Old Post Office (Pirmasens)
| Old post | |
|---|---|
 The facade of the Alte Post with forecourt |
|
| Data | |
| place | Pirmasens |
| architect | Ludwig von Stempel |
| Architectural style | Neo-renaissance |
| Construction year | 1891-1893 |
The Alte Post in Pirmasens is a listed building in the neo-renaissance style that was erected in 1893 as the Royal Bavarian Post Office . With its magnificent façade, it is one of the most representative buildings in the city and one of the most important still-preserved Wilhelminian-style administrative buildings in the former Bavarian Palatinate . Today it serves as a culture and event center as well as a museum under the name Forum Alte Post .
location
The building is located south of the Pirmasens Hauptbahnhof on Poststrasse, which is closed to car traffic at this point, between Bahnhofstrasse and Teichstrasse. Today's entrance is in the northern tower at the rear of the building to the so-called Posthof. The southern main facade facing Poststrasse frames Joseph-Krekeler-Platz , which was laid out in 2015 and which was replaced by the Art Nouveau building of the former Hotel Matheis until it was demolished in 2014 .
history
The boom in the shoe industry in Pirmasens during the 19th century led to an ever-increasing volume of parcels, which the previous postal facilities could not cope with. The volume of postal traffic was shown by the amount of fees incurred, here Pirmasens was in 1885 immediately behind Kaiserslautern , Ludwigshafen and Speyer in 4th place among the 20 Palatinate post offices, from 1890 to 1905 it was even supposed to take first place. It was therefore planned to build a new main post office and ultimately decided on a building site outside the city center at the train station to enable the direct loading of postal parcels onto railroad cars. Between 1887 and 1890, the required land between Bahnhofstrasse and Teichstrasse was initially purchased.
The building was planned and executed from 1891 to 1893 by the architect Ludwig von Stempel , who at that time was the director of the Kgl. Landbauamt Kaiserslautern and was already responsible for the buildings of the district office and district court in Pirmasens . The construction costs amounted to 237,330 marks, the architect Stempel also received a personal donation of 2,300 marks from the Prince Regent Luitpold in 1897 in recognition of his achievements in the construction. As a first class post office, the new Pirmasens building corresponded to the highest category in the area of the Speyer Post Office . Initially, the station was opposite on the other side of Bahnhofstrasse until it was rebuilt a little further north around 1900, but the old station building remained until it was demolished in 1976, while the second station building fell victim to the war. Around 1910, the Hotel Matheis was built on the previously free-standing forecourt of the post office , but this largely covered the post office facade for a whole century.
From 1926 the new main post office was built in order to cope with the further increase in postal traffic. The old post office was replaced by this and was now only the seat of the telecommunications and the power post office ; around 1930, however, the city was one of the largest postal service bases in Germany. The building remained in this function until it was closed in 1976. In contrast to large parts of the city, it survived the Second World War almost unscathed, but suffered from some renovation work that damaged the historical building fabric.
After the closure, the building was to remain empty for a long time, even if there were early considerations for a new use, initiated among other things by the inheritance of the citizen Elisabeth Hoffmann over 2 million marks to the city in 1978. The then mayor Karl Rheinwalt made a reservation the money for the purpose of using it exclusively for the Alte Post. In 1986 the building was listed and bought by the city. After initial security measures at the beginning of the 1990s, an architecture competition was held in 1994/95, the results of which, however, could not be realized due to the city's troubled finances. In 1999, a working group for the Alte Post cultural center was finally set up and work began on gutting the first parts of the building. In the following years, the first exhibitions took place in the southwest wing. The renovation was only completed in 2013 with the forest exhibition . Lock. Shoe. The history of the city of seven hills. on the occasion of the city's 250th anniversary. The official opening took place in January 2014 by State Interior Minister Roger Lewentz . Over the next few years, the exhibitions were constantly expanded, in April 2014 the Bürkelgalerie moved from the Old Town Hall to the Alte Post and in November 2016, Minister of Education Konrad Wolf opened the Hugo Ball Cabinet, an interactive permanent exhibition on the life and work of the co-founder of Dadaism opened.
architecture
The two-story sandstone building is a typical example of an elaborate historicist administration building . Its design contains motifs from the Italian and French Renaissance and is reminiscent of Italian palazzi. The three large arches of the main facade follow the triumphal arch scheme and contribute significantly to the representative overall impression of the building. The masonry on the ground floor is rusticated , a stylistic device already used in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi , the first secular building of the early Renaissance . The sequence of roofing windows on the first floor with alternating triangular and round gables is reminiscent of the Palazzo Farnese , for example .
