Treehouse (Hamburg)
The so-called tree house in the Hamburg harbor , also known as the “Niederbaumhaus”, was a customs, stock exchange, concert and pub built in 1662 in Hamburg's Neustadt district . It dominated the port image in Hamburg for almost 200 years and was canceled in 1857.
history
In 1662 the City Council of Hamburg decided to build a multi-function building at the corner of Baumwall and Steinhöft - at what is now the Alster barrage - in order to cope with the growing port traffic. The building contract was awarded to the builder Hans Hamelau , who had already built the so-called “block house” (which was demolished in 1853) in 1655 to defend the harbor, which stood opposite the tree house in the Elbe. Hans Hamelau traveled to Holland on behalf of the Hamburg Council to examine similar buildings and brought along various sketches and suggestions.
The name tree house refers to the historical use of the building - it served the port overseer as an office. At night he closed the access to the inland port with a large tree. This announced a bell on the roof of the building. The three-story building was also used as a customs and excise office, as well as an inn and concert hall. Also called Schifferbörse, so as a house where freight business of the sailors were settled, it was used. According to contemporaries, there was a wonderful view of Hamburg and the port from the gallery on the upper floor. According to official plans of the "Vermessungsbureau" of 1830, it was 41 feet (11.75 m) wide and 78 feet 9 inches (22.57 m) long. The entrance was on the northern narrow side.
Over the years, the house has developed into a popular restaurant, not least because of its good views, the license to serve various types of beer that only a few inns had, and the good hospitality. Weddings, baptisms and other celebrations were also held here.
The tree house also served as a pier for passenger ship traffic to Hamburg and down the Elbe. For example, the lawyer Ferdinand Beneke moved into Hamburg in February 1796 with the words:
“ There it lay before me, my future hometown, in all its Venetian splendor […]. What a sight when we drove past the countless rows of ships, looked at the swarm of this cosmopolitan water town, heard the different languages [...]. We drove through the harbor. Put on at the tree house. I'm jumping ashore - Republican soil! My fatherland! "
The freighters with milk and vegetables from the Altes Land and Vierlanden also docked at the tree house and reached Hamburg via a water staircase.
Johann Gottfried Herder , Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing are said to have been among the famous guests of the tree house .
Alfred Lichtwark described the tree house as "a wonderful piece of functional architecture without superfluous ornamentation and particularly attractive due to the roof structure, a pavilion that did not appear to be attached, but rather grown out."
Use as a concert hall
The largest room in the tree house was the ballroom on the first floor, which had a volume of 568 m³ with a floor area of 106 m² and offered space for around 200 people.
The composer Reinhard Keizer gave a concert on December 29, 1707 in the hall of the tree house. After taking office as church music director from 1722, the composer Georg Philipp Telemann also organized public concerts in the ballroom of the tree house . The senior elders of the city of Hamburg then complained on July 17, 1722 that he had "made music" in a "public inn" - meaning the tree house - and they tried to ban "such games that stimulate lust" to obtain. Telemann was not deterred by this and in the following years other works by him were heard in the ballroom, such as the world premiere of Telemann's Admiralty Music ( TWV 24: 1) on April 6, 1723 or the festive serenata played there for the first time on January 19, 1765 " Be of us with a wide view ”(TWV 24: 4) for the centenary of the Hamburg Commerzdeputation ( Chamber of Commerce ).
Also here on December 29, 1707 Reinhard Keiser's Der dying Saul presented with 24 instruments , as well as Keiser's Christmas Oratorio ( dialogue of the birth of Christ between Maria Joseph Eine Frembdlingen, a shepherdess and a shepherd with instruments ) premiered.
French rule, William Turner and the great Hamburg fire
In the period between 1811 and 1814, when Hamburg was under French occupation, the entire ground floor was used for the French customs administration and the upper floors were used as barracks . On his travels through Europe , the English painter William Turner sketched the tree house with the Michaelis Church in 1835 . From 1832 the members of the Hamburg Artists' Association of 1832 met in the hall on the upper floor every Saturday in summer . The painting The Members of the Hamburg Artists' Association by Günther Gensler , finished in 1840, shows part of the hall. The house survived the great Hamburg fire of 1842 unscathed.
Use from 1838 and demolition
On March 18, 1838, the Altona entrepreneur JL Schmidt set up a station for the Hamburg optical telegraph on the roof . On the route between Hamburg and Altona and Ritzebüttel-Cuxhaven, about 120 kilometers away, six intermediate stations were selected and suitable, elevated locations equipped with semaphores (swiveling signal arms). The end of the line was the Hotel “Belvedere” in Cuxhaven and the tree house in Hamburg.
During this time, the upper floor also housed Hermann Biow's first Hamburg photo studio .
In order to widen the entrance to the inland port, the Hamburg council decided to demolish the tree house. Therefore, on February 16, 1857, the landlord's lease was terminated by the finance department and the house was sold to demolition contractor JLF Röseler for 5,000 marks to tear it down.
The property was not built on again - the Slomanhaus was built behind it from 1908, and the “Baumall” underground station to the left of it from 1911 .
literature
- Jonas Ludwig von Heß: Topographical-political-historical description of the city of Hamburg. Bachmann et al. Gundermann, Hamburg 1796, OCLC 800800562 .
- Julius Faulwasser: Log house and tree house in the old Hamburg harbor. Hamburg 1918, DNB 579373215 .
- The art history of the tree house at the Althamburger inland port, The artist and his work (Hans Hamelau) , in: Hamburger Geschichts- und Heimatblätter No. 5, Hamburg 1930, pp. 184–187.
- Lenard Gimpel: On the acoustics of early concert venues in Hamburg. Master's thesis at the Technical University of Berlin 2008. (online at: ak.tu-berlin.de ) (PDF; 5.1 MB)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Jan Philipp Reemtsma: Lessing in Hamburg. Beck, Munich 2007, p. 20.
- ↑ Irmgard Scheitler: German-language oratorio libretti: from the beginnings to 1730. Schöningh, Paderborn a. a. 2005, p. 191.
- ↑ Joachim Kremer, Walter Werbeck: The cantorate of the Baltic region in the 18th century: preservation, expansion and dissolution of a church music office. Frank & Timme, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86596-060-3 , p. 20.
- ^ Eckart Kleßmann: Georg Philipp Telemann. Hamburg heads. Ellert and Richter, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-8319-0159-7 , p. 59.
- ^ Jürgen Neubacher: Georg Philipp Telemann's Hamburg church music and its performance conditions (1721-1767): organizational structures, musicians, casting practices. with extensive source documentation. Olms, Hildesheim 2009, ISBN 978-3-487-13965-4 , p. 90.
- ↑ Christine Blanken: Booklet for the CD Dialogus from the Birth of Christ Carus 83.417, Stuttgart, 2008, p. 4.
Coordinates: 53 ° 32 ′ 38 " N , 9 ° 58 ′ 54" E