Ballhaus (Berlin)

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As in this Paris ballroom in 1612, one can also imagine the interior of the Berlin ballroom.
The first Berlin Ballhaus already existed during the Thirty Years' War. Detail from the equestrian image of Elector Georg Wilhelm von Albrecht Christian Kalle from 1635.

The Ballhaus in Berlin was a large building that existed in the Baroque era and was intended for ball games. A first ballroom already existed outside the city walls during the Thirty Years War . The successor building built on the electoral (later royal) pleasure garden in Berlin 1659–1661 was demolished in 1715.

The fashion of ball games

Ballhaus (also Ballspielhaus) was the name in German of the Baroque period for a building in which the " Jeu de Paume ", a forerunner of tennis , was practiced. The game is already known from the Middle Ages , where z. B. was played in cloisters . Ball houses that were specially set up for the game later existed primarily at royal courts. In addition to Berlin, there were ballhouses used in this way during the Baroque period in Vienna , Munich , Passau , Düren , Frankfurt (Oder) and other places.

The ball houses were usually six times as long as they were wide. The walls, on which the roof structure was placed without any additional intermediate floor, measured about nine meters. The interior was simple and functional. Galleries ran along the walls to catch the balls. At the top, a few netting-draped openings let in skylights. There are also reports of hidden galleries, which, stretching along one of the long sides, had a sloping roof about head-high and ended up as an open gallery on one of the transverse walls. Just as in the case of tennis, a stretched net divided the interior into two halves, each of which was divided into four areas, marked lengthwise by white lines. All fields had their special names and indicated their location to the playing parties.

The ballroom on the Friedrichswerder

The first Berlin ballroom (No. 9) was west of the city gates in the area that would later become Friedrichswerder. Detail from the Berlin map by Johann Gregor Memhardt from 1652.

There was a first ballroom in Berlin as early as the Thirty Years War. This relatively small elongated ballroom with a pointed roof can be seen on the Berlin cityscape by Albrecht Christian Kalle from 1635. It was located directly outside the city walls west of the old twin cities of Berlin-Cölln on the Spreegraben in the area later known as Friedrichswerder .

As a result of the fortification of Berlin carried out from 1656 onwards, the ballroom came to lie directly on the inside of the new fortress. Elector Friedrich Wilhelm (the "Great Elector") decided to sell the building and set up a new ballroom in the pleasure garden, conveniently close to the palace .

The place of the old ballroom was sold by the elector to the pharmacist Fahrenholtz. In 1660 the old ballroom building on Friedrichswerder was demolished. The pharmacist built a pharmacy on the foundations of the old ballroom . The cellar vaults under the old Bauhaus were preserved and continued to be used for pharmacy purposes. The unicorn pharmacy was later located at this point in Berlin's Kurstrasse.

The ballroom at the Lustgarten

The new ballroom was located directly on the electoral pleasure garden in Berlin-Cölln. Graphic by Wolf / Jügel (1820) after a drawing by Johann Stridbeck the Elder. J. from 1690.

The elector had the building of the new ballroom built by his court architect Johann Gregor Memhardt from 1659 to 1661 directly on the pleasure garden based on the pattern of the ballroom in Düren. This second Berlin ballroom is based on the view of the pleasure garden of the painter and draftsman Johann Stridbeck the Elder . J. from 1690 to see.

Some information about the Berlin Ballhaus can be found in the travel description of a contemporary globetrotter, Christoph Pitzler. According to this, the ball house had a length of 72 feet (equivalent to 22.60 m) and a width of 31 feet (equivalent to 9.27 m). The Berlin researcher and historian Albert Geyer describes the Berlin Ballhaus as follows:

“It was a simple, rectangular, elongated house with tall, tall hall windows and a high pitched roof, which was enlivened by four gables on each long side. The lower row of windows on the first floor suggests narrow corridors along the ball court, where there must have been open gallery corridors at the level of the large upper windows. In addition to an anteroom in a low extension between the old building and the ballroom, where the players could relax and enjoy refreshments, there were also apartments in the house, as shown by the number, position and size of the windows on the gable side at the entrances to the pleasure garden seems to emerge, but especially proves an order of the Great Elector, according to which an apartment in the ballroom was to be set up for the shoemaker of the Electress Alexander Guaillard. "

The “ball master” who works at the ballroom is also said to have lived there.

Ball master

As ball master at the time of the Great Elector Johann Adam Triebeler was responsible for the proper operation of the system in the Berlin Ballhaus. He probably also worked as a coach and referee. In the heated games he often got into trouble due to agitated losers, so that he had to be protected against insults and threats by strict regulations of the elector. His successor after his death in 1688 was the native of Basel and Reformed Isaac Bion.

Demolition of the ballroom by King Friedrich Wilhelm I.

The Ballhaus am Lustgarten did not have a long lifespan. Already under King Friedrich I , its existence was endangered by the renovation of the Mint Tower under the architect Andreas Schlueter . When the mint tower was demolished in 1706 and the new castle was built, it had to be shortened so that it could no longer serve its original purpose. The grandson of the Great Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm I , the "Soldier King", who converted the pleasure garden into a parade ground for the Prussian military, had no more use for the building and therefore had the ballroom demolished (around 1715) to make more space for to receive the military parades in the Lustgarten.

literature

  • Albrecht Geyer: History of the palace in Berlin. Berlin 1936 (two volumes). New edition (of volumes 1 and 2 in one book) by the Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89479-628-0 .
  • Friedrich Nicolai: Description of the royal royal cities of Berlin and Potsdam, all the peculiarities located there, and the surrounding area. (4 volumes). Berlin 1786.
  • Hans Saring: The Berlin Ballroom at the time of the Great Elector. In: Communications from the Association for the History of Berlin . Vol. 58 (1941), pp. 5-7.
  • Erika Schachinger: The Berlin suburb Friedrichswerder 1658–1708. Böhlau, Cologne 1993, ISBN 3-412-13992-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Hans Saring: The Berlin Ballhaus at the time of the Great Elector. In: Communications from the Association for the History of Berlin . Vol. 58 (1941), p. 5.
  2. ^ Ball. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large, complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 3, Leipzig 1733, column 229.
  3. ^ Friedrich Nicolai: Description of the royal royal cities of Berlin and Potsdam, of all the peculiarities located there, and the surrounding area. Volume 1. Berlin 1786, p. 151.
  4. ↑ Erika Schachinger: The Berlin suburb Friedrichswerder 1658–1708. Böhlau, Cologne 1993, ISBN 3-412-13992-0 , pp. 54, 59 and 105 (note 502)
  5. ↑ Printed by Albrecht Geyer: History of the Palace in Berlin. Berlin 1936 (two volumes). New edition (of volumes 1 and 2 in one book) by the Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89479-628-0 , p. 61 ff.
  6. ^ Albrecht Geyer: History of the Palace in Berlin. Volume 1. Berlin 1936, p. 63.
  7. ^ A b Hans Saring: The Berlin Ballhaus at the time of the Great Elector. In: Communications from the Association for the History of Berlin . Vol. 58 (1941), p. 6.
  8. ^ Hans Saring: The Berlin Ballhaus at the time of the Great Elector. In: Communications from the Association for the History of Berlin . Vol. 58 (1941), p. 7