Ice Cellar (Affenstein)

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Preserved ice cellar in the social sciences and psychology library (2013)
South side after exposure
Exposure of the building with porcelain fragments from the institution
dome
entrance

The Eiskeller is a historical building on the former Affensteiner Feld in Frankfurt am Main . Today it is located on the Westend campus of the University of Frankfurt in the north-eastern part of the campus in the corner of Hansaallee and Lübecker Straße. The building was preserved and integrated into the Library of Social Sciences and Psychology (BSP).

Find history

On the parcel of Affensteiner Feld was the “ Institute for the Insane and Epileptic ”, a psychiatric facility that was built from 1859 to 1864 on the outskirts of the city. The institution, in which among others Heinrich Hoffmann and Alois Alzheimer worked, was popularly referred to as the "mad castle". In the north-east of the institution there was an ice cellar, which was referred to as the “ice pit” in a site plan by the architect Oskar Pichler in 1863, and as the “ice cellar” in a plan from 1908. In the days of the psychiatric clinic, the upper floor was, except for a portal with an entrance door, under a mound of earth that was planted with trees. Presumably in connection with the demolition of the clinic building in 1925/26, the entrance door was also filled with earth, the building was forgotten.

The site later belonged to IG Farben , which built the IG Farben House here in 1928 . After the Second World War , the area was used together with the IG Farben building by the US Army V Corps . At that time, the lower part of the building (the actual ice cellar) was below ground level on the edge of a parking lot.

The return of the site began in 1996, although the area at the corner of Lübecker Strasse and Hansaallee continued to be used until 2006 and only then came into the possession of the university. In April 2008, during the construction work for a library building on the new Westend campus, the building was exposed from a hill overgrown with scrub and trees and it became the focus of attention.

description

The exposed cylindrical structure has a preserved height of over seven meters with a diameter of over five meters. The walls consist of unplastered quarry stone on the outside and more regular stone blocks on the inside. The interior is not cylindrical, but tapering towards the bottom, which is caused by the brickwork (1.20 m to 0.80 m) that is perpendicular on the outside and thinner on the inside. A double dome, made of sandstone on the outside and bricked on the inside of vertically placed bricks , was not closed when it was found. Both were removed after exposure for static reasons.

The entrance has a triple, sluice-like door with a height of 1.50 m. The door reveals are made of basalt stones. This entrance area is flanked by two tong-shaped walls. They run into the round structure for a length of about 6 m without any visible construction joints and narrow towards the outer entrance.

During the excavation work, a large amount of the clinic's dishes were found, which, due to the porcelain brands encountered, were apparently disposed of in the building at the time the site was closed. In the interior there was a wooden scaffolding, remains of which on the floor and twelve beams on the wall were preserved. They could be dendrochronologically dated to the time the institution was built (1859–1864). At the bottom of the building there is a pit ( swamp ), at the bottom of which is the soil.

Interpretations

Medieval control room

Andrea Hampel, head of the monument office of the city of Frankfurt, took hold of the lower part of the building as a relic of a medieval defense tower from the 13th / 14th century immediately after it was uncovered in 2008 . Century as part of the Frankfurter Landwehr . She maintained this assessment in later specialist publications. The reason for the designation as a control room was based on structural details (quarry stone masonry, masonry moving in above, on which a half-timbered construction with battlements was placed) and the topographical location on a slight hill.

There are no finds that would support such a dating, as the examined interior was completely filled with material from the insane asylum, interspersed with modern fragments. The only documentary mention of Hampel is the mention of a control room on the Affenstein by Johann Georg Battonn in 1434, but notes that since Johann Karl von Fichard this has been viewed as a confusion with the Bockenheimer control room 1.5 kilometers away . The few sources mention the distinctive field name for the first time at the end of the 13th century. It is conceivable that the ending on "-stein" refers to a building. A control room is nowhere noted on historical maps, including the siege plan of Conrad Faber von Kreuznach from 1552.

The discovery of a previously unknown control room of the Landwehr immediately caused a special response in regional media. The Rhein-Main-Zeitung , local section of the FAZ , tried Indiana Jones and even wanted to see the site in a row with Troy , Mycenae or Jericho in the features section of the June 11, 2008 issue . In the following period, political committees also campaigned for the ruins to be preserved in situ , which the university immediately assured.

