Office building (Gotha)
The Amtshaus is an important listed building at Augustinerstraße 15 in Gotha . Among other things, it served as an administrative building for the Gotha Office, which was created in the Middle Ages . The house number of the office building was Sundhäuser Gasse 626 in 1717 and 122 and 133 in 1828.
history
The office building stands on two medieval properties which, according to research, were merged in 1634. On the western property there was a massive gable-independent house from the 14th century, about a third of which has been preserved. Both properties held brewing and licensing rights .
The main building dates from the period between 1634 and 1638. The princely master builder Hans Weber from Eisenach was responsible for the construction , who was apparently also allowed to use salvaged stones from the demolished Grimmenstein Castle .
In addition to being used as an official building, it also served as a place of residence and work for well-known Gotha personalities. Among them is the famous pedagogue and publisher Andreas Reyher . After his house, built in 1646 on Erfurter Straße, was robbed by the city fire of 1665, he bought the western part of the office building. He probably lived here until his death in 1673 and is listed as resident there in the register of residents in 1665 and 1668. His court book printer must also have been in the office building during this time. After Reyher's death, his sons Christoph and Salomon took over the building. In 1678 Christoph Reyher moved into the rebuilt house on Erfurter Straße, while his brother Salomon continued to live here until 1692. While Salomon Reyher lived here, according to dendrochronological dating, a major renovation was carried out on the western half of the building in 1687.
After Salomon Reyher moved out, the ducal chamber sells the house to chamber councilor and chief magistrate Paul Kühnold. In 1710 the heirs again sold it to the ducal chamber, which used it again as an office building. In 1732 the building was rebuilt and repaired. After that the office building was empty.
It was not until 1739 that the travel marshal and later chief court marshal Baron Hans Adam von Studnitz and the privy councilor Carl Ferdinand von Franckenberg moved into the building. Extensive repair work had been carried out beforehand, following the appraisal by the master builder Johann Erhard Straßburger . With the death of Carl Ferdinand von Franckenberg in 1760, von Studnitz's widow urged Franckenberg to move out. In 1764, von Studnitz received the upper floor of the building as the sole apartment.
Next to von Studnitz, Mrs. Oberschenk von Bechtoldsheim and senior librarian Schläger lived in the administrative building from 1769 to 1792, with whom the writer Caroline Schlegel nee. Michaelis spent a few years of youth here. After Studnitz's death in 1788, the secret councilor Wilhelm von Rotberg moved into the office in 1792.
As one of the last residents of the house, the Secret Council and Vice Chancellor Carl van der Becke moved in in 1810. At that time, the official meetings, the prisons and the official apartments were relocated to the building at Sundhäuser Gasse 124 to the west. However, the official archives remained on the ground floor of the official building. It was not until 1862 that it moved to the neighboring building to the west, which was previously used as a judicial office.
In 1828, the use of the building changed fundamentally with the establishment of the girls' school. As early as 1821 there were considerations to move the bourgeois school from the Augustinian monastery building to a new building. Finally, in 1827, the ducal chamber proposed to take over the office building, which the city then acquired in 1828. In the same year the building was rebuilt, other smaller apartments, such as those of the messenger, were vacated. The girls' school was also popularly known as the official school . The school later officially bore this name. A new construction of two large school halls planned in the 1880s on plots 15 and 17 on today's Augustinerstraße remained unrealized, despite the less than optimal conditions within the building for students and teachers.
The secondary school for girls was housed in the administrative building from 1882 to 1884. In 1882 the seminar school was given two rooms for use, which had to be cleared the following year due to personal needs. In 1894 the auxiliary school for children with disabilities moved into the office building. The official students were scornfully mocked with the word Amtiller . The use of the office building as a school ended in 1987.
In 1889 the water supply and disposal of the municipal civil engineering office moved into the southern area of the house under the direction of civil engineer and water manager Hugo Mairich , which was located here until after 1945. Due to the location of the water supply and disposal in the office building, the auxiliary school was also jokingly and disparagingly called the water high school .
