Old Town Hall (Bielefeld)
In the East Westphalian city of Bielefeld in the Mitte district , the administrative center built in 1904 is commonly referred to as the old town hall . Originally the oldest town hall in the city on the Alter Markt , it was rebuilt after being damaged by the war in the 1950s, and now houses the Theater am Markt.
history
The first town hall in Bielefeld's old town was probably built as early as the 13th century on the old market, after the merger with the new town it became the joint administrative center. In 1821 the building was enlarged, and the police and judiciary now found rooms in the town hall. Due to the rapidly increasing population figures as a result of industrialization , a larger new building became increasingly inevitable.
On June 14, 1902, in the presence of the Prussian President of the Province of Westphalia, Eberhard von der Recke, the foundation stone was laid for the new town hall on the site of the former hospital at today's Niederwall.The topping-out ceremony was held on September 2, 1903. After a good two years of construction, the newly built town hall was ready to move into in the summer of 1904. Initially, the building department moved into the new building, and the move was completed in August 1904. The police administration was also housed in the new building, as was the city savings bank . A bridge connects the city theater , which was completed in the same year, with the town hall. Numerous elements of a teaching building of the Masonic Great National Mother Lodge “To the Three Worlds” were attached to the structure. With over 850 symbols, this design is unique in Germany. During a visit by Kaiser Wilhelm II on August 29, 1907, an equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I was inaugurated, but it had to be demolished in 1921 due to the poor quality of the rock. Today a memorial commemorates the prisoners of war, tens of thousands of whom were imprisoned in Allied camps when the new memorial was erected in 1953. During the National Socialist era , the town hall was expanded to include an underground bunker.
The town hall was badly damaged in bombing raids on Bielefeld in autumn 1944. The reconstruction in the 1950s took place to a slightly different extent, so the town hall tower, a miniature replica of the Hermann monument , was not reconstructed.
new town hall
The youngest town hall building became necessary in the 1970s after Bielefeld almost doubled its population from 166,000 to around 330,000 today as part of the Bielefeld Act . The new building, located right next to the Old Town Hall, began in 1979, and the last phase was opened in 1988.
See also
Web links
- bielefeld.de: Town hall and administration
- kinderrathaus.de: Slide show on the history of Bielefeld City Hall
- Gigapixel image of the town hall facade
swell
- City of Bielefeld, Press and Traffic Office: New Town Hall , Bielefeld 1984
Individual evidence
- ↑ Open Monument Day 2015. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 7, 2016 ; accessed on September 8, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Open Monument Day 2011 - Information from the City of Bielefeld. (pdf) Retrieved September 8, 2015 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 1 ′ 16.4 ″ N , 8 ° 32 ′ 6.7 ″ E