Archaeologists at the University of Frankfurt, although not institutionally involved or responsible for the process, criticized this representation for the fact that it was “based primarily on what is thought, assumed and less on what is documented and critically examined”. The object was improperly stripped from the surrounding hill instead of exposing it from top to bottom. Accordingly, there is no information about the relationship between the structure and its surroundings, which was not examined.

Windmill

In a second construction phase after the expansion of the Landwehr in 1476, the tower, which has meanwhile become militarily useless, is said to have been converted into a windmill . As an indication of this, A. Hampel cites the mention of such a system for the year 1530, which, according to Achilles Augustus von Lersner , was in operation at that time. When it was converted into a windmill, pincer walls and the entrance area were added, and beam holes in the interior should indicate a new division of the tower into several floors. An externally recognizable pointed niche is said to have served to accommodate the control bar or codend of a Dutch windmill placed on top of wood .

These assessments raise numerous questions. The Lersner Chronicle quoted by Hampel by no means meets the current requirements of source criticism; Hardly any of the statements made by him can still be verified in a document today. Even if one follows Lersner regardless of this, it can also be stated that he does not designate a building as an “Affenstein”, but rather the term in the context of its mention, as in the earlier mentions, as a hallway designation. Viewed objectively, the passage quoted by Hampel only says that in 1530 there was a windmill in the very large “Affenstein” corridor. Whether and, if so, how long this already existed at that time, let alone how it was constructed and whether it emerged from a medieval viewpoint assumed by Hampel cannot be proven with the help of the text passage.

The operation of a windmill also appears technically impossible overall. Hampel himself noticed that the mill could not be rotated through 360 ° because the entrance wall formed an obstacle for its wings. It is also questionable why the entrance was added on the upper floor of the mill, for which there are no parallels with windmills, and why the rooms below (flour floor) were designed to be extremely low (no standing height) and without incidence of light. A more cautious interpretation assigns all the supposed conversions to the ice cellar (pincer walls - entrance was sunk in the ground; the pointed niche contained a lead pipe and served to pump out water, beam holes as scaffolding for the ice cellar).

Very similar ice cellar with wooden construction
Ice cellar in Potsdam

Ice cellar of the "Institute for the Insane and Epileptic"

The only thing that is undisputed is its use as an ice cellar for the “Institute for the Insane and Epileptic”. There is plenty of evidence of this use, especially on the site plan by the architect Oskar Pichler and other contemporary site plans.

Typical features of such a building are the double dome, the overhead, lock-like entrance area with three doors and the flanking walls, which were necessary because the entrance was below ground level. The conical shape of the interior meant that the ice was compressed downwards when it melted and the melting process was slowed down. The oak beams on the walls, which were dendrochronologically dated to the asylum period, provided additional insulation. Another typical feature is the cavity (sump) under the floor beams, which was used to pump out the water and is found in many ice cellars. A well, on the other hand, would have a negative effect on cooling. The cavity was not examined in detail, but rather poured with concrete for conservation in the university building.

A few meters to the south-east there was another rock cellar , linked above ground with a restaurant. However, he was not connected to the institution.

Although the ice cellar is the only use of the building that has been completely backed up by sources and has not been scientifically contradicted, its present-day presentation does not correspond to it at all. Rather, the building offers the viewer an image today that never existed in this form before. Typical features of the ice cellar such as the dome and the tong walls at the entrance have been removed, and the pump sump has been filled with concrete. Most serious, however, is the loss of the surrounding mound, which "stripped" the ice cellar and makes its function incomprehensible to today's observer. Due to public pressure and the desire to have discovered a watch tower, a considerable amount of public money was used here to restore the building to an unhistorical state. A true-to-original reconstruction on the extensive grounds of the Westend campus, which would have represented the better alternative from an economic and historical preservation point of view, was not even considered.

