Friedrichsplatz (Kassel)
| Friedrichsplatz | |
|---|---|
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 View of Friedrichsplatz and the city center |
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| Basic data | |
| place | kassel |
| District | center |
| Created | 1768 |
| Newly designed | 1950s and 1990s |
| Confluent streets | Steinweg, Frankfurter Strasse, Obere Koenigsstrasse, Karlsstrasse, stairsstrasse |
| Buildings | Fridericianum , State Theater , Ottoneum , Zwehrenturm |
| use | |
| User groups | Pedestrian traffic , bicycle traffic , car traffic , public transport |
The Friedrichsplatz in Kassel is one of the largest inner-city squares in Germany with a size of approx. 340 × 112 meters. It was created in the 18th century during the planned expansion of the royal seat of Kassel and is named after Landgrave Friedrich II of Hesse-Kassel . The square is known as the center of the five-yearly documenta .
location
Friedrichsplatz lies on the foothills of a former vineyard, on the plateau of which the Oberneustadt Kassel was built for the settlement of immigrant Huguenots from 1685.
Today it is bounded on the north-western narrow side by the Königsstraße . The northern annex is the Opernplatz with the Louis Spohr monument . The south-west and north-east long sides of the square are built on, the south-east side is bounded by the steep slope of the Karlsaue .
history
The Oberneustadt as a baroque extension of the city was built in front of the existing fortifications of the city of Kassel. Between the fortifications and the Oberneustadt an esplanade with rows of trees was laid out in 1688 according to plans by Paul du Ry . From 1762 the city fortifications were razed. According to the concept of Simon Louis du Ry in 1768, the square was planned and built on. Friedrichsplatz was intended to delimit the historic old town of Kassel and at the same time act as a link between the old town and the baroque Oberneustadt.
The south-east side of the square should remain free of buildings in order to create an organic connection between architecture and landscape as a “window” with an unobstructed view of the Fulda valley . To accentuate the view, the Friedrichs- or Auetor was built on the southeast side according to a design by Simon Louis du Ry from 1779–1782.
The Auetor was demolished in 1907 to make way for the monumental Wilhelmine new building of the State Theater. (Opening in 1909 as the “Royal State Theater”). With this construction, the original character of the square with its relationship to the Fulda and Karlsaue was abandoned. The State Theater, like most of the buildings in downtown Kassel, was badly damaged by the war in 1943 and was finally demolished in 1953 after a heated public debate. This opened the window to the Karlsaue and the Fulda valley again.
The original design of the square with its lawns and geometric paths no longer existed during the German Empire, and especially during the Nazi era. The square was often used for drills, marches and military parades. A Fieseler stork landed on the chaused area as part of a weapons parade during the Nazi era . After the Second World War , the square was called Friedrich-Ebert-Platz for a short time.
The new State Theater was built in 1959 on the southeast corner of Friedrichsplatz at an oblique angle to the square and almost parallel to the Ottoneum , so that the square shape of the square was disturbed and the corner was rounded. The traffic planning of the 1950s for the car-friendly city let the newly laid out street layout of the Steinweg cut Friedrichsplatz and since then it has separated the southeast third of the square from traffic and optics.
Towards the end of the 1980s there was once again the risk that the connection from Friedrichsplatz to Karlsaue would be abandoned. The award of the architectural competition for the construction of a separate exhibition hall for the documenta envisaged building on the site of the demolished old state theater as a bar in front of the Karlsaue. The competition winners ignored this requirement, so that the documenta hall has stood parallel to the new state theater with a curved floor plan since 1992 and digs itself deep into the steep slope of the Fulda valley. The view from Friedrichsplatz to the Karlsaue and the orangery , accentuated by the frame construction work of art by Haus-Rucker-Co since documenta 6 in 1977 , remained unobstructed.
In the 1990s, an underground car park with 980 parking spaces was built in two construction phases under the entire area of Friedrichsplatz, which was inaugurated on July 4, 1996. Large parts of the former city fortifications were exposed during the construction work. A small part and some showcases can be seen in the parking deck today. From autumn 2004 to February 2007, Friedrichsplatz served as an alternative area for the State Theater: while the theater building was being renovated, a dome tent stood on the square as a venue.
architecture
The development is very heterogeneous and therefore also varied. Due to the outstanding location in the cityscape, buildings were mostly of high design quality.
However, some of the historical buildings are irretrievably lost: on the northeast side of Friedrichsplatz the Palais von Jungken (built by Simon Louis du Ry 1767–69 ), the “White Palais” (1769), the “Red Palais” (1821–1826) and the court administration building (1826–1829) and the Elisabethkirche (1770–1777) were destroyed or damaged by bombing during World War II and were later demolished.
The most important buildings on the square today include:
Architecture of the northeast side
- Friedrichsplatz 15: State Theater , built 1956–1959. (Architects: Paul Bode and Ernst Brundig)
- Steinweg 2: Ottoneum (1603–1606), now a natural history museum.
