Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse (Ilmenau)
The Karl-Liebknecht-Straße is an important main road and a former part of the national highway 4 in Ilmenau ( Thüringen ). The street named after Karl Liebknecht is located south of the city center of Ilmenau. It connects Homburger Platz in the west with Ilmenau train station in the east. The total length of the road is about 600 meters.
history
Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse was laid out in the 1890s on the so-called “Mühlwiesen”. Its original purpose was to guide the spa guests arriving at the train station into the spa district and the spa facilities. That is why it is very broad for the conditions at the time. However , it has only been used for long-distance traffic ( B4 ) since the 1960s. Before that it was of little importance for traffic, as it practically ended in nowhere west of today's Homburger Platz. The breakthrough to the Tannenbrücke was only created in 1963 , when the steadily increasing individual traffic could no longer be routed through the city center. The last five houses on Lindenstrasse were demolished for this purpose.
Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse was called Bismarckstrasse until 1945. The numbering is from west to east, the houses with the odd numbers are on the north side, those with the even numbers on the south side. Originally these went to house no.36, today they went to no.30.
course
The Homburger Platz
The Homburger Platz, which marks the beginning of the street, is a square designed place from the late 19th century on which, in addition to some Art Nouveau houses, the former Central Hotel , the Sparkasse , the old power station and the city's Diakonie are located. Between 1890 and 1945 it was called Bismarck- Platz, between 1945 and 1990 Karl-Marx- Platz and since then it has been named after the Ilmenau twin town Homburg .
The old power station is now a technical monument . It includes a turbine that produces a small amount of electricity. It is driven by the Mühlgraben . The Central-Hotel existed from 1898 to 1943. After the Second World War it was used as an auxiliary hospital , during the GDR era as a hospital . Today it is a student residence . In the middle of the Homburger Platz there was a small park until about 1965, which then disappeared when the B4 was moved across the square instead of the previous roundabout . Therefore, today only individual trees in the old park can be seen. The villa buildings on the square were renovated in the 1990s. At Homburger Platz there is an important bus stop for the city buses and the regional buses to Suhl and Frauenwald , which is particularly used by the students of both Ilmenau grammar schools.
Between Homburg and Schulplatz
Karl-Liebknecht-Straße begins at Homburger Platz, which it leaves in a westerly direction. While Wilhelminian style apartment buildings stand on the south side of the street in this section , there is a parking garage on the north side . It was created in 1999. Until then, there was a large bakery on this site . Gabelsberger Straße, which was called Neue Straße until the 1930s , branches off here to the south . There is a busy pedestrian traffic light at the intersection . Here the Karl-Liebknecht-Straße joins the school square.
The school place
The school square is dominated by a school building on its south side. This red brick building was built in 1895 and housed the Ilmenau boys' school until 1949 . It was one of three schools in Ilmenau. There was also a girls' school (today's Karl-Zink-Schule) and a secondary school for higher education (today's Goethe School , House I). In 1949 it was converted into a polytechnic high school , which housed grades 1 to 10, now with students of both sexes. During this time the school was called the Karl Liebknecht School . In 1990 the school building was integrated into the Goethe School. Today it houses the secondary level I (grades 5 to 8) of this grammar school and is referred to as House II (in contrast to House I in the southern part of the city). To the west, the school square is flanked by the parking garage. In the north there are two corner houses, one of which is used by the AOK branch in Ilmenau. The east side is bounded by an Art Nouveau apartment building with a turret from 1905. In the middle of the square there are two parking spaces, under which old Ilmarme run, which make the ground there not very stable . As a result, the houses numbered 3 and 5 planned there could not be built. The school owes its existence to this circumstance. However, soil collapses and subsidence in this area repeatedly.
From the school portal, Schwanitzstrasse (named after the Ilmenau judge and honorary citizen of the 19th century Carl Schwanitz ) extends as a visual axis to the city center at the Apothekerbrunnen and the city church . Schwanitzstrasse was called Schulstrasse until 1898 (after the boys' school), then Schwanitzstrasse once, from 1945 to 1990 Friedrich-Engels -strasse and since then again Schwanitzstrasse.
