Barmer Hall of Fame

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Historic photo of the Barmer Hall of Fame, around 1900

The former Barmer Hall of Fame (officially named Kaiser Wilhelm and Friedrich Hall of Fame at the time ) is a historic building in the Barmen district of Wuppertal and, after its reconstruction, bears the title House of Youth . In addition to the Haus der Jugend, the building now houses the Von der Heydt-Kunsthalle , the Live Club Barmen ( LCB ) and a district library of the Wuppertal City Library .

construction

The building, which was built between 1897 and 1900 in the neo-renaissance style by the architect Erdmann Hartig , consists of Kordeler sandstone . The base zone and the outside staircase were made of granite . The architectural model of the multi-purpose building was the Berlin Reichstag building , which was also expressed with the glass dome with a square base. The column portico in front of the vestibule was the dominant component of the 53 meter long front. The sculptors Joseph Hammerschmidt , August Zurstrassen and Wilhelm Giesecke also worked on the facade . They designed the gable field above the entrance stairs and the figure friezes of the side wings with scenes of German unity from Prussian history .

Behind the vestibule is the actual hall of fame with the three emperor statues, which were made by the sculptors Karl Begas , Johannes Boese and Emil Cauer the Elder. J. were created. The side rooms were used in different ways; the seven rooms on the first floor alone were reserved for the museum association.

history

Historic photo of the Barmer Hall of Fame for the inauguration
Historic postcard of the Barmer Hall of Fame, around 1900
The hall of fame restored in the 1950s in late autumn 2012

The Barmer Kunstverein, which was founded in 1866, tried to create exhibition spaces from the very beginning. Initially, the association's works could be exhibited in the “Concordia” society house on Werth . When this moved to a new building, the idea of ​​building an art gallery was born and in 1886 a fund was set up to finance it. In the three emperor's year (1888) , the Barmer city administration decided to build a hall of fame in honor of Kaiser Wilhelm I and Kaiser Friedrich III. and made the property available for this purpose. The funding was then provided by the citizens of Barmer. In 1895 an architecture competition was announced, which the Barmer architect Erdmann Hartig won. The director of the Barmer Kunstgewerbeschule was able to prevail against 57 other submitted designs. After three years of construction, the building with the then official name "Kaiser-Wilhelm-und-Friedrich-Ruhmeshalle" was inaugurated by Kaiser Wilhelm II on October 24, 1900, with great sympathy from the population.

Works of the modern age were shown under the art historian Richart Reiche , who had accepted the office of curator of the Kunstverein in 1907 . In 1909 and 1911, two “Sonderbund exhibitions” and in 1910 the Neue Künstlervereinigung München , the predecessor of the “ Blue Rider ”, were presented to the public. Solo exhibitions on Franz Marc , Alexej von Jawlensky and Emil Nolde were shown in the same year and exhibitions by Adolf Erbslöh and Marianne von Werefkin followed in 1912 . With the works of August Macke , Barmen became a stronghold of Expressionism in 1913 . At the end of the 1920s, the Barmer Kunstverein owned one of the most important and respected collections of modern art.

With the merger of the cities of Barmen and Elberfeld to form Doppelstadt Elberfeld-Barmen in 1929 (officially Wuppertal from 1931 ) the Hall of Fame remained independent. Under the National Socialists , the modern styles of painting were viewed as ostracized. During actions in 1937 and 1938, 83 works of so-called degenerate art were confiscated here.

On December 31, 1939, a spectacular accident occurred when a turbine at the Barmen thermal power station broke apart while it was still in operation and rubble hit the Hall of Fame several hundred meters away. The glass dome was damaged, but there were no injuries.

During the Second World War , the air raid on Barmen on the night of January 29th to 30th, 1943, almost completely destroyed the dome and the collection; the building burned down. The municipal museum took care of it, while on April 21, 1946 the art association merged with the Elberfeld museum association, which ran the Von der Heydt museum , to form the art and museum association (KMV) . The works of art were relocated during the war in 1943, but the losses due to fire, theft and confiscation were very high. The remnants of both collections were brought together in the Von-der-Heydt-Museum in Elberfeld.

In the 1950s, the Hall of Fame was rebuilt after it had been empty for over ten years. On June 21, 1958, it was reopened under the name Haus der Jugend , with the internal structure being redesigned. The dome was not reconstructed. The emperor statues are also no longer preserved, as they were destroyed in the post-war period. An extension for the library was built in 1965. Despite the extensive changes inside and in the roof area, the building has been a listed building since 1985 .

In 2001 the city threatened to close the art gallery for financial reasons, since 200,000 visitors a year are not enough to work profitably .

today

House of Youth, December 2007
The side on the B7 after the dismantling in 2011

Today, the Geschwister-Scholl-Platz is home to the Haus der Jugend with facilities for the youth, the exhibition rooms of the Von der Heydt-Kunsthalle (previously Kunsthalle Barmen ) and, as in the past, the Barmer district library. The non-urban organization Bergische Kunstgenossenschaft also uses the rooms. The building no longer functions as a hall of fame. Since all parties share the building as required and there are hardly any contractual conditions, the situation is unsatisfactory.

Fire protection deficiencies still had to be remedied up to 2011, but financing them turned out to be complicated. Applied for funding of 5.2 million euros to finance the necessary renovation and further modernization, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia approved late. Previously, in 2006 the priority of modernization was downgraded to Regional 2006 . Only 1.1 million euros were available in the city's budget, with which, however, only the fire protection deficiencies can be eliminated. The improvement of the provisional room layout could not be taken into account. A not inconsiderably large part of the building that housed the city library had to be dismantled by 2011. The House of Youth was reopened in April of this year .

literature

  • Lutz Engelskirchen: The Barmer Hall of Fame. Of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie in Barmen. Cuvillier, Göttingen 1996, ISBN 3-89588-405-7 .

Web links

Commons : Barmer Hall of Fame  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ List of the district libraries of the Wuppertal City Library , accessed on January 5, 2017
  2. ^ Hall of Fame: Three German Emperors as namesake ( memento from February 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Westdeutsche Zeitung from December 17, 2005
  3. ^ New defeat for Barmen Westdeutsche Zeitung (online) from April 24, 2007
  4. ↑ Martina Thöne: Freshly renovated: there's a full program in the Haus der Jugend. In: Westdeutsche Zeitung of March 31, 2011.

Coordinates: 51 ° 16 ′ 17 ″  N , 7 ° 12 ′ 12 ″  E