Friedensplatz Oberhausen

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Oberhausen District Court (2008)
Friedensplatz towards the south (2008)
View of the square in winter, in the foreground the "Swan" by Zoltan Székessy , 1962, bronze (2011)

The Friedensplatz is a park-like, traffic-calmed area in downtown Oberhausen .

history

From 1854 to 1902 the premises of Styrumer Eisenindustrie AG, which filed for bankruptcy in 1901, were located on the area of ​​today's square. After the demolition of the company buildings, the city did not want to allow any new industrial settlements because it saw this wasteland as an important link between the train station, the town hall district and the Altmarkt. The idea of ​​creating the desired new station building with a representative station forecourt at this point was soon dropped because the railway administration did not want to participate in this project. Instead, the district court , completed in 1907, was built on the northern edge of the open space , a historicizing building in the neo-renaissance style . The jewelry square in front of it, from which star-shaped, wide streets emanated, was initially named Kaiserplatz . During the Weimar Republic , the square was not only renamed (now industrial square ), but also redesigned in terms of urban planning. The diagonal routing of the streets, which did not go well with the rectangular grid system that dominated the area, was abandoned and the new shape of the square approached the rectangular and more strictly geometric basic shapes that defined Oberhausen in the 1920s. The approximately 180-meter-long and 50-meter-wide square was now flanked on both of its long sides by new public buildings, which were designed between 1924 and 1927 in the style of brick expressionism based on designs by the alderman Eduard Jüngerich and the city architect Ludwig Freitag . These include the police headquarters, a branch of the Reichsbank (later the state central bank ) and the municipal finance and land registry office . During the Third Reich , it was renamed Adolf-Hitler-Platz , which was reversed in 1945. The name Friedensplatz has been in effect ever since . In 1955, the south end of the square was completed by the Europahaus designed by Hans Schwippert , a double tower complex with living and business rooms and a hotel area.

Todays situation

The square, which has been closed to motorized traffic since the 1980s, is characterized in its current design by a central axis of elongated water basins, which are closed off at the southern end by a fountain and bordered by flower beds and double rows of plane trees.

The Friedensplatz was included in two themed routes of the Route of Industrial Culture .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinz Reif : The belated city. Industrialization, urban space and politics in Oberhausen 1846–1929 . Textbd., Cologne 1993, p. 204.
  2. ^ Heinz Reif: The belated city. Industrialization, urban space and politics in Oberhausen 1846–1929 . Textbd., Cologne 1993, p. 207.

Web links

Commons : Friedensplatz (Oberhausen)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 28 ′ 19.2 ″  N , 6 ° 51 ′ 15.1 ″  E