From the school place to the bear crossing
On the section from the school square to the Bärenkreuzung, house numbers 8 to 21 form a Wilhelminian style ensemble, which is now a monument ensemble . This is why the appearance of the facades must not be changed to any great extent. On the south side, houses 8 to 18 have a uniform appearance from the outside, as they were built at the same time (1901 to 1904) by the architect Ernst Hüttenrauch, who was then their owner for a long time. The apartments in the houses are also laid out identically. Ernst Hüttenrauch lived in house number 10. This building is now separately under monument protection since it was richly decorated from the outside and from the inside. There are many ornaments made of sandstone on the facade and large wall paintings from around 1905 have been preserved in the stairwell. Behind this house there was a horse stable, which clearly distinguishes this building from the others. This also shows that it once served as a residence for a wealthy citizen. Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse forms an avenue overgrown with linden trees on this section . Henneberger Straße branches off to the south between the school and house number 8 . It was named after the Counts of Henneberg, who ruled Ilmenau in the Middle Ages.
The bear cross
The bear crossing is roughly in the middle of Karl-Liebknecht-Straße. Here the Karl-Liebknecht-Straße, which is a ring road, intersects the Oehrenstöcker Straße, an important arterial road that connects the city center with the Stollen district and the village of Oehrenstock. The bear crossing got its name from the hotel "Zum Bären", which was once located here. It was built at the time the road was being built (around 1890). At the beginning of the 1920s, the old building was replaced by a new house in the New Objectivity style that still exists today . The hotel was renamed House of Crafts after 1945. The restaurant with beer parlor and wine bar belonging to the hotel was very popular with the Ilmenauers. The hotel was closed during the fall of the Wall. The restaurant was continued as an Asian restaurant. After several changes of operator, the restaurant is currently (2015) closed. A regional branch of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHK) has been located here since 1990 .
In the 1960s, one of Ilmenau's first traffic lights was set up at Bärenkreuzung. She replaced the "Kreuzungs-Willi", a well-known personality who had been regulating the traffic on the intersection until then.
Between the bear and train station intersection
While residential houses dominate on the section west of the Bärenkreuzung, industrial plants were on the east section. On the north side was the Thuringian glass instrument factory Alt, Eberhardt & Jäger , which was founded in 1892. This three-wing factory building took up the entire space between Karl-Liebknecht-Straße and Mühltor. At times it had over 400 employees. Mainly thermometers and other laboratory devices made of glass were manufactured. In order to obtain the raw glass for this, a glassworks was built on the other side of Karl-Liebknecht-Straße in 1922 , which also belonged to the group. This glassworks had around 150 employees and produced around 900 different hollow glass products. In 1989 it was demolished. An ice rink has been built on this area since 2006 and opened in October 2007. Next to the ice rink, where a sawmill was located until 1995 , there is now a pond. It was created around 1998 during excavation work for the underground car park of a new shopping center that was to be built in this area. The excavation pit was poorly secured against the low groundwater and was therefore full. As a result, the shopping center across the street was housed in the glass instrument factory building, which had been vacant since 1990. The historic facade of the factory was preserved in order to comply with the monument protection regulations. The "Mühltor Center" has been located behind it since 1999.
The station crossing
At the station junction, also popularly known as the “Kauflandkreuzung”, the four-lane Karl-Liebknecht-Straße meets Langewiesener Straße to the east, Friedrich-Ebert -Straße , which is its northern continuation, and August-Bebel- Straße, which is west at night leads to the city center. The station crossing is located at Ilmenau station and is one of the city's most important transport hubs.
Population and social structure
About 250 people live on Karl-Liebknecht-Straße. Since all buildings are multi-storey apartment buildings, an above-average population density is achieved. The apartment sizes are usually between 60 and 100 m², which means that students and other residents are now about the same on Karl-Liebknecht-Straße . The street is sometimes referred to by the abbreviation KaLi in student circles .
Coordinates: 50 ° 40 ′ 58 ″ N , 10 ° 55 ′ 2 ″ E
