Altonaer Volkspark

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The current 205 hectare Altonaer Volkspark in Bahrenfeld is Hamburg's largest public park, the core area of ​​which has been a listed building since September 2002.

The school garden in the Volkspark

Emergence

As early as 1895, a private committee approached the Altona magistrate to remedy the blatant lack of open space in the interests of active health care: the industrial Altona / Elbe , which was independent until 1938, was at that time the most densely populated city in the German Empire alongside Breslau . Since that time, the municipality has acquired numerous private properties on the periphery and in neighboring rural communities, including the Bahrenfelder Tannen in 1903 , where large parts of the Volkspark were later built.

In 1913, under Lord Mayor Bernhard Schnackenburg , the magistrate decided to set up a Kaiser Wilhelm Park , although its funding was not yet secured, and appointed Ferdinand Tutenberg as horticultural director. He planned the park deliberately to differentiate it from the widespread horticultural school, according to which architectural elements and regularities dominate the art park (such as in the eastern part of Hamburg's city park ) - rather, the natural conditions and the materials found in them should determine the design. 1914/15 approximately 1,000 unemployed "emergency workers" began with the refurbishment of the premises and took the work of a war-related interruption from November 1918 again. Even if the implementation of Tutenberg's plans lasted throughout the entire Weimar period , essential parts of what was now known as the Altonaer Volkspark were completed in 1920. In 1925 the municipal Altona stadium was added.

Plant and equipment

The Tutenberg
Entrance to the dahlia garden
Mini golf course in the Waldesgrund

Structured by an extensive axial network of paths and embedded in a large forest with steep hills and deep gorges, there is - in accordance with the conception as a park for the people - a wide range of recreational, educational and leisure opportunities: playing and sunbathing areas, mini golf , Europe's oldest dahlia garden with around 40,000 plants (a tourist attraction), a school, perennial and rose garden, forest nature trail , hedge theater , several viewpoints (including the strictly geometrical, terraced Tutenberg ) and the originally horticultural model of Schleswig-Holstein . A Lower Saxon farmhouse with a coffee and beer garden and a “dairy farm”, which has been relocated to Altona, provides refreshments ; Also within the park are a primary school and a children's home.

The Volkspark is surrounded by a wreath of other uses, namely the Bahrenfeld trotting course (since 1867), the Altona main cemetery , which was laid out in 1923 according to Tutenberg's plans, and allotment gardens . Nowadays the Paddelsee, which was laid out in 1931 (fell dry in the mid-1930s), the groundwater-fed outdoor pool (opened in 1927) and the Bornmoorwiese (both since the construction of two arenas - see below) are no longer available.

nature

Due to its forest-like structure and size, a large number of forest birds breed in the Volkspark, such as the hawk , sparrowhawk , tawny owl , long-eared owl , green woodpecker , wood warbler , pied flycatcher , crested tit and , rarer , the tree falcon .

Current situation

  • With the growth in travel since the 1970s, the park became more and more cut off from the surrounding districts: to the vast areas of the railway line towards Schleswig-Holstein came the A7 motorway , along with their multi-lane access roads; A “Bahrenfeld bypass” through the southern part of the park was also planned. Since the turn of the millennium in particular, large, asphalted traffic areas have also been working deep into the recreational areas ( Braun car park near the HH-Volkspark junction, permanent conversion of the Bornmoorwiese to the Rot car park ).
  • A few bus lines lead to the park, but the Stellingen and Eidelstedt S-Bahn stations are relatively far away. Plans for a direct tram connection from Altona or Eimsbüttel in the direction of Lurup / Osdorfer Born were only half-heartedly pursued by the red-green Senate under Ortwin Runde (1997–2001) and have since been entirely on hold.
  • With the new constructions of the Volksparkstadion , Barclaycard Arena and Volksbank Arena for ice and ball sports at the beginning of the 21st century, the areas around the stadium have meanwhile been privatized.
The new Schleswig-Holstein model
  • Municipal financial problems lead to reduced maintenance measures: for example, the horticultural department simply plowed in the horticultural Schleswig-Holstein model from the 1920s in 1998, but had to restore it by resolution of the district assembly - even if only in a stone, less maintenance-intensive form.
  • Despite these problems, the park near the city is popular and used intensively. It was all the more surprising that in March 2005 Hamburg's chief building director Jörn Walter went public with the declaration that the character of the Volkspark would be changed by interfering with the forest in favor of a more “contemporary” use ( sports park in the Volkspark ). The building authorities are sticking to this intention despite criticism: In May 2005, Jack Rouse Associates , a US company that was also involved in the planning of the Autostadt Wolfsburg , was commissioned to develop an "upgrading" concept.

literature

in alphabetical order by authors / editors

  • Paul Th. Hoffmann: Neues Altona 1919-1929. Ten years of building a major German city . 2 vols. E. Diederichs, Jena 1929.
  • Peter Michaelis: 100 years of the Altonaer Volkspark . In: Die Gartenkunst  27 (1/2015), pp. 51–58.
  • Elke von Radziewsky: From dark forest to beauty forest. The Altonaer Volkspark . In architecture in Hamburg. 1995 yearbook . Junius, Hamburg 1995. ISBN 3-88506-245-3
  • Environmental Authority Hamburg (Ed.), Arr. v. Lars Ruge: 75 years of Volkspark Altona. A park guide . Hamburg 1995

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexander Mitschke, Sven Baumung: Brood Bird Atlas Hamburg. Hamburg avifaunist contributions 31, 2001. ISBN 3-00-008070-8

Coordinates: 53 ° 34 ′ 49 ″  N , 9 ° 54 ′ 13 ″  E