Palais Waitz von Eschen

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Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 51 ″  N , 9 ° 29 ′ 39 ″  E

The Palais Waitz von Eschen around 1880

The Palais Waitz von Eschen , also called Waitzsches Palais , was a city ​​palace on the Opernplatz in Kassel . It was destroyed in the devastating air raid on Kassel on October 22, 1943 .

history

When in 1767 after razing began the fortifications of urban expansion of Kassel, the Oberneustadt linked to the old town, the Opera Square was the western opener. The opera house or court theater already stood on the southwest side and on the opposite side, on the corner of Obere Königsstrasse and Opernplatz, the architect and chief court builder Simon Louis du Ry built his large residential and commercial building for the Huguenot merchant Jacques Roux in 1772–1774 . Landgrave Friedrich II von Hessen-Kassel won his Minister of State Jacob Sigismund Waitz von Eschen (1698–1776) as a representative for the front of the square, between the almost symmetrical side fronts of the Electoral Court Theater on the left and the Roux'schen House on the right City Palace.

He had one of the most elegant city palaces in the city built between 1770 and 1773 according to plans by Simon Louis du Ry. The building was three-storey and 13-axis, with an attic in the high hipped mansard roof . A three-axis, five-storey central projection towered over the front and ended with a söller in the second attic, which only towered over the building behind this söller. Two corner projections to the right and left were each crowned by a dwelling with a hipped roof . The sides of the building were triaxial. The front of the palace was initially only separated from the Opernplatz, which sloped in front of the building, by a railing . This gradient was later absorbed by a retaining wall and a stone balustrade with vases on its pillars and running along the entire facade , which supported the driveways to the portal. In front of the middle of the balustrade wall there was a semicircular, low fountain basin on Opernplatz, into which “Castle water” or “Prinzenwasser” from the Wilhelmshöher Prinzenquelle ran from a bronze lion head in the wall. The fountain was redesigned around 1900 and received a bronze figure by the Kassel sculptor Heinrich Gerhardt , the so-called "male duck".

The builder himself never lived in the palace, because he resigned from his offices in September 1773 out of bitterness over the curtailment of his competences, left Kassel in 1774 and entered the Prussian service as minister and chief miner. He died in Berlin in 1776. However, the palace remained in the possession of his descendants until it was destroyed in 1943.

Later changes to the Opernplatz

Spohr monument

Louis Spohr memorial

In 1883, a monumental monument was erected on Opernplatz, which still stands there today, for Louis Spohr , who was court music director and composer at the Kassel Opera from the 1820s to 1850s. The area surrounding the monument was landscaped a few years later, with bushes and two weeping willows in front of the balustrade, which significantly impaired the view of the palace.

Theaterstrasse and Opernstrasse

Since the middle of the 19th century, a narrow footpath, the so-called “Gnadengässchen”, which connected the Opernplatz with the “Wolfsschlucht”, began between the palace and the side wing of the commandant's office. In 1897 the path to “Theaterstrasse” was widened and the side wing was completely demolished for this purpose.

The "Locomotive", Opernstrasse 2 (2013)

When the court theater was demolished in 1909 and the "Opernstraße" was laid out, the new building at Opernstraße 2 replaced the theater side wing in 1910 and was popularly nicknamed "Locomotive" because of its shape. Built on the opposite side of the Southwest Opernstraße Leonhard Tietz a monstrous, 1911 opened department store, forerunner of since 1955 standing there Kaufhof .

destruction

The C&A department store with the Spohr monument (2007)

The Spohr memorial and the “locomotive” survived the bombings in World War II . But the Waitzsche Palais burned down during the major attack on October 22, 1943, and there was a vacant lot there for more than 15 years. The property was divided in 1952 by the street “Neue Fahrt”, and the city of Kassel claimed the location of the burned-out palace for a parking garage. On the only slightly damaged balustrade ramp, the Federal Post Office built a large barrack in 1955 , which contained a provisional post office during the Federal Garden Show in 1955 and the documenta 1 that was taking place at the same time . There was also a sales point of the Kaufhof when the neighboring, inaugurated 1955 new building of the department store, which was partly burned out during the war, was built. As the last remnant of the former palace, the balustrade with the fountain also disappeared when the C&A company built their department store there in 1959, which opened on April 1, 1960.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The building was bought by the Hessian government in 1837 and used as the official and residence of the Kassel city commandant. (Metz: Residenzstadt Cassel , p. 98).
  2. ^ Metz: Residenzstadt Cassel , p. 98
  3. ↑ See photo of the Spohr monument with the Palais Waitz von Eschen .
  4. ↑ http://regiowiki.hna.de/Datei:Gnadengaesschen-wolfsschlucht-schulstrasse-kassel.jpg
  5. ↑ At the millennium celebration in 1913, the dialect poet Georg Fladung targeted this building in a single song: "Ans Waitzsche Huss äs drangeklecksd us Stein ne Lokmadive, the Spohr begicked himself perplexed de neie Berschbekdive."
  6. ↑ The fountain's male duck fell victim to metal thieves soon after the Second World War.

literature