- Friedrichsplatz 18: Zwehrenturm . Erected around 1330 as a gate tower for the city fortifications. 1707 Baroque reconstruction and establishment of an observatory . 1779 Conversion to the current form and connection with the Fridericianum Museum .
- Friedrichsplatz 18: Museum Fridericianum 1769–1779 built as an important building of classicism and as a public museum . (Simon Louis du Ry)
- Friedrichsplatz 19: Leffers department store ( Sep Ruf , 1961 - remodeling by Walter von Lom , 1991) with the preserved portico (1826) of the destroyed Red Palace . On the arbor above is the group of figures “ The Strangers ” by Thomas Schütte from documenta IX from 1992.
- du Ry-Straße 1: documenta hall . (Architects: Jourdan + Müller , 1992)
Architecture of the southwest side
- Friedrichsplatz 14: AOK administration building , architect Konrad Proll, (1957). A cultural monument as an outstanding example of the architecture of the economic miracle. Elaborately designed spiral staircase.
Northwest side architecture
- Obere Koenigsstrasse 39: Koenigsgalerie (1995), including and preserving building fabric from the 1950s that is worth protecting.
- Obere Königsstraße / corner of Opernplatz: House No. 37 on Königsstraße was built in 1770. The architect was Simon Louis du Ry . The Kassel merchant Roux is named as the client. The late baroque building was bought by the state in 1837 and served as a commandant's office for a long time and is still popularly known today. The building survived the Second World War almost unscathed. Later it should be gutted because of alleged dilapidation, probably to enable a more economical use. After the half-timbered core was removed, parts of the facade gave way and made a (deliberate) demolition possible. The facade of today's fashion house at this point is, in the broadest sense, a concrete cast (reconstruction 1969) of the historical model using a few historical elements.
Monuments and works of art
Since the first documenta in 1955, Friedrichsplatz has been used temporarily for sculptures and outdoor art. Since then, some installations and individual works have remained on the square, which are intended to represent a chronology of pre- and post-modern art permanently as an ensemble.
- Monument to Landgrave Friedrich II, begun in 1783 by Johann August Nahl the Elder and completed by his son. It originally stood in the middle of the square and looked out over Oberneustadt. After the Second World War, it was moved a little to the south-west and now looks towards the Fridericianum.
- The sculpture The Victims of Violence by the Russian sculptor Vadim Abramowitsch Sidur was placed on the edge of the square in 1974.
- The light beam installation Laserscape by Horst H. Baumann on the Zwehrenturm , originally used as an observatory, has spanned the city axially since 1977.
- The headstock of the vertical kilometer of the earth by Walter De Maria , from documenta 6 . During the exhibition, De Maria had a derrick built on the square, with the help of which he sank a 1000 meter long brass rod into the ground.
- The frame building by Haus-Rucker-Co , erected in 1977 for documenta 6 , as a return to the accentuation of the “window to the landscape” that originally existed on the square when the Auetor was demolished in 1907, as a link between urban urbanity and the rediscovered expanse of the landscape as Viewing space.
- In 1982, for documenta 7 , Joseph Beuys planted the first of 7000 oaks from his work 7000 oaks - urban forest instead of municipal administration directly in front of the Fridericianum. After Beuys' death, his son Wenzel planted the 7000th tree in 1987 for documenta 8 right next to the Fridericianum.
- The group of figures the strangers of Thomas Schütte on the balcony of the department store bilka at the Documenta IX in 1992 remained there in a reduced form. The other part of the group stands on the roof of the MuK in Lübeck with a view of the Trave.
- The two curved steel rods on the shopping gallery building on the west side by Friedel Deventer from 1995.
- Four stumbling blocks in front of the main entrance of the State Theater.
Literature and Sources
- State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.); Monuments in Hessen - City of Kassel I (monument topography Federal Republic of Germany) ; Wiesbaden 1983 ISBN 3-528-06232-0 .
- Boehlke, Hans-Kurt; Simon Louis du Ry - A pioneer of classicist architecture in Germany ; Kassel 1980 ISBN 3-7982-0430-6 .
- Zumpfe, Ralf / Schrader, Karin / Thiemann, Carsten; Architectural Guide Kassel 1900 - 1999 ; Kassel 1997 ISBN 3-87816-087-9 .
- Becker, Kurt; Collected data from Oberzwehren and Kurhessen - formerly also known as Niederhessen or Hessen-Cassel ; Kassel-Oberzwehren, 2000.
- Museumsverein Kassel eV (ed.); Museum Fridericianum 1779–1979 ; Kassel 1979.
Individual evidence
- ^ Total spaces (980) in the Friedrichsplatz multi-storey car park , at shoppingen-kassel.pixel-base.de
- ↑ Information on the inauguration of the Friedrichsplatz underground car park on July 4, 1996 in Chronicle of the Years 1990 - 2000 , on kassel.de
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 48 ″ N , 9 ° 29 ′ 48 ″ E