Old Town Hall (Saarbrücken)
The old town hall is the former town hall of Saarbrücken . It stands on Schloßplatz and is a listed building as part of the “Schloßplatz” monument ensemble.
history
As early as the 15th century, there was a town hall at the end of today's Schlossstrasse, which Count Johann Ludwig had built in 1498. Wilhelm Ludwig donated the house to the city in 1604. In the middle of the 17th century, however, it had become so dilapidated that a new building was considered. In 1667, Matthes Berchtelen built a new town hall, which burned down ten years later. A new building was not implemented until 1698. The design for it came from Matthes Löw, the execution was in the hands of the builder Paulus Bucklisch.
The building that is preserved today was built between 1748 and 1750. Master builder Karl Abraham Dodel built the baroque building according to plans by Friedrich Joachim Stengel . The south wing originally consisted of two houses, which were probably also built by Stengel. It was not until the end of the 18th century that this wing was adapted to the town hall. With the amalgamation of the cities of Saarbrücken and St. Johann in 1909, the mayor's seat was moved to the more spacious St. Johann town hall , and the building lost its function as town hall.
The house was destroyed in the Second World War and rebuilt from 1947 onwards. The town houses behind the town hall, which were also destroyed, were not rebuilt. Today Nanteser Platz is located there. Municipal offices were housed in the building, as well as some offices of the city association (today regional association ), the municipal adult education center and, for a few years, the Saarbrücken Adventure Museum .
architecture
The main wing has six window axes, the two middle ones in a risalit with a segmented gable . In the gable field there is the year MDCCL (1750) and in a neo-baroque cartouche the Saarbrücken city coat of arms with the Prussian eagle given by King Wilhelm I in the handwriting of Gastein on August 9, 1874. The two wooden double doors can be reached via an outside staircase. There is a balcony with wrought iron bars above the doors. There is a square clock tower on the mansard roof. After a setback with a wrought iron grille, a single-storey structure with beveled edges and an onion helmet rises . The southern wing has eight axes, the southernmost axis is now missing on the ground floor and instead runs through a pedestrian passage. The hipped roof sits on the roof of the entrance wing.
With its façade facing the Schlossplatz, the building consciously took up elements of the former central building of the Saarbrücken Castle at the opposite end of the square and was intended to correspond to the western edge of the square.
The building also served as a model for the old town hall in Pirmasens, which was built in 1770 . For this purpose, the Tyrolean foreman Rochus Pfeiffer used on behalf of Landgrave Ludwig IX. von Hessen-Darmstadt also plans by the architect Stengel. As in Saarbrücken, the aim of the architecture was to refer to the Landgrave's residential palace opposite at that time and to frame the palace square there. Both buildings originally had three floors and both have a central projectile with a segmented arched field and a bell tower on the hunched mansard roof, but the building in Pirmasens has no extension, but an additional window axis on both sides and has been four-story since its reconstruction after the Second World War.
Extension with Saarbrücken town hall cycle
→ Main article: Saarbrücken town hall cycle
At the suggestion of the Prussian Ministry of Culture , the Saar cities were given a patriotic cycle of pictures out of gratitude for their support in the battle of Spichern and in the war of 1870/1871 . The painter Anton von Werner carried out the execution .
The city of Saarbrücken decided to demolish a residential building immediately adjacent to the town hall and to build a new conference room in its place, which was supposed to take the pictures. The Saarbrücken municipal master builder Benzel took over the execution. The hall was inaugurated on August 8, 1880, the ten-year anniversary of the Battle of Spichern, by the high president of the Prussian Rhine province , Moritz von Bardeleben , in the presence of high representatives of the civil and military authorities, and the pictures were presented to the public by Anton von Werner himself .
The walls were adorned with three larger and four smaller paintings by Anton von Werner. The cycle of murals presented the storm on the Rote Berg led by Bruno von François , the arrival of King Wilhelm on August 9, 1870 in Saarbrücken (which, as shown, had not taken place historically), the " Victoria " as an allegory of the unification of the Germans Trunks and large portraits of Helmuth von Moltke , Otto von Bismarck , Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm and Prince Friedrich Karl represent.
Medallions with portraits of Prussian officers from the Franco-Prussian War were placed on the first door of the hall. The portraits of deserving citizens of Saarbrücken and the neighboring town of St. Johann found their place on the second door of the hall. The center of the coffered ceiling of the hall was occupied by a monumental imperial eagle , which was surrounded by a waving banner that contained a quote from the poet Joseph Victor von Scheffel .
The annex, which was used as a meeting and ballroom, was destroyed in the heavy bombing raid on Saarbrücken on October 5, 1944. However, the pictures could be saved and were then stored in the attic of the St. Johann town hall . In 1994, fifty years after the destruction of the Old Town Hall, the paintings were donated to two private individuals with the obligation to restore them and make them accessible to the public. The Saarbrücken town hall cycle is to be presented permanently in the “K4 factory” in the old cotton spinning mill in St. Ingbert .
The extension was not rebuilt, today there is a parking lot here.
reception
The building was on the 15 Saar franc postage stamp of Saarland displayed (first edition 1954).
literature
- Walter Zimmermann: The art monuments of the city and the district of Saarbrücken . Unchanged reprint of the original edition from 1932, Verein für Denkmalpflege im Saarland, Saarbrücken 1975, pp. 123–124
- Josef Baulig, Hans Mildenberger, Gabriele Scherer: Saarbrücken architecture guide . Historical Association for the Saar Region, Saarbrücken 1998, p. 53
- Hans Caspary, Wolfgang Götz, Ekkart Klinge (arrangement): Rhineland-Palatinate / Saarland . (= Georg Dehio (†): Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler ). Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1984, p. 894
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ List of monuments of the Saarland, partial list of monuments of the state capital Saarbrücken ( Memento from January 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), p. 5
- ^ Albert Ruppersberg : History of the former county of Saarbrücken, history of the cities of Saarbrücken and St. Johann 1815-1909, the city of Malstatt-Burbach and the united city of Saarbrücken up to 1914. Volume III, part 2, 2nd edition from 1914, Saarbrücken 1914, pp. 91-94.
- ↑ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (Ed.): F. Informational directory of cultural monuments - independent city of Pirmasens. Mainz 2020, p. 4 f. (PDF; 6.3 MB).
- ^ Albert Ruppersberg: History of the former county of Saarbrücken, history of the cities of Saarbrücken and St. Johann 1815-1909, the city of Malstatt-Burbach and the united city of Saarbrücken up to 1914. Volume III, part 2, 2nd edition from 1914, Saarbrücken 1914, pp. 94-96.
- ^ Gerhild Krebs: Old Town Hall Saarbrücken. memotransfont, accessed August 24, 2013 .
- ↑ Rolf Henkel: Banished to the attic. Die Zeit , No. 46, 1975, November 7, 1975, accessed September 19, 2013 .
- ↑ 1880 - His Majesty's arrival in Saarbrücken. January 23, 2010, accessed September 24, 2013 .
- ↑ Contemporary art in old walls. (No longer available online.) City of St. Ingbert, archived from the original on September 27, 2013 ; Retrieved September 24, 2013 .
Coordinates: 49 ° 13 ′ 50.5 ″ N , 6 ° 59 ′ 26.6 ″ E