German Wine Gate

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German Wine Gate
German Wine Gate 2012.jpg
Data
place Schweigen-Rechtenbach
architect August Josef Peter, Karl Mittel
Architectural style Neoclassicism
Construction year 1936-1937
height 19.2 m
Coordinates 49 ° 3 '7.9 "  N , 7 ° 57' 22.7"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 3 '7.9 "  N , 7 ° 57' 22.7"  E
German Wine Gate (Rhineland-Palatinate)
German Wine Gate
particularities
The southern beginning of the German Wine Route

The German Wine Gate in the southern Palatinate wine-growing community of Schweigen-Rechtenbach ( Rhineland-Palatinate ) is a listed gate building with ancillary buildings . It is one of the landmarks of the Palatinate and has marked the southern beginning of the German Wine Route since 1936 . The counterpart at the northern end of the Weinstrasse, 85 km away, has been the house of the German Wine Route in Bockenheim since 1995 .

The regional winegrowers' cooperative of the Palatinate with its headquarters in Ilbesheim near Landau , about 20 km away, is called the German wine gate with reference to the building . She has been the sole owner of the facility since 2007.

geography

Sandstone column as the starting point of the German Wine Route

The wine gate spans at 218  m above sea level. NHN on the northeast edge of the district of Schweigen, the old route of today's federal highway 38 . This comes from the northeast in the direction of Landau and from Bad Bergzabern is identical to the German Wine Route. It ends about 700 m south of the gate at the French- German border near Wissembourg (Alsace) and merges into the French D 264, the former Route nationale 63 .

The federal road now runs as a bypass road a good 50 m east of the gate, which is only open to pedestrians and cyclists. The old route through the gate is connected to the federal road at two traffic circles , which were built 100 m north and south of the wine gate.

investment

The 19.2 m high wine gate is built from sandstone in the neoclassical style. The hipped roof supports at its first end two poppy capsules from copper , as fertility symbols apply. At a height of 7.6 m, a horizontal gallery made of wood extends across the gate clearing , which is accessible on its east side by a three-flight stone staircase. It offers a good view of the wine route running below it and the nearby mountains of the Wasgau . Another viewing platform at a height of almost 10 m opens up a view to the east towards the Rhine plain to the Black Forest .

To the north, on the "German side", there is a square, open central forecourt with paving . It is framed by single-storey low-rise buildings with hipped roofs, some of which are designed as porticos and some with arcades .

The entire complex also includes a restaurant, which is operated in the east wing by the German winegrowers' cooperative under the name of the monument, as well as an educational wine trail ; this was opened in 1969 as the first of its kind in Germany and is 3 km long.

history

Establishment in the Third Reich

The Weintor dates from the time of National Socialism . After a wine harvest in the Palatinate wine-growing region in 1934 that was two and a half times the average while Jewish wine merchants were banned from working, prices fell dramatically, which put many wineries in economic distress. The National Socialist rulers therefore created the German Wine Route including the Weintor to - according to the official interpretation - make the Palatinate better known as a wine-growing region and to create jobs.

The tenor of the speech that Gauleiter Josef Bürckel gave on October 19, 1935 in Bad Dürkheim at the opening of the German Wine Route under the title "Struggle and People - Wine and Truth" was not very friendly towards neighboring France (see also section quotation ). For the celebratory commissioning - the controlled press wrote of "consecration" - of the Weinstrasse on October 20, a wooden gate dummy in Silence and a similar one made of paper mache in Grünstadt near the northern end of the Weinstrasse had been erected as a temporary measure ; a column of about 300 motor vehicles traveled the 85 km from south to north after a single-engine airplane had flown the route early in the morning.

Instead of the wooden dummy, the stone wine gate was built in Silence in 1936, which spanned the country road at that time. The architects August Josef Peter and Karl Mittel from Landau won the architectural competition for this . The foundation stone was laid on August 27, 1936, and the completion of the construction work was celebrated less than two months later, on October 18. That the nearby nordelsässischen border town of Wissembourg ( German  White Castle ) aligned towards building was during the Nazi era with a huge swastika flag decorated, which could be seen from France and was seen there as a provocation. At the top right on the south side of the building there was also an almost 4 m high stone relief of an imperial eagle with a swastika in its claws .

From 1936 to 1944, the then winegrowers' cooperative Weintor was the owner of the facility, which then became the property of the Palatinate District Association .

End of World War II

Inscription on the German Wine Gate from March 1945

Since March 1945, when the US Army crossed the German western border at the end of the Second World War , the inscription "Jere Gill Min. Wells 3-45" and the outline of the US state of Texas with the Texas star have been on the south side facing Alsace chiseled in. Jeremy Gill was apparently an American soldier and came from Mineral Wells in southeast Texas, about 200 km north of Houston .