View 2013

conservation

The ruin was found to be worthy of monument protection . Their remains were preserved and integrated into the new building of the social and educational library. The ruin can be visited during the opening times of the library; For the public, direct access to the walls is not possible due to the circumstances of the presentation (a high plinth preserves the former basement of the ice cellar).

literature

  • Andrea Hampel: The Affenstein. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. In: Find reports from Hessen 50, 2010, Wiesbaden 2012, pp. 729–760.
  • Andrea Hampel: 600 years of "Affenstein" - a sensational find in Frankfurt am Main. In: Hessen-Archeologie 2008, pp. 142–146.
  • Hans-Markus von Kaenel , Thomas Maurer, Albrecht Schlierer: How what is thought changes what is built. To reinterpret the ice cellar of the former "Institute for the Insane and Epileptic" on the Westend campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. In: Wulf Raeck / Dirk Steuerungagel (Ed.): The built and the thought. Form of settlement, architecture and society in prehistoric and ancient cultures. Habelt, Bonn 2012, pp. 167–209 ( Frankfurter Archäologische Schriften 21). Available online on the university website (PDF file, approx. 3.2 MB, accessed on November 19, 2013)
  • Tower or shaft? 600 or 150 years old? There are still considerable differences in the interpretation of a historical monument on the Westend campus. In: Uni-Report 3, 2013, p. 3 ( online , PDF, 237 kB).

