Old Town Hall (Erlangen)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Facade of the old town hall on Martin-Luther-Platz (2012)

The old town hall in Erlangen was completed in 1740. Today the stately sandstone block building houses the Erlangen City Museum .

description

The three-story building is located in the center of the east side of Martin-Luther-Platz in Erlangen's old town. With its monumental facade structure, it dominates the square together with the Old Town Church. The building has five window axes and is crowned by a mansard roof. The two corner axes are each flanked by Corinthian pilasters , which attach over grooved ground floor pilaster strips and combine the two upper floors. The three central axes form a slightly protruding risalit . The arched ground floor windows are provided with wrought iron bars, while the upper floor windows are cranked framesexhibit. The windows on the first floor are also roofed with triangular gables. The arched portal, decorated with a female head as a keystone , is located in the central axis of the building. Tuscan columns on either side of the portal support a balcony with a baluster . The coat of arms of Erlangen's old town is affixed to the blasted triangular gable of the balcony door, which is also arched with a basket. In its architectural forms, the old town hall is comparable to the baroque aristocratic palaces in Erlangen.

Inside the building, a decorative stucco decoration by Martin Grasser from 1739 has been preserved in the former council rooms. Particularly noteworthy are the large and small halls on the first floor, the ceilings of which feature lattice and bandwork stucco with vases and bird motifs. Some doors also have the original fittings from the construction period. Since the city ​​scales used to be on the ground floor , it was not divided by partition walls, but designed as a spacious hall, which was only divided by four sandstone pillars. There are three large cellar vaults under the Old Town Hall.

Behind the building is a large inner courtyard, the eastern end of which is Cedernstrasse 1, built in 1780. This formerly served as a fire brigade equipment house in the old town, as the (partially walled up) basket arch gates are reminiscent of.

history

In the late Middle Ages, the old town hall was located in the northwest corner of today's Martin-Luther-Platz and also housed the town scales as well as the bread and meat banks in the basement . It was destroyed in the Thirty Years War, rebuilt in 1680 on its old site, but only a short time later destroyed again in the great fire in the old town on August 14, 1706.

In the course of the reconstruction of the old town, in which the course of the fronts of the Martin-Luther-Platz was significantly corrected, the old town hall was relocated to the east side of the square, where the new building that still exists in the years 1733/34 to 1740 was created. The plans were probably made by the master builder Johann Georg Weiß. According to August Gebessler, this was probably influenced by the architecture of the Bayreuth court building inspector Johann David Räntz and, in particular, by his castle of St. Georgen . The masons Georg Pickel and Johann Wilhelm Stängel as well as the carpenters Georg Haselmann and Heinrich Thaler were involved in the construction of the old town hall. The building sculpture comes from the sculptors Johann Friedrich Maucher and Peter Franz Tieffenbach from Wilhermsdorf .

On April 11, 1784, the first Catholic service since the introduction of the Reformation in Erlangen was celebrated in the old town hall, after Margrave Alexander granted the Erlangen Catholics the freedom to practice their religion. Until the completion of a separate church (today's Herz-Jesu-Kirche ) in 1790, the council rooms on the upper floor served as a prayer room. In addition, the building was used from 1749 to 1755 for theatrical performances by traveling troops.

The old town hall served its original purpose until the old and new town of Erlangen were united in 1812. After that, it housed a number of municipal and state agencies. From 1811 to 1827 a state hall office existed here, which had the task of weighing goods imported into the city and collecting tolls. The spacious cellar vaults and sheds in the inner courtyard were used to store incoming goods. In addition, from 1837 to 1919 the municipal pawnshop was located in the Old Town Hall, which granted loans to citizens in need against the deposit of valuables. At times the Erlangen district court was also housed in the premises .

After the First World War, the Old Town Hall was rebuilt before the first municipal educational and cultural center was established in it in 1921. In the former town hall, now known as the Volkshaus , the Volksbildungsbund organized general and vocational events. The building also housed the municipal public library and, from 1923, the city archive and parts of the local history museum. At the time of the Second World War, the local air raid command post was located in the basement of the building.

After the end of the war, from 1946 to 1947, the old town hall housed the judicial chamber , which was responsible for denazification in the Erlangen district. A Siemens office was also housed for a short time . The building has been used by the Erlangen City Museum since 1964. The museum complex also includes some of the neighboring buildings and presents a permanent exhibition on the city's history as well as changing special exhibitions on around 1000 square meters of exhibition space. The old town hall was renovated in 1988.

Sources and literature

Web links

Commons : Altstädter Rathaus (Erlangen)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 49 ° 36 ′ 6.5 ″  N , 11 ° 0 ′ 12.9 ″  E