Besold's house

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Facade of the Besold House on Hauptstrasse (2012)

The Besold House is a baroque aristocratic palace in Erlangen . The building at Hauptstraße 26 was built between 1733 and 1734 and is a listed building .

history

Before the Besold House was built, there was a two-storey building on the same site, which was built by Jean Molie in 1688 and had large-format frescoed facades . The building that exists today was built from 1733 to 1744 by Hofkammerrat Zacharias Buck. In 1746 it became the property of Hofrat August Göckel, Buck's son-in-law. From 1762 to 1772 the Swedish ambassador Johann August von Greiffenheim was the owner of the house. After that it belonged to Baron Berenger de Beaufain until 1842.

The Erlangen police station was in the building around 1820. This authority exercised state supervision over the city after Erlangen passed to the Kingdom of Bavaria. From 1835 to 1873 the large hall was used by the Freemason Lodge Lebanon for the three cedars , which also operated the first Erlangen city library in the Besold House from 1841 to 1848. In 1873 the property became the property of the bookseller Eduard Besold, after whom the house is named today. In the years 1882–1885 the building was inhabited by chemistry professor Emil Fischer , who was later awarded the Nobel Prize. Today a plaque on the facade commemorates the famous resident.

In 1922, the cinema owner August Berner acquired the Besold house. His son August and his wife opened a ladies' clothing store here in 1952, the "House of the Lady". The fashion house, which was expanded over the course of time to a sales area of ​​600 square meters on three floors, was one of the leading clothing stores in Erlangen until its closure in 2005. The ground floor of the house is still used today as a shop.

description

The representative sandstone block building on the east side of the main street emphasizes the middle of the street between Schlossplatz and Hugenottenplatz. Together with the rear building at Halbmondstrasse 5, it forms an architectural unit. The facade of the three-storey palace has six window axes and is closed at the top by a mansard roof on a mighty cornice .

The ground floor of the house is designed as a basement, while the two upper floors are combined by ionic pilasters at the corners and on both sides of the two-line central axis. The windows of the palace are drilled , with the windows on the first floor also having a straight roof. The entrance on the ground floor forms a basket arch portal on the central axis, which is flanked by Ionic free columns. These support a balcony with an elaborately decorated, wrought iron grille. The balcony can be entered through a round arch double door on the first floor, which is crowned by a flat gable with an ornamental cartouche. By installing large shop windows on the ground floor of the palace, the appearance of the house was changed significantly.

The upstairs rooms of the house Besoldschen have a very rich stucco decoration with grid - Bandel - and scrollwork ornaments . The ballroom on the second floor stands out with its significant stucco, which is enriched by motifs such as lambrequins , vases, birds and putti and antique corner busts .

The walls have vertical stucco fields, while the plinths are clad in red and black marble. A relief medallion with a portrait of Margrave Friedrich III is located above the open fireplace . The oil painting set into the ceiling depicts an allegory of the glorification of peace. In the adjoining room is a tiled stove from the third quarter of the 18th century with a Rocauille decor . There are also more stucco ceilings in the street-side rooms on the first floor. Some rooms also have artfully inlaid wooden floors.

Balcony with wrought iron bars on the first floor of the Besold House (2013)

The three-storey rear building in Halbmondstrasse is a sandstone block structure with eight window axes with a hipped roof and corner pilaster strips . The entrance is a basket arch portal on the central axis with a straight roof. On the first floor of the rear building there are two more stucco ceilings with tendril and bandwork ornaments. The inner courtyard between the two parts of the building is now built over and serves as a sales room.

Due to the clear similarity of the Besold house to the old town hall in Erlangen, which was built a few years later, Andreas Jakob assumes that the plans for both buildings probably come from the master builder Johann Georg Weiß. Jakob describes the effect of the architecture as “massive and heavy” despite the representative shapes.

Sources and literature

Web links

Commons : Besoldsches Haus  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments : Erlangen . List of monuments. As of February 21, 2018 (PDF; 0.36 MB)
  2. ^ Chronicle 2005. Website of Siegfried Balleis. Retrieved December 23, 2018.

Coordinates: 49 ° 35 ′ 49.1 ″  N , 11 ° 0 ′ 15.4 ″  E