Old Mint (Munich)

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Kunstkammer and Marstall building in the 16th century
Renaissance inner courtyard of the Old Mint (Münzhof)
Old coin

The Old Mint in Munich was from 1563 to 1567 by an unknown architect as stables - and Kunstkammer building for Duke Albrecht V built. In 1808/09 the building was given an early classical facade according to plans by Johann Andreas Gärtner and in the following years it was converted into the main mint.

location

The old mint was built in Munich's old town in the Graggenau quarter behind the northern city wall instead of medieval houses. The main building was built with four wings around an arcade courtyard, and an auxiliary building was built as a hay store above the former Pfisterbach (today Sparkassenstrasse and Falkenturmstrasse). Today the main building is bordered by Pfisterstraße (south side) (previously: Hofgrabenbach), Falkenturmstraße (east side) and Hofgraben (west side) between Marienhof and Platzl .

function

Marstall and Chamber of Art and Curiosities

The Augsburg municipal works master Bernhard Zwitzel comes into question as a possible architect . The long-considered assignment of the building to Wilhelm Egckl has been revised by recent research. Presumably he was the site manager. The four-winged building served as a stables on the bottom floor. Three-aisled, vaulted halls, supported by red marble columns, were built here. They took up the entire depth of the structure. Ancillary and staff rooms were located on the first floor. The art and curiosity chamber is on the second floor. The construction was initiated by the then Duke Albrecht V. The facade design at that time followed the use of the space, the floor heights varied significantly, which can still be seen today in the three differently designed arcade floors in the inner courtyard.

The ducal chamber of art and curiosities was one of the first universal museums, even if it was not accessible to the population. The more than 6,000 objects in the collection included important paintings such as B. The Alexanderschlacht by Albrecht Altdorfer , as well as natural, ethnographic and regional historical exhibits, including the city models by Jakob Sandtner . After being sacked by Swedish troops and their allies in 1632, it only led a shadowy existence, but was not finally dissolved until 1807/19.

Royal coin

From 1809 the building served as the Royal Bavarian Mint . A false ceiling was put in on the top floor, the former chamber of art and curiosities. The entire facade was redesigned in a classical style, the west side received an entrance project with a triangular gable and allegorical relief . The three-aisled stables on the ground floor were converted into small rooms, only a large hall remained in the south wing (today's portico). The big machines were set up in it. In order to prevent the building from moving, iron structures were installed between the columns in the central hall, which are still preserved today. The machines were driven by three water wheels in the Pfisterbach. The former hay store became a refinery.
During the Second World War, the north wing was almost completely destroyed by an air mine, bombs and fire on December 17, 1944 and January 7, 1945; the arcades remain largely undamaged. The baroque roof structure in the south wing has been preserved to this day. In the years 1950 to 1952 the building was repaired, new staircases were installed and the ceilings were replaced with concrete ceilings.

State Office for Monument Preservation

The Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation has been located in the building since 1986 . Between 1987 and 1996 the building was restored and repaired. A wall that blocked access to today's Falkenturmstraße was torn down. The arcade courtyard was opened to the public. In 1996 the artist Erich Lindenberg erected the "Broken Figure" in the main staircase. In the stairwell in the northeast corner of the building there has been a work by the artist Nikolaus Lang since 1998 . In July and August, the renaissance courtyard of the Alte Münze is used by the Bavarian Theater Academy for open-air performances.

architecture

A covered courtyard corridor connects it to the south with the former ducal residence, the Alter Hof . The arch is made of bricks and about 74 centimeters thick. The former courtyard corridor in the arch now has its access from the Alte Münze and is used as an archive. The bridge roof is dated to the turn of the year 1579/80 by means of a dendrochronological examination. Such a connection originally existed with Neuveste in the north. This part of the courtyard corridor was also demolished with the demolition of the Franciscan monastery (from 1392 St. Antonius of Padua) on today's Max-Joseph-Platz .

In the courtyard of the Alte Münze there are three rows of arcades one above the other. This three-storey four-wing complex still has its original inner courtyard, which is equipped with arcades on all floors that served as a building access point. In terms of architecture, the courtyard is linked to Italian Renaissance architecture, but appears less Italian due to the rather squat proportions and the irregular spacing of the yokes, making it an example of the German Renaissance style.
In the 19th century there was a widespread opinion that tournaments were held in the arcade courtyard. There are no sources for this. Tournaments should not have taken place. Reasons could be that the courtyard was probably too small for this, and the heyday of tournaments (12th century) was over centuries and, when the building was being built, there were only a few show tournaments for the population.

The old coin was given its classical west facade in 1808/09 based on a design by Johann Andreas Gärtner. The three female plaster statues in their gable are attributed to Franz Jakob Schwanthaler and personify gold, silver and ore as an allusion to the purpose of the house. In the course of the construction of Maximilianstrasse , the old mint was expanded to the north in the years 1857–1863 by the so-called "directorate building" based on plans by Friedrich Bürklein . The pointed arch arcades on its north facade were originally open. The Münzgarten was located between the pointed arch arcades and the Alte Münze.

