Frankfurt-Westend

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Coat of arms of Frankfurt am Main
Westend-Süd
Westend-Nord

4/5. District of Frankfurt am Main
Altstadt Bahnhofsviertel Bergen-Enkheim Berkersheim Bockenheim Bockenheim Bonames Bornheim Dornbusch Eckenheim Eschersheim Fechenheim Flughafen Frankfurter Berg Gallus Ginnheim Griesheim Gutleutviertel Harheim Hausen Heddernheim Höchst Innenstadt Kalbach-Riedberg Nied Nieder-Erlenbach Nieder-Eschbach Niederrad Niederursel Nordend-Ost Nordend-West Oberrad Ostend Praunheim Praunheim Preungesheim Riederwald Rödelheim Sachsenhausen-Nord Sachsenhausen-Süd Schwanheim Schwanheim Seckbach Sindlingen Sossenheim Unterliederbach Westend-Nord Westend-Süd Zeilsheimmap
About this picture
Coordinates 50 ° 7 '5 "  N , 8 ° 39' 48"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 7 '5 "  N , 8 ° 39' 48"  E
surface 4.129 km²
Residents 29,687 (Dec. 31, 2019)
Population density 7190 inhabitants / km²
Post Code 60054 ( Campus Bockenheim ),
60306 ( Opernturm ),
60308 ( Messeturm ),
60320, 60322, 60323,
60325, 60327, 60486
prefix 069
Website www.frankfurt.de
structure
District 2 - inner city II
Townships

North

  • 19 1 - Westend-North
  • 19 2 - Westend-Nord (Carl-Schurz-Siedlung)

south

  • 10 0 - Westend-South
  • 11 0 - Westend-South
  • 17 0 - Westend-Süd
  • 18 0 - Westend-South
Transport links
Highway A66
Federal road B8 B44
Train S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S8 S9
Tram and subway U1 U2 U3 U4 U6 U7 U8 16 17
bus 32 34 36 50 64 75 n1 n2 n3 n11 n82 n83
Source: Statistics currently 03/2020. Residents with main residence in Frankfurt am Main. Retrieved April 8, 2020 .

The Westend ( listen ? / I ) is a district of Frankfurt am Main . For statistical purposes it is divided into Westend-Süd and Westend-Nord , but is usually considered as a unit. The border between north and south is mainly the Grüneburgweg . The Westend is considered a district with middle-class, well-off residents and above-average property prices. Audio file / audio sample

Together with the Bahnhofsviertel as well as the Nordend and Ostend districts , both districts belong to the Wilhelminian -style and highly dense Frankfurt inner-city districts . Together with the Bockenheim district , the Westend forms the Frankfurt-Innenstadt II district . The population was 000000000029687.000000000029,687 last year .

history

Western district

Marking with today's borders of the Westend

Like the other Wilhelminian style districts, the area of ​​today's West End has been within the protective fortifications since the Frankfurt Landwehr was built and was part of the Frankfurt district. For the most part, consisting of arable land and heather, there were isolated estates in what is now the West End. The courtyards, the names of which still bear some streets today, were the Hellerhof, the Hynsperghof and the Kettenhof .

Classicism and Gründerzeit

At the beginning of the 19th century, the old Frankfurt city fortifications were razed. Soon numerous classicist suburban villas with spacious gardens were built along Bockenheimer Landstrasse , the arterial road to the neighboring town of Bockenheim . These included Gontard's garden house and Villa Leonhardi by architect Nicolas Alexandre Salins de Montfort and the Rothschild palace by Friedrich Rumpf . Around the middle of the 19th century, the area was parceled out by the city and streets and squares were laid out. The densely built-up Frankfurt Neustadt was bursting at the seams, and more and more people were drawn to the western outskirts . Paris was the model for road construction, which is why large boulevards and squares with radial streets were created.

The quarter around the Palmengarten 1893, the road network in the north west end is not yet finished.

In 1858, the first Frankfurt zoo was laid out on Bockenheimer Landstrasse , which was relocated to the Ostend district a little later. The Westend established itself as a residential area for the wealthy, as in other cities with a Westend . Numerous villas and spacious apartment buildings were built, many of which still exist today. At the end of the 19th century, almost the entire southern part of the West End was built on. The northern conclusion was the newly created Palm Garden , the Grüneburgweg with the owned by the Rothschild family located Grüneburgpark and of Heinrich Hoffmann founded "lunatic asylum" on the Affensteiner field, the so-called misleading castle . In order to spatially limit the development, the mayor of Frankfurt, Franz Adickes , had the Alleenring built at the beginning of the 20th century , which at the same time connected all the new parts of the city with one another.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some wealthy painters lived in the Westend, including Wilhelm Steinhausen , Hans Thoma and Joseph Kaspar Correggio .