The building has been empty since the school moved out in 1987. In 1993, the roof of the main building was secured with funds from the German Foundation for Monument Protection . The roof of the medieval building in the courtyard area was excluded. The city had this part of the official building demolished in 2012.
In 2018 it became known that the Gotha housing association is planning to renovate the office building and to build on the land next to it. Already in 2009 there were plans to convert the office building for age-appropriate and barrier-free living by the housing cooperative.
building
Exterior design
The stone main house from the 17th century has an L-shaped floor plan. The office building has two upper floors and a simple façade with 13 axes. At the two corners of this façade there are corner rustifications made of sandstone. Over time, these disappeared behind a layer of plaster above the first floor. The façade, hunched to the west, stood on an approx. 1 m wide water lane with a gap to the neighboring building. This street was later walled up and was visible until the neighboring building to the west was demolished.
Above the portal of the office building, the beer openings are available in the bricked-up state. So-called beer wipes (usually bundles of hops and barley) were put into the beers' own openings and thus made known every day where beer was served in the city. The office building is one of the few houses in Gotha where these round openings above the gate have been preserved. Also above the portal is a house brand that has been preserved from the previous buildings . The inscription of this house sign reads: "SOLI DEO GLORIA PR 1574 Zum green Salmon". This house brand was hidden under a layer of plaster for a long time.
The remaining part of the massive gable-facing residential building in the courtyard area was extended by a half-timbered floor in 1687. In the 1970s, the facade was given a layer of plaster, so the half-timbering was no longer recognizable.
Interior design
The office building partially stands on the foundations of previous medieval buildings. Large parts of the basement and a Gothic entrance with an ogival frame also date from the Middle Ages.
Even before Studnitz and Franckenberg moved in in 1739, there were conversions inside. Johann Erhard Straßburger came to the conclusion that 18 new windows, two iron ovens with pottery attachments (obtained from Frankfurt am Main ) had to be obtained, carpentry, locksmithing, whitewashing, painting and the repair of the horse stables had to be done.
Studnitz in particular had the office building richly furnished. Soon painted wall paneling, stucco ceilings and stucco stove niches adorned the upper floor. In October 2019, baroque frescoes were discovered behind the wall paneling. These probably date from the time immediately after moving into the house in 1739. They probably even belonged to the “requested” wall coverings from Friedenstein Castle . In all probability, the frescoes were adapted in style and representations to these wallpapers. The three window reveals and the associated four wall pillars on which the wall frescoes are located belonged to a room whose east wall, which no longer exists today, separated the apartments from Studnitz and Frankenberg. The representations of the frescoes correspond to the Bandelwerk of the high baroque and do not yet have any echoes of the Rococo . Due to the good state of preservation, it can be assumed that the frescoes could only be seen for a short time and then disappeared behind the wooden wall paneling. Because as early as 1741, von Studnitz had a large part of his living rooms covered with wall panels.
When it was used as a school from 1828 onwards, several walls were torn down to create classrooms.
literature
- Udo Hopf: Historical building examination and archival research on the “Amtshaus”, Augustinerstraße 15 in Gotha , Gotha July 2012
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ City of Gotha residents' register 1928/1929 Engelhard-Reyhersche Hofbuchdruckerei, Gotha 1928, p. 16
- ↑ Heiko Stasjulevics: Mocked as "water high school", Thüringer Allgemeine Gotha , January 13, 2018
- ↑ Matthias Wenzel: The near future seems secure - history of the office building at Augustinerstraße 15, Thüringische Landeszeitung Gotha , July 11, 2009
- ↑ Udo Hopf: Colorful bouquets of flowers and single-colored landscapes, Thüringer Allgemeine Gotha , May 29, 2020
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 '49.9 " N , 10 ° 42' 2.3" E