Princely House (Leipzig)
The Princely House in Leipzig was one of the most beautiful Renaissance buildings in the city. From 1648 to 1918 it belonged to the University of Leipzig . It was destroyed in World War II.
Location and shape
The Princely House was the eastern corner of Grimmaische Strasse and Universitätsstrasse (until 1838 Alter Neumarkt), its address was Grimmaische Strasse 30. It stood on the north-western end of the site of the former St. Pauli Monastery , which had been assigned to the university after the Reformation .
The Princely House was a three-story building with a gable roof and three gables facing Grimmaische Strasse. Eleven window axes faced Grimmaische Strasse and thirteen faced Universitätsstrasse with the adjoining part of the building. The upper floors were decorated with two artistically designed round bay windows made of Rochlitz porphyry at the corners facing Grimmaische Strasse . An inner courtyard with arcades was enclosed by two further parts of the building . In the north-western corner of the courtyard there was a stair tower that towered over the ensemble of buildings.
Princely house (right) and university church around 1700
Floor plan of the Princely House (upper floor)
The Princely House around 1895
The eastern round bay window around 1900
Copy of the eastern round bay window on a new building in Leipzig at Grimmaische Strasse 17
history
In 1558 the councilor Georg Roth had the renaissance building built on the foundation walls of a monastery and earlier town houses. The builder was Paul Widemann , who also carried out the stone carving on the round core. In 1599 Mrs. Anna Buchner, the widow of the mayor Peter Buchner, was the owner of the property and from 1615 her nephew Martin Buchner. In 1639 it was acquired by the manor owner Wolfgang Meurer .
In 1612 four Altenburg princes lived in the house while they were studying, which is what earned him his name from then on. Even later high-ranking guests stayed here, for example Tsar Peter the Great is said to have stayed here in 1713 .
In 1648 the Princely House came into the possession of the university, where it remained until 1918. In 1653 the university established a botanical garden in the garden belonging to the Princely House after the former medicinal plant garden ( hortus medicus ) on the north side of the university church had been devastated in the Thirty Years War . The garden was open to the public and existed on this site for 150 years until it was moved to a site near what would later become the Imperial Court building in 1806 .
In 1850, the Hardtsche Haus was built next to the Princely House in Universitätsstrasse No. 1, and it was generally regarded as belonging to the Princely House. Its architect was Albert Geutebrück . It was used by the theological faculty until 1943. The part of the Princely House facing Grimmaische Strasse was essentially a commercial building. By 1860 the ground floor was the defeat of the Meissen porcelain factory . Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch's largest bookstore in Europe at the time was also located in the Princely House.
The Princely House was destroyed in the bombing raid on Leipzig on December 4, 1943. For some time the stump of the stair tower still protruded from the rubble field. Arwed Roßbach had moved the bell from the tower of the Princely House when the university church was being converted into its new tower. Before the church was blown up in 1968, it was salvaged. It was hung in the inner courtyard of Karl Marx University from 1978 and is now at the top of the imitation tower of the new Paulinum , which contains the elevator. Large parts of the round bay windows were also saved. In 1986, a copy of the eastern bay of the Princely House was attached to a new building in Grimmaische Strasse 17 - diagonally across from the former Princely House Square - as the “Princely Bay”. In the parapet of the bay window, coats of arms are depicted on the first floor and cartouches with portraits of the owner family on the second floor . Above the windows is the Latin inscription "Turris fortissima nomen domini beati omnes qui confidunt in eo", translated as "The most solid tower is the name of the Lord, happy all who profess it."
During the construction of the seminar building along Universitätsstrasse in 1978, the place of the Princely House was largely left free, the western end of the new institute building along Grimmaische Strasse now covers it again.
literature
- Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z . PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , p. 166
- Ernst Müller: The house names of old Leipzig . (Writings of the Association for the History of Leipzig, Volume 15). Leipzig 1931, reprint Ferdinand Hirt 1990, ISBN 3-7470-0001-0 , pp. 28/29
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Gina Klank, Gernot Griebsch: Lexikon Leipziger Straßeennamen , Verlag im Wissenschaftszentrum Leipzig, 1995, ISBN 3-930433-09-5 , p. 213
- ↑ The house names of old Leipzig
- ^ Peter Schwarz: The millennial Leipzig. From the beginning to the end of the 18th century . 1st edition. tape 1 . Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2014, ISBN 978-3-945027-04-2 , pp. 281 .
- ^ A b W. Hocquél: The Princely House
- ↑ Alfred Geutebrück's university buildings
- ^ Picture of the destroyed royal house
- ↑ Thomas Topfstedt, Pit Lehmann: Der Leipziger Augustusplatz: Functions and shape change of a big city square , Leipziger Universitätsverlag 1994, ISBN 978-3929031287 , p. 20
Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 22 ″ N , 12 ° 22 ′ 41 ″ E