German goldsmith's house

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Old Town Hall (2009)

The German Goldsmith's House (formerly the Old Town Hall ) is the former town hall of the old town of Hanau , which has been used as a museum since the beginning of the 20th century . The director has been the jewelry historian Christianne Weber-Stöber since 2006.

Historical building stock as the old town hall

Elle on the ground floor of the former Old Town Hall.
One of the sandstone reliefs on the facade shows a monkey with a mirror, a popular medieval motif for blind self-love.
Fountain of justice on the old town market in front of the goldsmith's house.

The German Goldsmith's House was built as a half-timbered building on the long side of the Old Town Market between two stone gable walls and on a stone base. It comes from the late Gothic and early Renaissance and is dated to the year 1538 by an inscription on the building. Its functional predecessor building as a town hall from the 15th century stood on the opposite side of the market square (so-called playhouse ). A memorial plaque on the house "Altstädter Markt 1" reminds of this. Konrad Speck is known as a builder , as well as the stonemasons Hans von Gießen , Peter von Aschaffenburg and Hans von Lich .

The two-flight flight of stairs at the German Goldsmith's House was added to a design by Christian Ludwig Hermann from 1742. Numerous sandstone relief stones from the 14th to 16th centuries set into the facade show allusions to folly and self-love as well as depictions of mythical creatures or the wise bourgeoisie - a pictorial program still indebted to the Middle Ages . Originally the ground floor contained arbor-like sales halls, the first floor the council chamber, parlor and hall and the upper floor a warehouse. A Hanauer cubit, which was used for the market, is embedded in the facade as an iron bar.

Well of Justice

The sandstone fountain in front of the town hall is an important work of Renaissance stonemasonry. It was commissioned by the Hanau Old Town Council in 1607/1608 and created by the Büdingen sculptor Johannes Rab. The fountain is crowned by Justitia with scales and sword. The two lions on the left and right hold heraldic shields with the coats of arms of the old town of Hanau and the Counts of Hanau-Münzenberg . The fountain structure was originally designed in color.

Later use

After the city administrations of the old town and the new town of Hanau were merged in the third decade of the 19th century, the building was superfluous as a town hall. It was used temporarily as a regional court and then by various schools. From 1902 to the Second World War it served as the museum of the Hanau History Association . A lapidarium was located in a previously existing small courtyard .

During the air raids on Hanau in March 1945 , the building burned down to the foundation walls and the two gable walls.

Later structural changes

The half-timbering that can be seen today is therefore a reconstruction from the years 1955–1958. A new staircase was then added to the rear. In line with its use as an exhibition space, the original room layout was dispensed with during the reconstruction. In recent years, a modern extension has been added to the rear for handicapped accessible access and modern sanitary facilities.

On the south side a plaque commemorates the Hanau chronicler and music teacher Johann Daniel Wilhelm Ziegler (1809–1878).

Todays use

Hanau also describes itself as the city ​​of fine jewelry . The city has a tradition of goldsmithing that goes back to the beginning of the 17th century and, with the State Drawing Academy, is the seat of a leading institution for training goldsmiths and also the seat of the German Society for Goldsmithing . In close cooperation between these institutions and through good connections with the Berlin party and leadership at the time, the German Goldsmith's House was founded on October 18, 1942 and was based in the building, including the Museum of the Hanau History Association located there in the city palace was relocated. Today, changing exhibitions, especially presentations of jewelry , are shown in the German Goldsmith's House .

The goldsmith Ebbe Weiss-Weingart gave the city of Hanau 250 pieces of jewelery from the years 1947 to 1998 for the German goldsmith's house, as an essential contribution to the collection that began in 1960, which today with well over 900 pieces of jewelery and table utensils provides a representative overview of the national and international scene after 1945 gives. The parts were presented in the exhibition from February 25, 2018 to June 3, 2018 Ebbe Weiss-Weingart - 70 Years of Jewelry . Ebbe Weiss-Weingart was involved in many exhibitions in well-known domestic and foreign museums. a. in Helsinki, Paris, Tokyo and the USA.

literature

  • Magnus Backes : Hessen. Handbook of German Art Monuments ("Dehio"). 2nd edition 1982. ISBN 3-422-00380-0
  • Michael Hierholzer: German goldsmith's house - golden and silver avant-garde in a half-timbered house. In: Hendrik Markgraf (Ed.): Museumslandschaft Rhein-Main. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-7973-0490-0 , pp. 61-63.
  • Georg Ulrich Großmann : Central and South Hesse: Lahntal, Taunus, Rheingau, Wetterau, Frankfurt and Maintal, Kinzig, Vogelsberg, Rhön, Bergstrasse and Odenwald. DuMont, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-7701-2957-1 (= DuMont art travel guide ), p. 215.
  • Cultural Office of the City of Hanau (Ed.): Museums of the City of Hanau. German goldsmith's house . Hanau no year (approx .: 1980)
  • Carolin Krumm: Cultural monuments in Hessen - City of Hanau . Ed .: State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen . Theiss, Wiesbaden 2006. ISBN 3-8062-2054-9 , p. 141
  • Magistrate of the City of Hanau (Ed.): German Goldsmith House Hanau . Hanau 1982:
    • Karl Dielmann: From the old town hall to the German goldsmith's house ;
    • Karlheinz Hoppe: The German goldsmith's house today - institution, center and shop window .

Web links

Commons : Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus (Hanau)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Homepage Gesellschaft für Goldschmiedekunst eV from July 21, 2014: 25 years of activity in the German Goldsmith's House in Hanau , accessed on July 27, 2019
  2. ^ Society for goldsmithing: German goldsmith house Hanau - collections. Retrieved March 30, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Highlights from the Ebbe Weiss-Weingart Collection, accessed on March 30, 2018

Coordinates: 50 ° 8 ′ 12 ″  N , 8 ° 55 ′ 4 ″  E