At the main guard
| Hauptwache | |
|---|---|
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 View over the Hauptwache towards Rossmarkt |
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| Basic data | |
| place | Frankfurt am Main |
| District | Downtown |
| Created | middle Ages |
| Confluent streets | Roßmarkt , Große Eschenheimer Strasse , Zeil , Biebergasse, Katharinenpforte |
| Buildings | Katharinenkirche , Hauptwache , Kaufhof |
At the Hauptwache , or Hauptwache for short , is the center of the city and one of the most famous places in Frankfurt am Main . The actual Hauptwache is the baroque guard building located here , but the name was transferred to the whole square around 1900 and replaced its earlier name Schillerplatz . Before 1864 the square was called Paradeplatz in accordance with its military function at the time .
Confluent streets
Some of the most important streets in the city center flow into the square (clockwise):
- The Zeil , pedestrian zone and most important shopping street in the city, runs eastwards from here towards Konstablerwache .
- Liebfrauenstrasse, also a pedestrian zone, leads south to Liebfrauenberg and further as Neue Kräme into the old town .
- The Katharinenpforte leads south to the Hauptwache car park and the Kornmarkt .
- The Roßmarkt itself is an important inner city square and turns west into Kaiserstraße , which leads to Kaiserplatz and Willy-Brandt-Platz .
- The stone path is a small, car-free shopping street in western direction to Goetheplatz leads. The Hotel zum Schwan , where the Peace of Frankfurt between Germany and France was signed in 1871 , stood in Steinweg .
- The Biebergasse leads west to the Rathenauplatz and turns into the Freßgass .
- The Schiller Street , a pedestrian zone, the northern section was reopened to traffic after protest the shopkeeper runs from the main station north to the stock exchange .
- The Große Eschenheimer Straße connects the Hauptwache with the Eschenheimer Tor , the former city gate in the north of the Neustadt. In this street was the Thurn und Taxis Palace , the seat of the German Bundestag from 1815–1866 .
Space design
The square with an area of approximately 19,000 square meters has been redesigned several times. Its current shape is shaped by a large opening in the floor, which some Frankfurters also briefly call the hole . The opening opens up to the B-level , an underground shopping arcade below the square, which also serves as access to the underground express train stations. From the passage there is direct access to some of the surrounding shops, including the grocery and delicatessen department of the Kaufhof department store at Hauptwache .
Different architectural styles prevail on the square. On the one hand there is the baroque Hauptwache in the middle, while the surrounding buildings are all newer architecture due to the consequences of the war. The design of the above-ground part of the so-called Allianz-Passage , which is located at the western end of the square , stands out dominantly . Drafts for a conversion are currently being developed for the building.
As part of a large-scale beautification of the square, encouraged by the Bürgererverein Schöneres Frankfurt , the hole to the B-level is to be closed. However, the financing of the project has not yet been clarified. The resulting square should get back its pre-war name "Schillerplatz" and the statue of the poet Schiller, which was banished to the Taunusanlage, should return to the center of the square in accordance with the Goethe monument.
Since February 19, 2009, the entire space has been closed to car traffic. It is the last section of the continuous pedestrian zone from Konstablerwache to Rathenauplatz.
Important buildings at the Hauptwache
The baroque building that gave its name to the entire square was built in 1729–30 by the city master builder Johann Jakob Samhaimer . The main guard was the seat of the city guard and also included a prison . The building has been used as a café since 1905 . After it burned out in World War II, it was rebuilt in 1954 and moved to its current location in 1967.
While the guard building itself looks rather inconspicuous, the Katharinenkirche on the south side of the square is the urban dominant feature of the area. The main Protestant church in Frankfurt was built in 1681 by Melchior Heßler in Gothic style, a very unusual design for this construction period. The nave is a six-bay hall church with a high hipped roof, in the middle of the north facade stands the striking tower crowned by a baroque dome. The church was rebuilt by Theo Kellner and Wilhelm Massing until 1954 after it was destroyed in the air raids on Frankfurt am Main on March 22, 1944 . While the exterior was faithfully restored, the interior is in the style of the 1950s.
On the northeast corner of the square, between Großer Eschenheimer Straße and Zeil, there is the Kaufhof department store on Hauptwache , the flagship store of one of the group's largest stores. Even after the renovation, the department store still has the white facade typical of Kaufhof branches. Instead of the Tietz department store , which had been destroyed in the war , a new two-storey building was built in 1950, which was expanded to four storeys with a new facade in 1954. The next expansion happened in 1968, when today's white facade and access to the underground shopping arcade ("B-level") were created. In the most recent renovation in 2007, the “round corner” from the original building, which opened in 1950, was “opened” with the help of a glass front.
The northern wall of the square is dominated by the Alemanniahaus , which opened in 1956 and which replaced a commercial building that was destroyed in the war and known for its magnificent Wilhelminian style architecture (1892), its beer cellar and the Alemannia-Lichtspiele cinema .
On the west side of the square, between Biebergasse and Steinweg, there was a branch of the well-known Berlin Café Kranzler until the 1990s .
On the south side, west of the Katharinenkirche, is the former department store Kaufhalle , which opened in 1956 and was abandoned in 1988 and converted into a Kaufhof sports department store . To the east of the church is the Zeilpalast , a large cinema center built in 1950 .
The rapid transit hub
Under the square is one of the largest underground high-speed train hubs in Central Europe and the second largest in the city , with 181,000 passengers per day . Two underground stations and one S-Bahn station form the second most important transfer point on the inner-city transport network.
The Hauptwache used to be the most important transfer point for the city's tram , Frankfurt's first tram line (1872) began here. There have been no trams at the Hauptwache since 1986 .
literature
- Wolf-Christian Setzepfandt : Architecture Guide Frankfurt am Main / Architectural Guide . 3. Edition. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-496-01236-6 , p. 15 (German, English).
- Carl Wolff, Rudolf Jung: The architectural monuments in Frankfurt am Main. Volume 2 - Secular Buildings , Architects and Engineers Association and Association for History and Antiquity, 1898, pp. 320–325
Web links
- Architecture of the reconstruction ( memento of October 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) at the main guard
- Around the Hauptwache - views of a square ( memento from January 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (exhibition catalog of the Institute for Urban History, PDF approx. 1.7 MB)
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 48 ″ N , 8 ° 40 ′ 43 ″ E