All Saints' Gate

All Saints' Gate
Place in Frankfurt am Main
Beginning of the Hanauer Landstrasse at the Allerheiligentor
Basic data
place	Frankfurt am Main
District	Downtown
Created	1809
Confluent streets	Allerheiligenstrasse, Battonnstrasse, Hanauer Landstrasse , Lange Strasse , Obermainanlage

The Allerheiligentor is a square in the eastern inner city of Frankfurt am Main . From the 14th to the beginning of the 19th century, the eastern gate of the Frankfurt city fortifications was located here . The square was created in 1809 after its demolition and the redesign of the fortification ring into a green area, the ramparts . This is where Hanauer Landstrasse begins , one of the major entry and exit roads in the city center.

history

All Saints Chapel and All Saints Gate of the Second City Expansion

Design of the classical All Saints' Gate, 1809

After Emperor Ludwig der Bayer had granted Frankfurt the so-called second expansion in 1333 , the city began a few years later to enclose the newly won Neustadt with a city ​​wall . The eastern gate of the wall was initially named Rieder Tor , after the Riederhöfe , located about half an hour outside the city on the borders of their territory . In historical documents it is sometimes mentioned as the Hanauer Tor . It was only when the All Saints Chapel was built nearby in 1366 that this name slowly passed over to the gate. The exact construction date of the representative gate tower fluctuates in historical sources between the 1340s and the 1380s.

During the occupation by Swedish troops in the Thirty Years War , the city had its fortifications expanded according to the then modern principles. In 1632, two fortresses were built to the south and north of the gate, the Allerheiligen or Judenbollwerk (named after the nearby Judengasse ) and the Schwedenschanze or Breitwallbollwerk . The passage through the gate was redesigned so that the old gate led out of the city into a kennel , where the road diverted to the north and led through a newly built baroque portal on a bridge over the city moat onto the country road.

In 1809 the fortifications with the old Allerheiligentor were demolished and converted into a green area. City architect Johann Friedrich Christian Hess erected two classicist gate buildings in 1810, which served as guard houses and customs houses. In the gable there were two niches with busts , and above the archway there was a Frankfurt eagle with clover stems and an F on the chest. The frieze above the Doric columns bore the inscription All Saints Thor on the northern gate and MDCCCX on the southern one . The street was still closed with a wrought iron grille until 1864.

At the suggestion of Jakob Guiollett, the baroque outer All Saints Gate was not torn down, but used as a charcoal store. In 1810 the merchant Johann Heinrich Tabor bought the gate, enlarged it with two side extensions and added one storey to it. In 1872 the commercial association bought this house. He had another floor added, which was used as an event hall. The building of the commercial association was an important place in the social life of Frankfurt until 1908, then the association moved into the newly built public education center at Eschenheimer Tor . The former building of the commercial association with the old gate was badly damaged in the air raids on Frankfurt am Main during World War II . In its place there is now a Kolping Society hotel .

Entry of Prussian troops on July 16, 1866

On July 16, 1866, Prussian troops under General Eduard Vogel von Falckenstein entered the city from Aschaffenburg through the All Saints' Gate. It was the end of the Free City of Frankfurt . A few weeks later, on October 8, 1866, Prussia annexed the city. Between 1864 and 1866, most of the classical land and water gates had already been torn down. For some, however, the guard houses were left standing in favor of commercial use, including at the All Saints' Gate. Around 1900 a weighing house and a coffee shop were housed here.

Since the Middle Ages, the eastern city ​​center has been mainly inhabited by small craftsmen. After the ghetto was lifted at the beginning of the 19th century, numerous Jews settled here . During the Second World War , most of the historical building fabric was destroyed by the air raids on Frankfurt am Main . Today the area around the Allerheiligentor is an inner city area with a dense, architecturally insignificant development mostly from the 1950s and 1960s.

Public transport

At the Allerheiligentor there is a junction of three lines of the Frankfurt am Main tram . In an east-west direction, line 11 connects the old town route, which opens from the west, through Battonnstrasse with the Hanauer Landstrasse, which runs eastwards. From the south, lines 14 and 18 come from Sachsenhausen over the Ignatz-Bubis-Brücke . The Ebbelwei Express also runs on this route .

literature

• Architects & Engineers Association (Ed.): Frankfurt am Main and its buildings . Self-published by the association, Frankfurt am Main 1886
• Walter Gerteis: The unknown Frankfurt . 8th edition, Verlag Frankfurter Bücher, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-920346-05-X
• Rudolf Jung: The laying down of the fortifications in Frankfurt am Main 1802–1807 , in: Archive for Frankfurt's History and Art, Vol. 30, self-published by the Association for History and Antiquity, Frankfurt am Main 1913
• Fried Lübbecke : The face of the city. According to Frankfurt's plans by Faber, Merian and Delkeskamp. 1552-1864 . Waldemar Kramer publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1952
• Franz Rittweger: The old Frankfurt am Main , Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2006, ISBN 3-86568-118-2
• Heinrich Schüßler: Frankfurt's towers and gates . Waldemar Kramer publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1951
• Carl Wolff, Rudolf Jung: The architectural monuments of Frankfurt am Main - Volume 2, secular buildings . Self-published / Völcker, Frankfurt am Main 1898

Web links

Commons : Allerheiligentor  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• All Saints' Gate. altfrankfurt.com

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 48.4 "  N , 8 ° 41 ′ 38.4"  E