The northern part of the city remained less densely built up due to the spacious Grüneburgpark. In 1930 Hans Poelzig built the IG Farben building , the administration building of IG Farben . Little changed in this situation until the Second World War . During the Nazi era , districts were abolished and the Westend became part of the Frankfurt-Nord section . Police station 9 at Lindenstrasse 27 was the headquarters of the Frankfurt Gestapo . During the Allied air raids in World War II , the West End was spared from area bombing . After the end of the war , almost the entire Westend-Nord (from Wolfsgangstrasse ) was initially declared a restricted military area. The American military government set up its headquarters in the IG Farben building . Surrounding quarters have been converted into settlements for GIs . In 1948 the barbed wire around the restricted area was removed again.

Skyscrapers and street battles

In the 1950s, the Westend was a purely residential area for around 40,000 people. The houses usually only had four storeys.

The first skyscraper

Until 1938, the city of Frankfurt was a (by linearization ) very low price in the possession of a 5.8 hectare large Palais -Areals between Bockenheimer Landstrasse, Unterlindau, Staufenstraße and Reuterweg come the previously long-established Jewish family Rothschild had heard. Although the purchase price was improved in 1950, the Rothschild heirs enforced the return of a third of the area. After they had also received the permit for a high-rise development, they sold the returned property to the Schweizer Zürich Versicherung and the Berliner Handelsgesellschaft , which built office towers there directly opposite Opernplatz . The Zurich high-rise , built in 1960, listed from 1989 to 1996 and demolished in 2002, was the first high-rise in Frankfurt's Westend. Now there is the Opera Tower, two and a half times as high . The city converted the landscape park from the late 19th century that was on the site into a public green area, the Rothschild Park .

The destruction of living space

After the forced management of living space was lifted in 1960, the social democratic planning department head Hans Kampffmeyer developed a concept for the decentralization of the inner city. The neighboring districts, especially the Westend, were to become an expansion area. The "five-finger plan" of 1967 provided for intensified development to be built along the axes Mainzer Landstrasse , Bockenheimer Landstrasse, Reuterweg, Grüneburgweg and Eschersheimer Landstrasse leading through the Westend . Numerous Wilhelminian-style buildings were demolished in the coming years as a result of property speculation. Their long-established residents have been driven out. By 1970 several hundred houses in the Westend were empty, they were often in a completely neglected condition.

The development met with resistance from the population. The bourgeoisie reacted by founding one of the first citizens' initiatives in Germany, the Aktiongemeinschaft Westend (AGW). The AGW created a cadastre of buildings worthy of monument protection and obtained a change ban for the Westend as early as 1970. The city now wanted to reverse the initiated development by means of a development plan. In 1972 the state of Hesse issued an ordinance against misappropriation of living space .

At the same time, the Frankfurt house-to-house fight developed , which was mainly driven by students from the University of Frankfurt in the Westend . Numerous houses were occupied, and demonstrators repeatedly fought street battles with the police. The young Joschka Fischer was also involved. The height of the urban warfare was between 1970 and 1974.

In 1972 the terrorist organization Red Army Faction carried out an attack on the American headquarters in the IG Farbenhaus, in which a soldier was killed.

In the 1970s, a number of other high-rise buildings were built in the Westend, such as the AfE tower on the university grounds . The City-Haus at the Republic Square, at that time the tallest skyscraper in Germany, burned in 1973, to the cheers of some students, but was completed later.

Although the development plan issued in 1976 did not provide for any further high-rise buildings in the West End, exceptions were repeatedly approved in the South West End, especially along the Mainzer Landstrasse and the Alleenring. Today, the southern West End has largely grown together with the Frankfurt banking district . The gentrification process is largely complete in the Westend. On the edge of the West End, the temporarily tallest skyscraper in Europe, the 257 meter high was built on the fairgrounds Messeturm .

