Güntzbad

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Street view Güntzbad (1908)
inside view

The Güntzbad was an indoor pool in the Art Nouveau style in Dresden . Until 1945 it was located on the Elbberg in the Pirnaische Vorstadt , right next to the old town bridgehead of the Carolabrücke .

history

Construction and opening

Newspaper advertisement for the opening

The first large indoor swimming pool in the city of Dresden was built from 1903 to 1905 according to plans by city building officer Edmund Bräter and opened on January 2, 1906. The construction was made possible by financial means from the Güntz Foundation , which provided a total of 1.65 million marks. The building had a representative facade with Art Nouveau ornaments, the sandstone facade had been provided with "elaborate figurative ornament". Inside there were two separate swimming pools for men and women, with the men's swimming pool having a pool area of ​​275 square meters. The women's pool measured approx. 18 × 9 meters. In addition, there were 50 baths for the population of the neighboring residential areas, whose houses mostly had no bathrooms. There was also an Irish-Roman sweat bath , a dog bath and a refreshment room called a “bath café”. In the attached laundry, bathers could have their clothes washed and ironed. More than 195,000 visitors visited the Güntzbad in its opening year, and by 1926 the number of bathers had grown to up to 775,000 per year. In the evenings, the Dresden swimming clubs were available.

Reconstruction from 1925 to 1927

From 1925 to 1927, the bathroom was expanded and modernized under the direction of City Planning Officer Paul Wolf . In accordance with the prevailing taste of the time, New Objectivity, parts of the Art Nouveau furnishings were removed, for example the large tiled stove in the Güntzbad. For this purpose, new tubs and sweat baths, massage rooms and rooms for spa and healing treatments were created. A sun terrace accessible by elevator was created on the roof. In addition to water treatment and heating systems, the modern technical systems of the Güntzbad included an in-house electricity supply with a diesel generator, a centrally controlled clock system and a radio system through which visitors could watch the radio program with headphones.

Reconstruction planning and demolition after 1945

The interior of the ruins of the Güntzbad (after 1945)

In World War II heavily damaged, the reconstruction of the house was in the postwar period long debated. At a public meeting of the city council in the Great House of the State Theater on May 10, 1951, the CDU city council asked Henkel to investigate what could be done to save preserved ruins such as the Güntz baths. The NDPD MP Roßbach spoke out against the preservation of listed ruins. A reconstruction of the Güntzbad was planned in the third variant of the partial development plan from August 1958, whereby on August 20, 1958 the economic policy department of the SED city ​​administration in Dresden came out in favor of a different variant of the development plan. On May 4, 1961, the funds for the construction of the Güntzbad were canceled after the Presidium of the Council of Ministers had decided to declare the construction of Dresden's old town a special state plan.

At the beginning of August 1962, Lord Mayor Gerhard Schill had the SED's district and city management confirm the city's proposals for demolishing the remaining ruins, including those of the Güntzbad. Accordingly, the bath should be demolished in 1962/63. The costs for the demolition were " considerably more than originally planned for its construction ... ". In 1964 the Güntzbad was demolished. Five years later, the Steinstrasse indoor swimming pool was built as a replacement in the immediate vicinity, which was closed in 2001 due to disrepair. A bronze figure recovered from the ruins of the Güntzbad by the sculptor Georg Wrba has been in the Zschonergrundbad in Dresden-Kemnitz since 2010.

literature

  • Fritz Löffler: The old Dresden - history of its buildings . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1981, ISBN 3-363-00007-3 .
  • Matthias Lerm: Farewell to old Dresden - Loss of historical building fabric after 1945 . Forum Verlag, Leipzig 1993, ISBN 3-86151-047-2 .
  • Volker Helas, Gudrun Peltz: Art Nouveau architecture in Dresden . KNOP Verlag, Dresden 1999, ISBN 3-934363-00-8 .
  • Dietmar Schreier / Manfred Lauffer: Disappeared - When Dresdeners sweat in the Güntz-Bad , in: Sächsische Zeitung, October 17, 2009

Web links

Commons : Güntzbad  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helas / Peltz, p. 46f, image no. 58, image no. 59, image no. 60, image no. 61; P. 187.
  2. ↑ Lerm, p. 173 writes there: "7 million DM"
  3. ↑ Lerm, p. 188 writes 1,100,000 DM
  4. ↑ Löffler, p. 416, p. 489; Lerm, p. 78, p. 144, p. 173, p. 188, p. 189.
  5. ↑ Zschonergrund website - accessed on March 6, 2013

Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 10.1 ″  N , 13 ° 44 ′ 54.6 ″  E