Web links

Commons : Affenstein (Frankfurt)  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Plans published by Hans-Markus von Kaenel , Thomas Maurer, Albrecht Schlierer: How what is thought changes what is built. To reinterpret the ice cellar of the former "Institute for the Insane and Epileptic" on the Westend campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. Bonn 2012, p. 168 fig. 1 and p. 173 fig. 5; Excerpt from a site plan of the grounds of the psychiatric clinic from 1887 ( memento from December 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on ipernity.com
  2. ↑ Hans-Markus von Kaenel in: eiskeller-frankfurt.blogspot.de , article from September 12, 2008 (accessed November 20, 2013)
  3. ↑ a b Andrea Hampel: 600 years "Affenstein" - A sensational find in Frankfurt am Main. In: Hessen-Archäologie 2008, pp. 142–146, here p. 145.
  4. ↑ Andrea Hampel: The Affenstein. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. In: Find reports from Hessen 50, 2010, Wiesbaden 2012, pp. 729 and 734; same: 600 years of "Affenstein" - a sensational find in Frankfurt am Main. In: Hessen-Archeologie 2008, p. 143.
  5. ^ Numbers after Andrea Hampel: The Affenstein. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. In: Find reports from Hessen 50, 2010, Wiesbaden 2012, p. 735.
  6. ↑ Albrecht Schlierer in: Hans-Markus von Kaenel, Thomas Maurer, A. Schlierer: How what is thought changes what is built. To reinterpret the ice cellar of the former "Institute for the Insane and Epileptic" on the Westend campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. Bonn 2012, p. 184; Profile section, made by Steueragel engineers, November 2009, Hessisches Baumanagement ( online ); Photo of the lower interior of the building after uncovering
  7. ↑ Andrea Hampel: The Affenstein. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. In: Find reports from Hessen 50, 2010, Wiesbaden 2012, p. 735.
  8. ↑ According to Andrea Hampel: 600 years of "Affenstein" - a sensational find in Frankfurt am Main. In: Hessen-Archeologie 2008, p. 144
  9. ↑ a b Can be seen on a photo of the lower interior of the building after exposure
  10. ^ Hans-Markus von Kaenel in: H.-M. von Kaenel, Thomas Maurer, Albrecht Schlierer: How what is thought changes what is built. To reinterpret the ice cellar of the former "Institute for the Insane and Epileptic" on the Westend campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. Bonn 2012, p. 170.
  11. ↑ Andrea Hampel: 600 years "Affenstein" - A sensational find in Frankfurt am Main. In: Hessen-Archäologie 2008, pp. 142–146, here pp. 145f .; same: the monkey stone. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. In: Find reports from Hessen 50, 2010, Wiesbaden 2012, especially pp. 750–754.
  12. ↑ Andrea Hampel: The Affenstein. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. In: Find reports from Hessen 50, 2010, Wiesbaden 2012, especially pp. 746–750.
  13. ↑ Andrea Hampel: The Affenstein. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. In: Find reports from Hessen 50, 2010, Wiesbaden 2012, especially pp. 750 and 752.
  14. ↑ Andrea Hampel: The Affenstein. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. In: Find reports from Hessen 50, 2010, Wiesbaden 2012, especially pp. 741–746.
  15. ↑ Johann Georg Battonn: Slave Narratives Frankfurt Volume 1. Frankfurt a. M. 1861-1875, p. 140 ( online at google-books ); Andrea Hampel: The Affenstein. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. In: Find reports from Hessen 50, 2010, Wiesbaden 2012, p. 754.
  16. ↑ Thomas Maurer in: Hans-Markus von Kaenel, Th. Maurer, Albrecht Schlierer: How what is thought changes what is built. To reinterpret the ice cellar of the former "Institute for the Insane and Epileptic" on the Westend campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. Bonn 2012, pp. 172–177.
  17. ↑ Claudia Michels: Speculation about the Affenstein. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , June 13, 2008 ( online ); same: Find on Campus Westend. The upstart from Hansaallee. In: Frankfurter Rundschau, June 17, 2008 ( online )
  18. ↑ The monkey stone has appeared again. In: Rhein-Main-Zeitung No. 134, June 11, 2008, p. 43 as well as an ave for the Gothic. Almost like in Jericho: A medieval watchtower was discovered on the edge of downtown Frankfurt. ibid p. 35.
  19. ^ Hans-Markus von Kaenel in: H.-M. von Kaenel, Thomas Maurer, Albrecht Schlierer: How what is thought changes what is built. To reinterpret the ice cellar of the former "Institute for the Insane and Epileptic" on the Westend campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. Bonn 2012, pp. 178-180.
  20. ↑ First in a specially set up internet blog , later published in Hans-Markus von Kaenel, Thomas Maurer, Albrecht Schlierer: How the Thought Changes the Built. To reinterpret the ice cellar of the former "Institute for the Insane and Epileptic" on the Westend campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. Bonn 2012, pp. 167–209 Quotation on p. 206.
  21. ↑ The citation from A. Hampel: Der Affenstein. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. In: Fund reports from Hessen 50, 2010, Wiesbaden 2012, p. 754 note 26 and p. 756 note 29 reads: “GA von Lersner, The world-famous Freyen Reichs-, Wahl- und Handelsstadt Frankfurt Chronika (Frankfurt a. M . 1734) 1st book, chap. IV, 23 “and cannot be resolved in this way. In chap. VI, p. 23 is the sentence 1530. Before the current mills there were wind = mills, one of which had stood on the Affenstein.
  22. ↑ Andrea Hampel: The Affenstein. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. In: Find reports from Hessen 50, 2010, Wiesbaden 2012, p. 754.
  23. ↑ Albrecht Schlierer in: Hans-Markus von Kaenel, Thomas Maurer, A. Schlierer: How what is thought changes what is built. To reinterpret the ice cellar of the former "Institute for the Insane and Epileptic" on the Westend campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. Bonn 2012, pp. 186-188.
  24. ↑ Andrea Hampel: 600 years "Affenstein" - A sensational find in Frankfurt am Main. In: Hessen-Archeologie 2008, esp. P. 146 .; same: the monkey stone. A medieval watchtower and its varied history through six centuries. In: Find reports from Hessen 50, 2010, Wiesbaden 2012, especially p. 758f.
  25. ↑ Albrecht Schlierer in: Hans-Markus von Kaenel, Thomas Maurer, A. Schlierer: How what is thought changes what is built. To reinterpret the ice cellar of the former "Institute for the Insane and Epileptic" on the Westend campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. Bonn 2012, pp. 196-200.
  26. ↑ http://www.frankfurt-nordend.de/zu_gast_im_alten_frankfurt.htm
  27. ^ Hans-Markus von Kaenel in: H.-M. von Kaenel, Thomas Maurer, Albrecht Schlierer: How what is thought changes what is built. To reinterpret the ice cellar of the former "Institute for the Insane and Epileptic" on the Westend campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt a. M. Bonn 2012, p. 207.
  28. ↑ Opening times
  29. ^ Frankfurter Neue Presse: The ice cellar of the “Struwwelpeter” author ( Memento from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Article from August 23, 2012 on fnp.de, with a photo of the current status (accessed on November 20, 2013)

Coordinates: 50 ° 7 ′ 42.9 "  N , 8 ° 40 ′ 11.8"  E