Bernusbau

Bernusbau in Frankfurt am Main

The Bernusbau is a baroque city palace in Frankfurt am Main and part of the Saalhof . The wealthy merchant family Bernus , who immigrated from Hanau , had the building built on the Mainkai from 1715 to 1717 instead of older, dilapidated remains of the medieval hall courtyard.

history

The ancestors of the Bernus family were religious refugees who first moved from Italy via the Netherlands to the Evangelical Reformed city of Hanau in the 17th century . A Jacques Bernus from the Italian city of Piacenza had settled in Hanau in 1612. His great-grandchildren, the two brothers Heinrich and Johannes Bernus (1657–1720), wealthy cloth merchants, moved from Hanau to the Lutheran Free Imperial City of Frankfurt am Main in 1682 , where they acquired citizenship in 1696. In the same year they bought the old, completely neglected Saalhof , the former royal palace of the Staufer .

From 1715 to 1717, according to plans by the Arnsburg Cistercian Father Bernhard Kirn, instead of the quay wall on the banks of the Main, the baroque Bernus building with gable façades was built as a city palace , which is architecturally reminiscent of the Friedrich building of Heidelberg Castle . Heinrich's only son, Jakob Bernus, took over the Saalhof alone in 1725. His descendants are extinct in the male line. The structure is the immediate neighboring building of the Rententurm , a tower of the former Frankfurt city fortifications . Today the Rententurm and Saalhof with the Bernusbau and Burnitzbau are part of the Historical Museum of Frankfurt .