City Hall (Mainz)
The town hall in Mainz was built on the banks of the Rhine from 1882 to 1884 according to plans by the Mainz city architect Eduard Kreyssig . With a maximum capacity of 5000 people in the "Great Hall", it had the largest ballroom in Germany at the time it was built. Until it was largely destroyed in the Second World War, the city hall in Mainz was the venue for carnival campaigns , as well as major cultural, sporting and political events. The Rheingoldhalle has been located in the same place and with the same function since 1965 .
history
In 1876, the fruit hall in Dominikanerstraße, in which major exhibitions and festivities of the city of Mainz had taken place, was completely destroyed by fire . The fruit hall, which stood in the middle of a densely populated area of the old town of Mainz, held 2,500 people and was built in 1839. Its reconstruction was out of the question for structural reasons.
The city architect Eduard Kreyssig therefore suggested building a new city hall on the newly raised bank area near today's driveway to the Theodor-Heuss-Brücke . In the following years from 1877 to 1880, he produced six plan variants that were controversially discussed by the city council and the citizens. On October 6, 1880, for traffic reasons, the city council decided to move the building site further upstream between the “Rothe Thor” and the “Eiserne Thor” and thus in the immediate vicinity of the iron tower .
The changed planning basis and other problems drove the construction costs up from the originally estimated 386,000 marks to a total of almost 720,000 marks. Nevertheless, the inauguration of the town hall, built between 1882 and 1884, was celebrated on January 5, 1884 under the chairmanship of the Mayor of Mainz Alexis Dumont in a glamorous setting with a banquet with 1200 representatives of the Mainz population.
The town hall was used for the first time during the Carnival campaign in 1884 by the Mainz Carneval Association, which had to pay 7,000 marks for renting the hall and foyer. Other major sporting, social and political events followed. In addition to the regular use of the building for carnival events, the large festival hall was also used for commercial exhibitions such as the Mainz radio exhibition from April 4 to 12, 1926. An eight-day track cycling from November 19 to 26, 1911 caused a sensation . For this purpose, a wooden track with a length of 125 m, a width of 2.5 m and a curve elevation of 3 m with an angle of 50 ° was laid in the large festival hall. The then master driver Heinrich von Opel gave the starting signal for the event . The winner was the Jean Rosellen / Hans Ludwig team with 2484 kilometers driven, third place went to Georg Barth and Karl Wilde from Mainz.
Bernhard Adelung proclaimed the republic in Mainz on November 10, 1918 in the town hall. Shortly thereafter, the French occupying power confiscated it and used it for its own purposes from 1918 to 1927. Shortly after the opening of the hall, Thomas Mann gave a well-attended reading there. The first election rally of the NSDAP in Mainz took place on August 24, 1930 in the town hall. The then well-known party strategist Gottfried Feder spoke in front of allegedly 3,000 visitors .
Towards the end of the Second World War, the town hall was largely destroyed by bombs in air raids in 1945 . The parts of the building that were still standing were temporarily used for a while, but later completely demolished. As a follow-up building, the Rheingoldhalle , built on the same site and inaugurated in 1968, was planned in the 1960s .
Architecture and equipment
The central, rectangular ballroom was 27.6 by 52.8 meters and was surrounded by a low gallery all around. The room was spanned by a hipped roof with a skylight. The roof girders were free-standing iron, multiple constricted round supports with composite capital and base, which in turn carried iron lattice girders in the transverse and longitudinal direction. In the lower hall area there was also a suspended gallery that was used to supply the skylight. Twelve large gas-powered chandeliers provided sufficient lighting in the hall. Four stairwells led visitors from the entrance area to the galleries on the long and back sides. On each long side there was a five and a half meter wide foyer with seven, each four and a half meters wide double doors into the main hall. The two foyers could be integrated into the main hall if required.
The main entrance to the town hall was on the Rhine side. From the foyer there, twelve double doors opened to a 9 by 46 meter wide Rhine terrace. Like some parts of the interior furnishings and the facade, this was not completed until 1888.
A heating system in the basement ensured that the building was heated. It had four chimneys designed by Kreyssig as decorative turrets on the corners of the building.
With a capacity of up to 5,000 people, the large hall was the largest ballroom in Germany at the time . Under this 27.6 by 52.8 meter room was a wine cellar , the ceiling of which was supported by cast iron supports.
photos
Image detail from a postcard motif, city hall on the left in the picture, on the right the cathedral
City hall around 1900
Great hall of the city hall
See also
literature
- Franz Dumont, Ferdinand Scherf, Friedrich Schütz (Hrsg.): Mainz - The history of the city. 2nd edition, Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1999, ISBN 3-805-32000-0 .
- Helmut Wirth: There was no stone left from her. Memories of the Mainz town hall, which was inaugurated on January 5th, 1884. In: Mainz, Vierteljahreshefte for culture, politics, economy, history ( ISSN 0720-5945 ), 4th year 1984, issue 1. pp. 42–47.
- Helmut Wirth: The old town hall as a fool's residence. A chapter in the history of Carnival in Mainz with colorful highs and brown lows. In: Mainz, Vierteljahreshefte for culture, politics, economy, history ( ISSN 0720-5945 ), 5th year 1985, issue 1, pp. 25–32.
Web links
- Information about the city hall on the website of the city of Mainz
Coordinates: 50 ° 0 ′ 7.2 ″ N , 8 ° 16 ′ 33.3 ″ E