Bayenturm

Structure and location of the Bayenturm on a representation by Arnold Mercator in 1571

Bayenturm in 1670

The Bayenturm is a medieval defense tower in the city center of Cologne . The defiant Bayenturm , built like a castle , was built around 1220 as part of the eight-kilometer-long medieval city fortifications . The southern corner tower of the city wall on the Rhine is one of the few testimonies of this complex that surrounded Cologne for 700 years. The tower is around 35 meters high with the ground floor and four upper floors including battlements. The walls of the first floor are 2.50 meters thick. Today the Bayenturm is the seat of the non-profit foundation “FrauenMediaTurm”.

Structure and history

The Bayenturm was one of the last two towers to end the city wall, probably built after 1217 and first mentioned in 1250. The tower system has a square substructure with three floors, surrounded by 2.50 meter thick walls. Two octagonal upper floors were built on top of it around 1325, which were closed off by cantilevered battlements above a round-arched frieze with clover-leaf arches . To the south and west, the fortifications joined the Cologne city wall. On the eastern side of the Rhine, a wall, battlements and a built-on building with a hipped roof connected the Cologne Uferstraße, which was accessible through a gate. You only got into the city center through another wooden gate on the left in the Rhine wall. From here the Rhine wall had a further 21 gates to the north.

The fortification with battlements and guard buildings above was continued via an arch over the Rhine to a pillar anchored in the river. In addition to its general protective function against enemies on land and water, the “towing operation” (pulling barges upstream by horses) on the towpath could be monitored from here. The connection, after it had already expired, was finally torn down in 1585; only the beginning of the arch remained after the parts of the complex in the river were destroyed by ice in 1784 .

In front of the tower to the south was a lock through which the moat in front of the land-side city wall was flooded.

On June 8, 1262, with the conquest of the tower by the Cologne citizens, the archbishop's supremacy was finally broken. A wisdom from Cologne says: whoever has the tower had the power .

The Bayenturm played a role in Cologne's struggle for early civil liberties against Archbishop Engelbert II , which is why it was adorned with the city's coat of arms.

It was reinforced during the Thirty Years War in 1620. When construction began on the new Rheinauhafen in 1850/51, the medieval Rhine bank wall was demolished and replaced by a crenellated wall on the newly created Rheinau peninsula. This wall was connected to the Bayenturm via an open half tower / bank caponier and a new kennel. Since the tower did not interfere with the expansion of the city in the 19th century, it - unlike most of the wall and the majority of the gates - was not razed in 1881, when Prussia was the area on which the medieval city wall and the new Prussian bastions were located , but sold to the city of Cologne. Between 1895 and 1898, severe damage to the tower from a fire in 1697 was repaired by city architect Josef Stübben .

At the beginning of the 20th century, the tower that was specially prepared for this purpose became the Cologne Museum of Prehistory and Early History . It was opened in 1907 under Carl Rademacher , the museum's first director. The exhibitions and research holdings housed in the Bayenturm were largely destroyed in air raids in July 1943. Rescued remains of the collection were housed in the Severinstorburg , where they remained until the establishment of an institution created as a follow-up facility in October 1946. The amalgamation of the Roman and Germanic departments of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum and the remains of the collection of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History formed the basis of today's Roman-Germanic Museum in Cologne.

The tower, which was severely damaged during the Second World War, survived as a ruin for decades. It was not until 1987 - now almost completely destroyed - that it was rebuilt according to plans by the city master builder Josef Stübben from 1895.

Today's Rheinuferkai is about 50 meters away from the tower, which was rebuilt under the city curator Hiltrud Kier . A ten-meter-long three-storey part of the building, which was part of the inland fortifications, has been preserved facing Rheinuferstrasse. Work on the interior of the complex began in early 1992 under the direction of the architect Dörte Gatermann . What is remarkable is the lighting of the interior, which otherwise would only have been done through a “gap window”, through a “celestial eye”, says Gatermann. The city of Cologne financed the expansion with 5.5 million German marks.

FrauenMediaTurm Foundation

The Bayenturm has been the seat of the non-profit foundation FrauenMediaTurm , initiated by Alice Schwarzer in 1984, since August 1994 and since then it has housed an archive and a documentation center on the historical and current women's movement. Alice Schwarzer is the CEO. In addition, Alice Schwarzer's office is located in the Bayenturm and, since 2003, Emma's editorial team . The premises were rented from the FrauenMediaTurm Foundation.

The archive's collection comprises 15,000 books, 60,000 documents such as leaflets and posters, 33,500 articles, including Emma's entire magazine collection since 1977.

The online database contains around 42,000 entries on feminist topics relevant to women, as well as articles from magazines. The archive was financed by a foundation by Jan Philipp Reemtsma in the amount of 10 million German marks.

The subsidies from the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia for the feminism archive amounted to 210,000 euros annually from the budget of three ministries from 2008. In 2011 they were reduced to 70,000 euros. The red-green state government justified this, among other things, with the fact that a publicly funded archive must be "publicly accessible". In 2012 the Federal Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth promised project funding of 150,000 euros annually for four years. In October 2013 it was announced that in 2014 all grants from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for the archive will be canceled.

On February 6, 2014, allegations were made that there were irregularities in the use of the tower. The FrauenMediaTurm foundation has received large amounts of funding from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the federal government in the past. In addition, the city of Cologne rented the rooms for non-commercial purposes. Schwarzer's foundation - according to SPD politician Martin Börschel and the deputy Green parliamentary leader Jörg Frank (both from Cologne) - illegally rented these rooms to others without transferring the additional income to the city of Cologne.