Belvedere train station

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Belvedere House, view from the southeast, April 2007

The station Belvedere (also: House Belvedere ) is the former station building of the station Muengersdorf , the end point of the opened on August 2, 1839 seven kilometers of railway in the Rhenish Railway Company from Cologne station on Thürmchen after Muengersdorf formed. The building in today's Cologne district is the oldest railway station building in Germany that has been preserved in its original form.

history

Drawing of the train station from the first half of the 19th century

railway station

The station was at the end of the first section of the planned, world's first international railway line Cologne – Aachen – Antwerp . The client for the building, which was completed in 1839, was the Rheinische Eisenbahngesellschaft. The station building was located a short distance from the tracks with a view of Cologne on a hill and was also used as a restaurant for excursion guests from Cologne. In a text from the construction time of the line it was said: “The Müngersdorfer are looking forward to the construction because they will then see the Cologne residents arrive by steam car. It's just a small beginning, but that's not less welcome, because - every beginning is difficult. "

On August 2, 1839, the inauguration of the route from Cologne to Müngersdorf took place with a special trip for invited guests. The train from Cologne reached “in 10 minutes the newly and tastefully furnished Belvedere in Müngersdorf, one mile away, with a beautiful view”. At the Müngersdorf train station "a garden had been made and a small but magnificent station building was added, in which at the same time an economy is operated". From 16 August of that year, six pairs of trains ran between Cologne and Müngersdorf on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, and on Sundays there was an additional evening return trip from Müngersdorf.

However, sales did not develop as hoped. "In the beginning, the railroad-loving public had been busy visiting this strange place of amusement in the middle of the field, but the desire soon subsided and the journeys no longer brought in enough to cover the costs." With the extension of the line to Aachen in 1840/41 , the importance of the station decreased further. It was shut down in the 19th century.

Reuse

Stumbling block for Klara Stoffels in front of the Belvedere train station

The building came into the possession of the city of Cologne in 1892, which used it as a residential building. Klara Stoffels, who was murdered by the National Socialist judiciary in 1944, lived there from 1935 until her arrest in 1943 . Two artists lived and worked there since the 1950s. Since 1980 it is under the monument number 268 listed building and part of the landscape park Belvedere , as its namesake, it functioned.

Belvedere station had stood empty since 2010 and was in great need of renovation . In December 2010 a support group Bahnhof Belvedere e. V. , who organized the funds for the renovation, took over the developer for it and aims to use the building for cultural purposes. At its meeting on June 23, 2015, the Cologne City Council voted unanimously for the renovation of the historic Belvedere train station. The city transferred the building under leasehold to the support group and contributed to the costs of renovation and expansion. On October 29, 2018, the support group was awarded the German Prize for Monument Protection 2018, the Silver Hemisphere, for its services to the preservation of the building and its commitment .

Belvedere station is part of the Via Industrialis network in Cologne.

description

Natural monument plane tree group

The plans for the building probably come from the architect and city master builder Johann Peter Weyer or - in the opinion of Walter Buschmann  - from Cologne city master builder Matthias Biercher, who was a student of the Berlin Building Academy and thus the Schinkel School . The two-storey building, built in the classicist country house style, is the oldest surviving station building in the German-speaking area and one of the few Schinkel School buildings in the Rhineland . The plastered building with its noticeably high windows is to the side above the railway line on Belvederestrasse, named after the station. The middle part of the street-side facade has a balcony supported by volutes . On the garden side, after a winter garden, there is a terrace garden.

The property belonging to the house was placed under protection as a protected landscape component in 1991. There are seven plane trees around 150 years old in the green space belonging to the house .

literature

  • Alexander Kierdorf (Ed.): Cologne. An architecture guide. Architectural Guide to Cologne. Reimer, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-496-01181-5 .

Web links

Commons : Haus Belvedere  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Belvedere station in the city of Cologne's calendar of events
  2. ^ Walter Buschmann, Alexander Kierdorf: Cologne Belvedere station . Rheinische Industriekultur e. V.
  3. ^ General organ for trade and commerce , fifth year, Cologne, 1839, p. 95.
  4. ↑ Friedrich Ev. von Mering, Ludwig Reischert On the history of the city of Cologne am Rheine , third volume, printed and published by Joh. Wilh. Dietz, Cologne 1839, p. 300.
  5. ↑ a b A. W. Beyse, contributions to practical railway construction, printing and publishing by C. Macklot, Karlsruhe 1840, pp. 114–115.
  6. ^ General organ for trade and commerce , fifth year, Cologne 1839, p. 432.
  7. ↑ a b c Förderkreis Bahnhof Belvedere (ed.): Bahnhof Belvedere - a new future for Germany's oldest station building. Information flyer. Support group Bahnhof Belvedere e. V., Cologne undated
  8. ↑ Belvedere terminus? In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . Edition of September 10, 2011, p. 49.
  9. ↑ Lövenich in Brennpunkt eV - Magazin ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 20, accessed December 21, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.loevenich-im-brennpunkt.de
  10. ↑ The redevelopment decision of the city of Cologne from 2015 described on the website of the support group
  11. ^ German National Committee for Monument Protection (ed.): German Prize for Monument Protection 2018 . Berlin 2018, p. 18f.
  12. ↑ Prize winners 2018 on the homepage of the German National Committee for Monument Protection (not yet updated); accessed on November 3, 2018.
  13. ↑ http://www.via-industrialis.de/seiten/routen/westen.html#belvedere

Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 49.5 "  N , 6 ° 52 ′ 17.7"  E