The building bears the greatest resemblance to the former post and telegraph office in Kaiserslautern on Karl-Marx-Strasse, which was built in 1890 according to plans by Ludwig von Stempel, but is no longer as well preserved as the building in Pirmasens after war damage . The main design difference is the orientation of the facade: While the post office in Kaiserslautern is directed towards the corner of the building through two side facades that converge towards a head building, the counterpart in Pirmasens with its main portal is directed towards a central display facade along Poststrasse.
A 33-meter-long mosaic band with motifs from the postal service runs along the main facade and the side facades facing Bahnhofstrasse and Teichstrasse. During the Second World War it was damaged in the area of the south-west wing, but could be completely restored during the restoration according to the original plans of the manufacturer Villeroy & Boch . Above the main portal there was originally a sandstone relief of the royal Bavarian coat of arms flanked by two lions from the sculptor's workshop of the Menges brothers in Kaiserslautern, which was removed from the roof in 1932 for traffic safety reasons. After its interim restoration, it is now in the courtyard of the building.
The center of the building is the domed hall, the former parcel hall. It has a splendid coffered ceiling, which was modeled on the original version on the basis of the preserved wooden substructure, after later modifications (above all a plastered ceiling hung as a cover) severely damaged the original. Another remnant of the historical interior design is the stucco ceiling of the so-called dome room on the upper floor of the north tower, which dates from 1896 and was rediscovered and restored during the renovation work. A modern aspect is the glass extension on the north side, built from 2006 to 2012, which connects the exhibition rooms as a passage and staircase.
Forum Alte Post
The building has been used as a cultural site for the city of Pirmasens since autumn 2013. It houses two permanent exhibitions for the two most important artists born in the city, the Dadaist Hugo Ball and the Biedermeier landscape and genre painter Heinrich Bürkel . There are also regular changing exhibitions. Cultural events and seminars take place in the domed hall, named Elisabeth Hoffmann Hall in honor of the founder, and it can also be rented for private celebrations.
literature
- City administration Pirmasens: Forum Alte Post - contributions to the history of construction. 2nd Edition. Gabriel, Pirmasens 2014.
- Julius B. Lehnung: Beloved Pirmasens. 1st edition. Vol. 4 (1875-1905). Komet-Verlag, Pirmasens 1981, ISBN 3-920558-03-0 .
- Julius B. Lehnung: Beloved Pirmasens. 1st edition. Vol. 6 (1890-1900). Komet-Verlag, Pirmasens 1984, ISBN 3-920558-05-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.pirmasenser-zeitung.de/nachrichten/detail/matheis-wirbelt-viel-staub-auf , accessed on September 26, 2016 at 8:14 p.m.
- ↑ Julius B. Lehnung: The postal history of the city of Pirmasens and the stamps used until 1914 . In: Palatinate postal history - postal history sheets . No. 36, 1971.
- ↑ Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung , 37th year 1917, No. 67 (from August 18, 1917).
- ↑ Julius B. Lehnung: Beloved Pirmasens . 1st edition. Vol. 3 (1840-1875). Komet-Verlag, Pirmasens 1980, ISBN 3-920558-02-2 , p. 235.
- ↑ a b c d Building history & architecture. In: pirmasens.de. Archived from the original on September 26, 2016 ; accessed on August 25, 2018 .
- ^ City of Pirmasens: Forest. Lock. Shoe. The history of the city of seven hills. Retrieved August 26, 2019 .
- ^ Ministry of the Interior and for Sport Rhineland-Palatinate : Minister Lewentz: Alte Post is a lively cultural center in Pirmasens. Retrieved August 26, 2019 .
- ↑ More attention for Heinrich Bürkel - permanent exhibition in the form of Alte Post opened. In: Pirmasenser Zeitung . April 15, 2014, archived from the original on December 3, 2016 ; accessed on August 25, 2019 .
- ↑ FOCUS NWMI-OFF / City of Pirmasens: Pirmasens: Minister of Culture Dr. Konrad Wolf opens the Hugo Ball Cabinet. In: Focus Online . October 24, 2016, accessed October 14, 2018 .
Coordinates: 49 ° 12 '14 " N , 7 ° 35' 55.9" E