Bach gate

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The Bachtor ( Kölsch : the Bachpooz ) was built around 1230 in the southwest of the city of Cologne at the end of the street Am Weidenbach in the Carthusian Wall running there, which in December 1883 with the creation of the Neustadt between Waisenhausgasse and Weyerstraße after the nearby collegiate church St. Pantaleon in Pantaleonswall was renamed. The building was one of the twelve large gates that were built in the city's new protective and circular wall in the course of the last medieval city ​​expansion . The gate construction, first mentioned in 1241, served as a windmill from 1730 and was closed in 1883.

Brook gate with doorway and Duffesbach flowing through it on the Mercator map from 1571

Environment and origin of name

In this section, the new city wall closed the monastery immunity of the St. Pantaleon Abbey, as well as the surrounding houses of the “villa s. pantaleonis ”. The Bachtor was now the entry and exit on the field side of the included area of ​​the "villa", which bordered the districts of Oversburg and St. Severin to the southeast and the districts of St. Aposteln and St. Peter to the northeast .

The gate was at the end of the street "Off der weschbach", which started at the Greek gate and which was later named "Am Weidenbach". It was named after the Hürther - or Duffesbach , which flows from the foothills and enters the town there , and which had already given the old Bach gate its name.

Local traffic route

In its function as the entrance and exit of the fortified city, the new gate took over the tasks of the old Bach gate, which was created after the second urban expansion and has now become obsolete, which was then left to use as a gate house to the monastery of the " White Women " adjacent to this gate in 1300 .

The new gate, known at the time as “the bachpforts” in German at the time , did not lead to one of the city's major arterial roads , as was the case with the Weyertor to the northwest , but served as a local entry and exit point , like the Pantaleon gate adjoining it in the southwest Exit that was walled up in 1538. Since the neighboring Pantaleon Gate was walled up between 1528 and 1842 with the exception of a small door around 1538 (closed until it was opened for the Rhenish Railway ), it shows that there was little traffic and that there was minimal traffic in this area of ​​the city.

history

The independence of the citizens, which had been achieved with difficulty, led to the collection of various municipal excises , which, as in all old town districts, were then also collected in the newly added ones. The increased income of the city created the financial prerequisites for the large-scale construction project of a new ring wall with walls, watchtowers and gates to be realized.

City wall tower with "throwing nose", reconstruction by Heinrich Wiethase
Gun from Cologne tower riflemen

Fortification and defense

The residents of the suburbs received a different status with the inclusion of their neighborhoods in the city . From then on they had citizenship , but were now also subject to general tax and military service in the event of a defense, as well as the duty of guard and had to recruit appropriate personnel from their ranks for this purpose. The district, in this case St. Mauritius , now had to bear the loads of people (security personnel) and material for the wall sections and gates located in its area, including the construction of the stream gate.

The responsible officials were responsible for the supervision and management of the respective districts, in particular the assigned fortification section, their house on the Weidenbach mentioned a council minutes from 1420 and described it as "house opposite the Kaule an der Bach", located in the field of St Pantaleon.

Building description

middle Ages

The city ​​gate consisted of an almost square central building in which the archway of the cross-vaulted passage reached a clear width of about 5.5 m and a vertex height of about 7.00 m. The building was flanked by two inclined towers, the ground plan of which was two-thirds circular towards the field. Originally, the central building crowned with battlements towered over the equally reinforced side towers by a storey height. Access to the rooms of the gate building was provided by a side staircase.

Modern times

The Duffesbach entering through the gate is also shown in the illustration of Arnold Mercator in 1570/71 , and the gate passage, which was walled up except for a doorway as early as 1528, is recognizable. Mercator's drawing, made from a bird's eye view , shows a higher four-storey central building framed by the city wall and flanked by three-storey side towers. At that time the gate system had a field-side forecourt enclosed by walls, which had a small side door and its main exit to the south-west. This lay in a towering, crenellated wall, which was joined by picket fences on both sides , which were repeated as an outer weir after the city moat that followed.

The danger that also arose in the Rhineland from Swedish trains during the Thirty Years War prompted the council to secure the city by further expanding its fortifications. He instructed that the systems be strengthened in the form of additional wooden bulwarks , beginning with the two power heads in front of the Bayen and Kunibert towers . As the drawings by Hollar (1635) and Merian (1646) show, the construction of new bastions in front of the main gate, including the Bach gate, was carried out. When the additional wooden systems fell into disrepair after ten years due to weather damage, they began to be undertaken in the early 1640s and replaced with solid stone foundations.

Shortly before the turn of the 18th century, the city again invested considerable funds in expanding the city fortifications. In 1689, since the unusually high expenditure for building the fortress could not be covered by the budget of the Wednesday rent chamber, an additional 1000 riksdaler were made available. As a result, the Brandenburg engineer Wichbold Coens , commissioned by the city, built new bastions in front of a few city gates, including the Bachtor.