Location and demarcation

Border road to the north end (right): The Eschersheimer Landstrasse

The Westend is located on the northwestern border of the city ​​center and north of Bahnhofsviertel and Gallus . It shares the longest border with Bockenheim to the west of it. The Dornbusch district connects to the north of the west end, and the north end to the east. The northern border of the West End is identical to the course of the former Frankfurter Landwehr, which protected the territory of the Free City of Frankfurt for centuries .

Frankfurter usually refer to the built-up area as Westend, which is bordered by Reuterweg, Bockenheimer Anlage am Opernplatz, Taunusanlage , Mainzer Landstraße to Platz der Republik, Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage , Senckenberganlage, Zeppelinallee , Miquelallee , Hansaallee and Bremer Straße to Reuterweg.

The official Frankfurt city districts do not quite coincide with these "perceived" boundaries. After that, the entire eastern part of the exhibition grounds , including the exhibition tower and festival hall and limited by the Rhein-Main S-Bahn , also belongs to the Westend. The same applies to a peripheral area in the west, which is usually assigned to Bockenheim, but the Marriott Hotel , the Senckenberg Nature Museum and most of the Bockenheim campus of the Goethe University still officially belong to the Westend. In the east, the west end extends to Eschersheimer Landstrasse, but this area is often mistakenly added to the north end from Reuterweg. In the north, the Westend extends beyond Miquelallee, so that the Carl-Schurz-Siedlung also belongs to the district.

The border between Westend-Süd and Westend-Nord runs from Miquelallee through Siesmayerstraße (between Palmengarten and Botanical Garden ) and then follows Grüneburgweg to Eschersheimer Landstraße.

Cityscape

The Westend is still characterized by partly upper-class Wilhelminian style architecture, which makes it one of the most expensive residential areas in Frankfurt. However, the 1950s residential and office buildings from the 1970s are also unmistakable, with the latter in particular being built without regard to the surrounding buildings.

High-rise buildings in Westend-Süd

Skyscrapers at the fair . From left to right: Pollux, Kastor, Messeturm and Westend Gate

The south of the west end, together with the western inner city of Frankfurt and the eastern station district, form the Frankfurt banking district. The concentration of high-rise office buildings there is higher than anywhere else in Frankfurt. In the Westend, the Bockenheimer Anlage / Taunusanlage / Mainzer Landstraße street in particular is built on with skyscrapers. From east to west are the Park Tower (115 meters) and the Opernturm (170 meters) on Opernplatz, the twin towers of Deutsche Bank (155 meters each), the Trianon (186 meters), the Frankfurt Office Center (142 meters), the Westendstraße 1 (208 meters) and the City-Haus (142 meters) at the Republic Square.

The exhibition tower (257 meters) on the exhibition grounds, the tallest building in Europe from 1991 to 1997, has become a symbol of the city. Other high-rise buildings in Westend-Süd are or were the Westend Gate (159 meters) and the AfE tower (116 meters) of the Goethe University, which was demolished in 2014 .

Infrastructure

traffic

One-way streets in Westend, here the
Lessingstraße / Kettenhofweg intersection

As a predominantly residential area, the Westend has mostly narrow streets, which are also traffic-calmed . With a few exceptions, all traffic routes are one-way streets that change direction at intersections. That's why the streets of the Westend are popular with driving schools . The exceptions are streets of cross-district importance. First, these are the border roads Eschersheimer Landstrasse, green belt and Alleenring that much of the professional record and trade traffic. Other important roads are the Bockenheimer Landstrasse as the main diameter road in the east-west direction, the Reuterweg / Bremer Strasse / Hansaallee road as an arterial road to the north and the Grüneburgweg as a further east-west connection. The Grüneburgweg is also the Westend-North / Westend-South border .

Westend underground station

The Westend was one of the first districts to be connected to the Frankfurt tram network . At that time the main route led over the Bockenheimer Landstrasse. Since the construction of the C-route of the Frankfurt subway , the Westend only has the fair line 16, which runs along the avenue ring along the western edge of the district. The Westend was also connected to the subway from the start. The A-lines running in the tunnel run under the Eschersheimer Landstrasse. The Westend has had another underground line since 1986 below the Bockenheimer Landstrasse. The C-Lines run from Opernplatz to Bockenheimer Warte with the stations Alte Oper , Westend and Bockenheimer Warte . A third underground line was added in 2001. The D-tunnel runs below the avenue ring and serves the eastern exhibition center. A transfer station was built at the Bockenheimer Warte. The Westend is also connected to the Rhein-Main S-Bahn network via the Taunusanlage in the east and Messe in the west .

