Old Town Hall (Neubrandenburg)
The last, so-called old town hall of Neubrandenburg from the pre-war period, a Baroque building from 1747, stood in the middle of the town's market square until its ruins were torn down in 1950 . Previously, it was largely burned out due to fire at the end of the Second World War .
Since 1990, the large GDR building erected in the 1960s for the former SED district council of the Neubrandenburg district on Friedrich-Engels-Ring has served as the seat of the city administration .
history
The Town Hall building has a long, until the Middle Ages-standing tradition in Neubrandenburg. Despite all the uncertainties of the tradition, eight town halls can be identified for this city to date, five of them for the period up to 1945.
First town hall (after 1248)
Even the founding deed of the city of Neubrandenburg, through which Margrave Johann I of Brandenburg ordered the building of the city, contains a clause for a first town hall building: “But if they [the citizens] have a building with their own for the benefit and advantage in the market of the same city Work and costs will be able to list, so we lend it to them in the same way [to use it] for the benefit of the city after mutual consultation. ”However, this building was not on today's market, it is said to have been in today's Friedländer Strasse, the oldest part of the city. There was also a small, market-like square there. This first town hall was probably located opposite the house of the commissioned locator Herbord von Raven , who built the planned medieval town and was its first bailiff. In this early town hall the jury met under the chairmanship of that city bailiff.
Plattenburg or Harnischburg - a town hall?
Another building in the city, perhaps dating back to the Middle Ages, was the so-called Plattenburg or Harnischburg on the south side of Marienkirchplatz. There are only a few uncertain records about the function of this public building. It can be taken for granted that this building fulfilled tasks similar to a town hall. It was used to store weapons and armaments. The morning speech traditionally took place in front of him , the annual general assembly of all citizens of the city. It still played an important role in court hearings in the 18th century. Around the middle of the 19th century, the building was demolished as part of the redesign of Marienkirchplatz. A first bathing house was built from its beams in Tollensesee, which at some point fell victim to the ice drift.
Second town hall (14th century)
Around the first half of the 14th century, a new town hall actually appears to have been built on today's market square and the court seat was also moved to the market square. Only the existence of a department store on the market, known as "Schohus", is documented for 1372. This was probably mainly a trading depot for the strong guild of shoemakers , but also a sales and meeting place. The exact location of that department store on the market is not known. Also, one does not know whether there was any building continuity between this department store and the newly built town hall on the market, as is known for the Stralsund town hall.
Archaeological excavations in 2006 revealed foundations of two large, centrally located buildings on the market square, including a 14-meter-wide and 25 to 30-meter-long building on the east side of the square. It is undisputed that one of these buildings must have been the medieval “Schohus”. Which of the two buildings it was could not be determined by archaeological findings.
Third town hall (1585–1588)
In the years 1585–1588 a new town hall in the Renaissance style was built on the eastern side of the market. It was probably a gabled house with a council arbor on the west. Such a type of building is similarly preserved in other northern German cities. It is not sufficiently certain whether the remains of the “Schohus” were included in the Renaissance building. The cellar walls of the second, eastern building, which came to light during the excavations, may be structural remains of this third town hall or a previous building that has not been recorded in writing. Older building traces that could be found in the eastern part of the last (fifth) town hall at this point need not have been of medieval origin. This third town hall was destroyed by flames in the great fire of 1676.
Fourth town hall (after 1676)
The fourth town hall was built on the market square , offset to the west . It took the city almost 50 years to rebuild the now three-story building. It was not even completely finished when there was another city fire in 1737 , which also destroyed the town hall.
Fifth town hall (after 1737)
The reconstruction and reconstruction of the town hall went much faster after the town fire of 1737. Written records only give more precise information about subsequent developments. On June 30, 1739, another council meeting took place in the not yet completely finished town hall.
