Ball court
The ball court is located in the historic center of the city of Mainz . It is trapezoidal and surrounded by baroque aristocratic palaces or their replicas from the 20th century.
The ball court today
The square is designed as a pedestrian zone with old paving. The older Dalberger Hof , since 1846 Maria Ward School (Congregatio Jesu, Maria Ward Sisters Ballplatz 1–2), the Fechenbach -Laudenbacher Hof (1718) with a formerly large garden (Ballplatz 3), which in the French era was known as the “Gasthaus zum Adler ”functioned, and the west wing of the Osteiner Hof form the eastern part of the square. The Catholic Youth Center Mainz and the Catholic student community are in the same escape .
In the south, the school building of the Maria Ward School, called Engelhaus , joins today .
Within the paved area is the bronze three-girl fountain, which depicts three girls under an umbrella.
On the western side of the square, in a covered passage from the ball court to Weißliliengasse, two altars can be seen that belonged to the Mithras shrine in Mainz , the other remains of which were destroyed in 1976 when an insurance company was built. The mithraeum was built in the years 70 to 80, i.e. under Emperor Vespasian, and is therefore the oldest and largest known mithraeum in the entire Roman Empire. In the east, a café forms the second wing of the new buildings on Ballplatz. From the Ballplatz, the streets Am Stephansberg go towards St. Stephan , Schillerplatz , Eppichmauergasse towards Bischofsplatz.
During the Johannisnacht is a locust-book market place on the area whose books stalls extend to the Schillerplat.
Due to the proximity to the non- co-educational girls and boys schools Maria Ward-Gymnasium and Bischöfliches Willigis-Gymnasium , the place is frequented by children and young people.
history
The ball court used to be called on the Kielstock or on the Kelstock . During the French administration at the time of the consulate and the First Empire, it was referred to as place de paume on the city map . The current name Ballplatz derives from the games that took place on the square and the balls that were held in the courtyard "Zum Roten Haus", which later became the older Dalbergerhof. This house belonged to the cathedral monastery, which sold it to the city in 1398. At that time it must have been used by the city as a tavern and ballroom and was therefore given the name “the ballroom” and the square in front of it was named “the ball court”. On the night of October 27-28 , 1462 , which had become so fatal for Mainz, Count Philipp von Katzenelnbogen stopped by . After the subjugation of Mainz, Elector Adolf II of Nassau gave it to his brother-in-law Eberhard von Eppstein, Herr zu Königstein. Eberhard had a chapel built in it, which was consecrated in 1466 in honor of the apostles Simon and Jude.
The Cologne court , whose gate can still be seen today on Bischofsplatz, extended to the west side of the ball court. The former owner, Count Ludwig von Isenburg-Büdingen , owned this farm as a Cologne fief. In 1567, Count Ludwig had a Lorenz chapel in the garden demolished to enlarge the garden.
The taverns to the great abbot and to the small abbot are named in a document dated Wednesday after the 18th day 1507, in which it says
"The Dalheim monastery won its third ban on the house and inheritance of the great abbot, against the St. Agnes monastery over, on the Kilstock and has poisoned and given up such woodpecker hens and Johann von Specht, canon of Mainz,"
In 1507, the elector Jakob von Liebenstein gave the monastery spiritual freedom on this house and declared it a tavern. Associated with this was the exemption from taxes, services and burdens or from worldly interventions. He gave him the right to sell wine in it with the old measure. On Wednesday after St. Nicolai's Day in 1519, the Archbishop and Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg allowed the Dalheim monastery to swap its court as abbot on Kilstock for the court of Zirlin , and later Hasselbaum on Diethmarkt, and to exchange his spiritual freedom, including the right to wine tavern the old measure of moving to the replaced house. The house of the great abbot later became an inn and the carpenters' gift house or guild house. The house at the little abbot was integrated into the Osteiner Hof in the 18th century.
Another house was the Dompfarrhof on the Kielstock . His name was carved in stone under an old cross on the house. A cathedral vicar and cathedral pastor named Barkhof donated it to the Mainz cathedral chapter in 1309 as the residence of the cathedral pastor.
In 1760, the theater director Ackermann appeared in Mainz and, with the support of the Mainz nobility and some merchants, built a wooden theater on this square. The court carpenter was a guarantee for his solidity. The residents of Mainz poured in and the first receipt was a few thousand guilders. He played until 1763, when he went to Hessen-Kassel with fame and a well-filled cash register . Even later, when the first comedy house was already being built on the large Bleiche , large wooden booths were set up on the ball court at the time of the masses and in them traveling menageries were shown.
A stone that broke through the roof and several floors of the Fechenbach-Lauterbacher Hof during the powder tower explosion in 1857 can now be seen in a green strip opposite the building.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Christiane Reves: Building blocks for the history of the city of Mainz: Mainz Colloquium 2000 . Franz Steiner Verlag, Volume 55 2002, ISBN 978-3-515-08176-4 , pp. 142 .
- ^ Georg Christian Joannis : Rerum Moguntiacarum Volume I et II , Frankfurt am Main, Verlag JM v. Sande, 1722
- ^ Karl Anton Schaab : History of the City of Mainz, first volume, 1841
- ^ Karl Georg Bockenheimer : Mainz and surroundings ; Published by J. Diemer, Mainz 1880, p. 141
Coordinates: 49 ° 59 ′ 51.2 ″ N , 8 ° 16 ′ 9.6 ″ E