Use as a mill

As early as 1717, the mill master Matheis (Mathÿs) Groenlant proposed to the town that the construction of the stream gate should be converted into a tower windmill . He had submitted a cost estimate for his application to set up and operate a fur, interest, chamois leather and wage mill there. It was only 12 years later that the applicant came to a positive decision, as the Cologne City Council approved the construction of the new windmill by resolution of September 15, 1729.

  • Tower designed in 1717

  • Mill tower after fire around 1880

In 1730, in preparation for the construction of the mill, the central section of the gate system was removed from the first floor above the walled-in portal and the flank towers were reduced to two floors with roofing. A round, upwardly tapering mill tower made of brick masonry was attached to the remaining central building , which had a rotatable conical cap similar to windmills in the south of France. Underneath the cornice of the tower, on the city side, the year 1730 was visible in 65 cm wrought iron digits . Starting from the level of the street to the final cornice of the tower, the entire structure now reached a height of 32 meters, the cap height was 39 meters. In 19th century illustrations, the mill had a boat-shaped cap. The large windmill had nine floors ( floors or Söller , ndl. Zolders ): floors one and two, the bottom two, were storage rooms, floors three - seven housed the grinder with the equipment for tan processing, floor eight was the lifting floor for the bag lift and bottom nine of the cap base with access to the cap mechanism. The mill tower had a circumference of about 35 m at the foot (outer diameter ~ 11 m, inner diameter ~ 8.5 m), the walls were about one meter thick. In the cap ran the wing axis with corrugated head and wooden comb wheel, which in the cap base via the crown wheel ((top) bunker) drove the downward-running vertical shaft for the machinery, as well as the two Spreet beams of the harvester and the braking device. The gallery, an 18-meter-wide wooden structure, was located at the height of the sixth floor (22 m) and was supported by approx. 40 long beams above the fourth floor in the masonry. From here, the gate wings of the wing cross with a diameter (flight) of ~ 24 meters were covered with canvas. The harvester with reel and codend tracking for turning the wings into the wind was also located there. The 4th, 6th and 8th floors had round windows, the others rectangular. On the field side, the former central gate building with a walled-up portal and hipped roof with dormers ran between the flank towers reduced to three floors (ground floor and two upper floors).

The building, which was subsequently called Neu-, Pantaleons- or Bachmühle, remained in the hands of the city during the Prussian period, just as it was in France. In 1832 the building was auctioned together with the Bottmühle and went into private ownership for 5,500 thalers . The tower, which was recently surrounded by residential buildings on the city side, burned down completely in 1860. In 1883 it stood in the way of continuing the street Am Weidenbach and was closed in July 1883. On July 27, 1883, when the mill was being demolished, a municipal main gas pipe was destroyed.

literature

  • Hans Vogts , Fritz Witte: The art monuments of the city of Cologne , on behalf of the provincial association of the Rhine province and the city of Cologne. Published by Paul Clemen , Vol. 7, Section IV: The profane monuments of the city of Cologne , Düsseldorf 1930. Verlag L. Schwann, Düsseldorf. Reprint Pedagogischer Verlag Schwann, 1980. ISBN 3-590-32102-4
  • Hermann Keussen : Topography of the City of Cologne in the Middle Ages , in 2 volumes. Cologne 1910. ISBN 978-3-7700-7560-7 and ISBN 978-3-7700-7561-4
  • Hiltrud Kier : The Cologne Neustadt. Planning, creation, use. (= Contributions to architectural and art monuments in the Rhineland , 23rd) Schwann, Düsseldorf 1978, ISBN 3-590-29023-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hiltrud Kier: The Cologne Neustadt planning, development, use. P. 153 f
  2. ^ A b c d e f Vogts, Witte: Die Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Köln , on behalf of the Provincial Association of the Rhine Province and the City of Cologne. (Ed.) Paul Clemen, vol. 7, section IV: The profane monuments of the city of Cologne , city fortifications p. 27 ff
  3. ↑ Hermann Keussen , Volume I, page 67, with reference to Lau: “Property taxes are to be proven in the first half of the 12th century. So for the districts of S. Martin, S. Laurenz, S. Brigida, and S. Kolumba. (Lau, Cologne 229 Ann. 7; 332) "
  4. ↑ Hermann Keussen, Volume I, page 67
  5. ↑ Hermann Keussen, Volume II, p. 220, column b
  6. ^ Acrylic picture of the gate around 1750 by Siegfried Glos
  7. ↑ Drawing of the Pantaleonsmühle from 1837
  8. ↑ Drawing of the Pantaleonsmühle from 1884
  9. ^ Hans Vogts, The profane monuments of the city of Cologne , 1930, p. 33
  10. ↑ Walther Zimmermann, Die Kunstdenkmäler des Rheinlands , Volume 23, 1978, p. 76

Coordinates: 50 ° 55 ′ 39.9 ″  N , 6 ° 56 ′ 44.5 ″  E