Set pieces of the fire ruins were also included in the new building of this town hall, but the architecture was heavily modified. It was no longer based on the predecessor from the Renaissance. A new baroque building was built according to plans by the ducal court architect Julius Löwe , which was completed in 1747 with the octagonal tower. The building was again three-story with a mansard roof at the end. Together with the tower, it was now 35 meters high, making it as tall as it was long.
This building is traditionally referred to as the “old” town hall of Neubrandenburg. This last town hall on the market square, "dat in sine Buart utsach as if we name it ut 'ne Christmas pop-up box" as Fritz Reuter described it, shaped the cityscape for two centuries and was a popular photo and postcard motif until it was destroyed. It is the only town hall in the city whose appearance has been handed down figuratively.
The town's dignitaries liked to meet in the Ratskeller , a pub on the eastern ground floor of the town hall. Here, among other things, the legendary round table of Fritz Reuter took place, who was the first to present many ideas for his works and examined them for their audience suitability. Perhaps the most famous Reuter painting “Ick will jug vertellen” also reminds of this.
Shortly before the end of the Second World War (April 29, 1945), the Soviet army marched into the city and started numerous fires. The town hall was also destroyed in this inferno in 1945, which destroyed around 80% of the old town. The ruin was torn down in the early 1950s. Rebuilding was originally considered, but these plans were refrained from for financial reasons.
Today the site of the fifth town hall is vacant. The preserved basement foundations were left untouched during the construction of a new underground car park (opened at the end of 2008). As part of the construction of an underground car park and the redesign of the market square, a fountain system was installed over this ground monument .
A provisional solution
Due to the war loss of most of the public buildings in Neubrandenburg (including the old town hall on the market square), municipal administrative authorities were initially distributed across the entire city in numerous emergency and makeshift quarters from 1945 onwards. In 1947 the city bought the fire ruins of the former head office of Mecklenburgische Versicherung not far from the train station on the northern city ring (today: Friedrich-Engels-Ring) and began to rebuild it in a greatly simplified form as a provisional new seat of the city administration. The aim was to put the building into operation for the Neubrandenburg city anniversary in 1948. This provisional arrangement proved to be particularly durable in the following decades and remained the headquarters of the City Council of Neubrandenburg until 1990. All dreams and plans of rebuilding the old town hall or building a new town hall building in Neubrandenburg have since failed to this day.
SED district leadership becomes the new town hall
In the 1960s, an oversized new building for the SED district management and the council of the Neubrandenburg district was erected outside the old town at Friedrich-Engels-Ring 53, which has served as the seat of the city administration since reunification in 1990. Several historic villas on Wallring were demolished for the new building and the Ringstrasse.
In 2014, on the recommendation of the city administration, the Neubrandenburg city council passed a resolution to renovate the far too large-sized town hall building, without examining alternatives as required by law and without considering follow-up costs. This decision was considered invalid in 2016 and a new decision procedure was initiated. In December 2016, without a precise calculation and profitability calculation, including follow-up costs, renovation costs of a good 13 million euros were assumed, which would most likely be significantly exceeded. In addition, no guarantees could be given as with a new building. At the suggestion of the city council, alternatives such as smaller new buildings on various building sites close to the city center were examined from April 2016.
Individual evidence
- ^ Document text in the translation by Franz Boll from "Chronik der Vorderstadt Neubrandenburg" (Neubrandenburg, 1875), pp. 4–5.
- ↑ The public interpretations of the findings by the excavators are not without controversy in urban historical research.
- ↑ What will happen to the town hall in Neubrandenburg? ( Memento from December 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), NDR.de, November 6, 2013, accessed on December 5, 2014
- ↑ Costs continue to rise: City hall renovation really expensive , print edition (more detailed) and Nordkurier online, December 29, 2016
Web links
- Literature about the old town hall (Neubrandenburg) in the state bibliography MV
- From the shoemaker's guild house to the town hall - schatzsuche-nb.de
- 2008 citizens' initiative to rebuild the old town hall of Neubrandenburg (archive)
Coordinates: 53 ° 33 ′ 27 " N , 13 ° 15 ′ 36.2" E