Public facilities

Despite the high population density and the good transport infrastructure, the Westend has no hospitals , fire stations or police stations . However, all emergency facilities are available in the adjacent north end .

In contrast, there are an above-average number of educational institutions in the Westend. In addition to the Goethe University , the Westend has the Frankfurt University of Music and the Sigmund Freud Institute . There are numerous schools in the Westend, including several elementary schools ( Elsa Brändström School, Engelbert Humperdinck School and Holzhausenschule ), the IE Lichtigfeld School of the Jewish community, a private school ( Anna Schmidt School ) and several grammar schools:

Attractions

Senckenberg museum

Old university campus with the Senckenberg Museum

The Bockenheim campus of the Goethe University is located along the Senckenberg facility from Georg-Voigt-Straße to Bockenheimer Warte . The main building dates from the early days of the university and was built at the same time as today's Senckenberg Museum.

The building of the Senckenberg Museum is also impressive. It was built for the Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft between 1904 and 1907 according to plans by Ludwig Neher , as was the university's Jügelhaus . Both buildings are built in the tradition of baroque palace construction. The representative overall front is worth seeing, which impresses with its connection with the wing buildings of the Physikalischer Verein and the Senckenberg library in the form of open arcades.

America House

The building on the corner of Reuterweg / Staufenstraße, which was inaugurated in 1958, was intended as a "House of Friendship of Nations" to bring American culture closer to the Frankfurt population through books, films and music. The building, which is now a listed building, was designed by the American architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) in collaboration with the Frankfurt architect Otto Apel . The employees moved to their new domicile in the new US consulate building in the Eckenheim district on September 29, 2005 .

After extensive renovation work by the architects Schneider and Schuhmacher, the Instituto Cervantes opened its Frankfurt branch on September 22, 2008 . The inauguration took place in the presence of the Spanish Crown Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia.

The aim of the Instituto Cervantes is to promote the Spanish language and to make known and cultivate the cultural heritage of all Spanish-speaking countries.

Messeturm, Festhalle and Hammering Man

The Frankfurter Messeturm, formerly Frankfurt and Europe's tallest skyscraper, is located on the western border of Westend-Süd directly on the Frankfurt exhibition grounds . The other sights are right next to it. The festival hall with its self-supporting dome structure made of steel and glass between stone corner towers was one of the first buildings on the exhibition grounds. Exhibitions and concerts take place here regularly. On the forecourt of both buildings is the Hammering Man , a movable statue of the American Jonathan Borofsky .

New university campus with IG-Farben building and Grüneburgpark

The former corporate headquarters of IG Farben, built in 1928, is located on Grüneburgpark in the Westend-Nord district and has been the Westend campus of Frankfurt University since 2001 . The IG-Farben building was previously the headquarters of the US armed forces in Europe. The surrounding Grüneburgpark complex is on the curve of Miquelallee and is one of the largest parks in Frankfurt.

Horse stable

One of the few originally preserved buildings is the former Livingston horse stable in Ulmenstrasse. It is the only remaining building of a magnificent complex of villas belonging to Marx Löwenstein .

Westend Synagogue

The only one of the four large Frankfurt synagogues that survived the Holocaust is the Westend Synagogue , built from 1908 to 1910 on Altkönigstrasse. It has an extraordinary Assyrian architecture with elements of Art Nouveau .

Suhrkamp House

The former Suhrkamp house on Lindenstrasse in Frankfurt am Main, demolished in 2011

The office building of the Suhrkamp publishing house , formerly the company's headquarters, was on Lindenstrasse. After the publishing house was poached to Berlin, the building was sold and demolished in 2011.

literature

  • Klaus Merten, Christoph Mohr: The Frankfurt Westend . A documentation by the Kuratorium Kulturelles Frankfurt with a focus on architecture and numerous historical images (maps and photos). Prestel Verlag Munich, 1974. ISBN 3-7913-0036-9
  • Heinz Ulrich Krauß: Frankfurt am Main - data, highlights, construction work . A chronicle of Frankfurt's urban development. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt 1997. ISBN 3-7973-0626-1

Web links

Commons : Frankfurt-Westend  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. http://stadtplan.frankfurt.de/frankfurt/html/de/1280x1024.html
  2. Stadtvermessungsamt Frankfurt am Main (ed.): Portal GeoInfo Frankfurt , city ​​map