Soon after the end of the war, the stone Nazi symbols in the complex were knocked out.

Since the Second World War

Coat of arms of the former Bergzabern district

The originally planned northern Weintor counterpart in Bockenheim was only realized 60 years later and in a different form, namely as a house on the German Wine Route spanning the Weinstrasse .

In 1949, the then Bergzabern district bought the Weintor at a price of DM 10,000 . In 1978 the west wing and the cellar vaults were acquired by the German wine association , which had now been founded . The eastern wing continued to belong to the district, which was renamed the Südliche Weinstrasse district in the same year 1978 . The gate and the east wing also became the property of the winegrowers' cooperative in 2007, so that she has owned the entire complex ever since.

The Wine Walk of Fame , a path of honor on which metal plates embedded in the ground bear the names of personalities or groups who have made a name for themselves in wine and viticulture, has started at the Weintor since 2012 . The facility is supported by the German Weintor wine cooperative . Every year on April 23, the path of honor can be expanded to include more panels that commemorate German or internationally known personalities. April 23rd was the day on which the Romans celebrated a wine festival ( Latin Vinalia ) in honor of the god Jupiter , during which the wine of the previous year was also drunk for the first time. The German-English name of the path of honor was commented on in the dialect- conscious Palatinate as " Denglish ".

Roll of honor for Dom Pérignon (2012)

In the first three years, three new records were unveiled. The following personalities or groups will be honored:

Because the initiator Jürgen Grallath had given up his post as managing director of the German wine cooperative, there was no further plaque of honor in 2015 and 2016.

Quote

"The wine is true - the vow is real: This is where Germans stand and nothing but Germans - in the West the nation's field guard."

- Nazi Gauleiter Josef Bürckel at the central "opening act" of the German Wine Route in Bad Dürkheim on October 19, 1935

literature

Web links

Commons : Deutsches Weintor  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b Rhineland-Palatinate in 3D. State Office for Surveying and Basic Geographic Information Rhineland-Palatinate, accessed on June 14, 2020 .
  2. Location of the wine gate on: Map service of the landscape information system of the Rhineland-Palatinate nature conservation administration (LANIS map) ( notes )
  3. Peter Schmersahl: Poppy in the fine arts. In: DAZ online , No. 5 , January 26, 2003, p. 45 , accessed on June 14, 2020 .
  4. a b Information based on measurements carried out privately.
  5. Imprint. German Wine Gate e. G., Retrieved October 6, 2019 .
  6. Schweigen-Rechtenbach wine educational trail. weinlehrpfade.de, accessed on October 26, 2011 .
  7. Ulrich Wendler: Silence: The German Wine Gate. Retrieved October 25, 2011 .
  8. a b c German Wine Route . In: NSZ Rheinfront . Ludwigshafen October 21, 1935.
  9. a b c Ingenious idea with a problematic origin . In: The Rhine Palatinate . Ludwigshafen August 7, 2010.
  10. Wine Route: Is the name older? In: The Rhine Palatinate . Ludwigshafen August 20, 2010.
  11. a b German Wine Gate. The owner. District of Südliche Weinstrasse, accessed on June 14, 2020 .
  12. Günter Werner: Greetings from Hollywood . In: The Rhine Palatinate . Ludwigshafen April 7, 2012.
  13. Peter Gängel: Isn't the translation enough? In: The Rhine Palatinate . Ludwigshafen April 14, 2012.
  14. Inaugurated the Wine Walk of Fame. (No longer available online.) Winzergenossenschaft Deutsches Weintor , April 24, 2012, archived from the original on June 10, 2015 ; Retrieved June 25, 2013 .
  15. The Wine Walk of Fame is growing. (No longer available online.) Winzergenossenschaft Deutsches Weintor, April 25, 2013, archived from the original ; Retrieved June 25, 2013 .
  16. Marcel Blanck on the Sentier de la renowned. lalsace.fr, May 12, 2013, accessed August 25, 2016 .
  17. Three more honors. (No longer available online.) Winzergenossenschaft Deutsches Weintor, April 15, 2014, archived from the original on April 24, 2014 ; Retrieved April 24, 2014 .
  18. Rolf Sperber: “Wine Walk of Fame” will not be extended by three records until next year. In: Bürstädter Zeitung . May 3, 2016, accessed February 12, 2017 .
  19. Growth on the Wine Walk of Fame. Deutsches Weintor e G, April 20, 2017, accessed on April 23, 2017 .