The construction plans of a major investor made archaeological research into the mint garden, which has meanwhile been converted into a vehicle fleet depot for the State Monuments Office, necessary. These investigations also included the basement rooms of the adjacent buildings. In the course of several excavation campaigns that took place from 2010 to 2015, under the scientific direction of the archaeologist Arne Schmid-Hecklau, the well-preserved remains of the city wall from the 13th century, the kennel wall from the 15th century and the overlying building structures from the 18th and 19th century including the historical use of the garden will be exposed and documented.

Robbery and alchemy in the coin

On the night of September 20 to 21, 1906, the mint worker Wilhelm Ruff and the soldier Wilhelm König stole freshly minted coins worth 130,030  marks from the old mint. They had entered the closely guarded building unnoticed through the bed of an underground, temporarily drained Munich city stream .

On October 3, 1929, the alchemist Franz Tausend , in whose "Society 164" founded together with Erich Ludendorff for organic gold growth, conservative upper-class citizens and NSDAP members had invested millions, demonstrated his gold production process in the Alte Münze. He presented the surprised experts with a lump of 0.1 gram of gold that he wanted to have extracted from 1.67 grams of lead, but this did not protect him from being convicted as a fraudster .

literature

  • Michael Petzet: The old coin in Munich . In: Workbooks of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation . tape 87 . Lipp, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-87490-649-3 .
  • Lorenz Wallnöfer: The former Marstall and Kunstkammer building in Munich. Stations of a building. In: Arx. 12 (1990), No. 2, pp. 563-566.
  • Johann Baptist Fickler : The inventory of the Munich ducal art chamber from 1598 . Transcription of the inventory manuscript cgm 2133. Ed .: Peter Diemer in collaboration with Elke Bujok and Dorothea Diemer (=  Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class. Treatises. New series . Issue 125). CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-7696-0120-3 .
  • Dorothea Diemer, Peter Diemer, Lorenz Seelig, Peter Volk, Brigitte Volk-Knüttel, Friederike Wappenschmidt, Elke Bujok: The Munich Art Chamber . Ed .: Willibald Sauerländer (=  Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class . Issue 129). Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7696-0964-6 (Volume 1: Catalog Part 1, Volume 2: Catalog Part 2, Volume 3: Articles and Appendices).
  • Nikolaus Lang: Forensics: Finds from the Pfisterbach and samples of earth colors in the new stairwell of the old mint . In: Workbooks of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation . tape 99 . Lipp, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-87490-659-0 .
  • King Max I. Joseph - model and monument: to an installation by Erich Lindenberg in the old mint in Munich . In: Workbooks of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation . tape 86 . Lipp, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-87490-540-3 .
  • The arcade courtyard of the Old Mint . In: Monument preservation information . Special edition, 2001, ISSN  1863-7590 .
  • Simone Kreuzeder, Thomas Aumüller: Building research in-house . In: Monument preservation information . tape 153 , November 2012, ISSN  1863-7590 , p. 29 .
  • Richard Nemec: The underground Munich . In: Monument preservation information . tape 148 , March 2011, ISSN  1863-7590 , p. 93 .

Web links

Commons : Old Coin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Münzhof. Munich Wiki, accessed on March 11, 2016 .
  2. ^ A b c Josef Hugo Biller, Hans-Peter Rasp: Munich Art and Culture. City guide and manual . 15th edition. Ludwig, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7787-5125-5 , p. 167 .
  3. ^ A b Richard Nemec: The underground Munich . In: Monument preservation information . tape 148 , March 2011, ISSN  1863-7590 , p. 93 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h The arcaded courtyard of the Alte Münze . In: Monument preservation information . Special edition, 2001, ISSN  1863-7590 .
  5. ^ A b Simone Kreuzeder, Thomas Aumüller: Building research in our own house . In: Monument preservation information . tape 153 , November 2012, ISSN  1863-7590 , p. 29 .
  6. ↑ Michael Petzet: The old coin in Munich. 1996.
  7. ↑ Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Ed.): Just published: Fickler's inventory of the Munich Art Chamber from 1598 . Munich November 4, 2004 ( online [accessed July 9, 2012] press release 22/04).
  8. ↑ Walter Ziegler: Die Münchner Kunstkammer ... Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-historical class, treatises NF 129, Munich 2008 ... Reviewed by Walter Ziegler. In: Commission for Bavarian State History (Hrsg.): Journal for Bavarian State History . Munich March 8, 2011 ( badw.de [PDF; 16 kB ; accessed on July 10, 2012]).
  9. ^ Franz Georg Kaltwasser: The library as a museum . from the Renaissance to today, illustrated using the example of the Bavarian State Library (=  contributions to books and libraries . Volume 38 ). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-03863-2 , books and libraries as exhibits from the 16th to 18th centuries. The establishment of the Munich court library in 1558 as part of the cultural policy of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, p. 9 ( e-book [accessed July 10, 2012]).
  10. ↑ archbau.com; The underground Munich: remains of the city walls discovered. Retrieved October 13, 2016.
  11. ↑ Martin Arz: The treacherous rear . In: Deadly Munich. The most spectacular criminal cases . Hirschkäfer, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-940839-08-4 , p. 71 ff .
  12. ↑ Martin Arz: The gold maker and stupid greed . In: Deadly Munich . 2009, p. 91 ff .

Coordinates: 48 ° 8 ′ 19 ″  N , 11 ° 34 ′ 45 ″  E