on November 20, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Peter Kalchthaler : Freiburg Mitte: Triumphbogen in Kaiserstraße , Badische Zeitung of May 3, 2010, accessed on December 30, 2010
  5. ↑ Joachim Scheck: From the rain to the eaves. Badische Zeitung, August 3, 2015, accessed on August 4, 2021 .
  6. ^ A b Hans Sigmund: The Freiburg tram network was put back into operation soon after the bombing raid in 1944. Badische Zeitung, November 21, 2016, accessed on August 4, 2021 .
  7. ↑ Simone Höhl: Forty years ago there were still cars on the Kajo. Badische Zeitung, April 5, 2017, accessed on August 5, 2021 .
  8. ↑ Frank Zimmermann: Solution for the Artik in sight. Badische Zeitung, October 30, 2015, accessed on August 4, 2021 .
  9. ↑ 16 March: Opening of the Rotteckring tram. In: Messages. VAG, March 12, 2019, accessed on August 6, 2021 .
  10. ↑ Peter Kalchthaler: The Karlskaserne once shaped the streets at the Victory Monument. Badische Zeitung, February 15, 2016, accessed on August 3, 2021 .
  11. ↑ Simone Höhl: In Freiburg excavators come across an old bastion at the victory monument. Badische Zeitung, March 25, 2017, accessed on August 1, 2021 .
  12. ↑ Peter Kalchthaler: This is how the space at the Victory Monument has changed over the past 150 years. Badische Zeitung, July 24, 2017, accessed on August 2, 2021 .
  13. ^ Architects group F70. Retrieved August 1, 2021 .
  14. ↑ Frank Zimmermann: When an art gallery was built in Freiburg in the middle of the war. Badische Zeitung, December 22, 2017, accessed on August 3, 2021 .
  15. ↑ Uwe Mauch: Europaplatz for the Victory Monument? Badische Zeitung, February 9, 2018, accessed on August 6, 2021 .

Web links

Commons : Europaplatz  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Europaplatz on the side of the city of Freiburg

Coordinates: 47 ° 59 ′ 52 ″  N , 7 ° 51 ′ 10 ″  E