Galgent Gate

The Galgentor was considered to be the most beautiful Frankfurt city gate

Galgentor on the siege plan, 1552

The Galgentor , also called Gallustor in the early modern period , was one of five city gates of the late medieval Frankfurt city fortifications , which allowed access to the Frankfurt Neustadt , which Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian allowed the city to enclose in 1333.

Location and surroundings

View from the Goethe House to the Galgentor, around 1750

The Galgentor was built between 1381 and 1392. In front of the gate was a bridge over the city moat with a fore. Mainzer Landstrasse began on its land side . From the gate, the Große Gallusgasse led to the Roßmarkt , the most important square in the city. Even today, the street is an important inner-city connecting street as Große Gallusstraße . The intersection of Große Gallusstraße and Neue Mainzer Straße , where the historic Galgentor was located, is the center of the banking district .

West of the gate was the gallows field , where the high court had been since the 14th century . Public executions by hanging or wheeling were carried out here from the 14th century to 1799 . In August 1806, the high court was hastily demolished because the French army claimed the gallows field as a parade ground for public fireworks in honor of Emperor Napoléon . Today the station district is located here .

history

Head portrait of St. Bartholomew from Galgentor (ca.1352)

Head portrait of Charlemagne from the Galga Gate (ca.1390)

Demolition work in front of the Galgentor in 1805

Design of the classical Gallus Gate, 1808

Despite its chilling name, the Galgentor was the most important Frankfurt gate, as traffic from and to Mainz passed through it. It played a special role in the coronations of the emperors , because the newly elected emperors had used the gate to enter the city since the end of the 14th century. Its square gate tower was therefore particularly representative: on the outside under Gothic canopies were the statues of the city's patron saints, Saint Bartholomew and Charlemagne, between an imperial eagle standing on a lion .

When imperial troops approached the city dangerously during the Schmalkaldic War in 1546, half of the tower was demolished in order not to stand in the way of any defensive fire from the city. The expected attack did not materialize and it was rebuilt within a very short time, when the siege plan of 1552 shows the tower again in full size and with a roof. It is also the only detailed and final representation of the building in its medieval form. In 1607 the first structural change was made with the addition of a roundabout to the gate tower.

From the 16th century, the Frankfurt chronicler Achilles Augustus von Lersner had various reports about the Galgentor. In 1582 on Mary Magdalene Day, i.e. July 22nd, there was a fight between the tower keepers. This supposedly happened at the moment when a procession was just passing through the gate, which is why one of the guards had his eyes gouged out as punishment. In the same year, according to Lersner, there was also a fire on July 18, which completely destroyed the wooden parts of the tower and made extensive new construction necessary.

In the Thirty Years' War the city began its outdated city walls by one after the then modern principles of Dutch fortress construction scale Sternschanze fortress to expand. In 1635 a bastion was placed in front of the Galgentor and the inner city moat , the gallows bulwark , in front of which another moat ran. The medieval Galgentor no longer led to the country road, but to the ramparts. About 100 meters south of the gate, between the gallows bulwark and the Mainz bulwark , the New Galgentor was built between 1661 and 1662 with a drawbridge over the outer moat.

The name Gallustor came up in the 18th century after the memory of the medieval gallows became increasingly objectionable. In order to underline the change of heart, the fountain of the same name in the nearby Kleine Galgengasse , soon known as Kleine Gallusgasse , was sculpted by St. Gallus in 1783 . The fountain, like the entire district, only went under during the air raids on Frankfurt am Main during World War II . In 1808 the entire gate system with tower and bridge in front was demolished. City gardener Sebastian Rinz laid out the Gallus complex on the site, part of the green belt protected by a Wall Service , which continues to this day around Frankfurt city center.

In place of the medieval gate, Johann Friedrich Christian Hess built the Taunustor in 1810 , two classicist gate structures with wrought-iron bars that were closed every evening until 1864. Using the remains of the baroque gate over the outer city moat, the Gallustor (today Willy-Brandt-Platz ) was built south of it . New doors and windows were broken into the old ground floor that had been preserved and it was given a roof in the new taste of the times. The gable field was provided with the city coat of arms and the golden inscription S. Gallus Thor MDCCCIX , the old wooden gate now replaced the splendid work of a blacksmith. Both gate structures were demolished at the end of the 19th century.

literature

Architects & Engineers Association (Ed.): Frankfurt am Main and its buildings . Self-published by the association, Frankfurt am Main 1886
Walter Gerteis: The unknown Frankfurt . 8th edition, Verlag Frankfurter Bücher, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-920346-05-X
Rudolf Jung: The laying down of the fortifications in Frankfurt am Main 1802-1807 , in: Archive for Frankfurt's history and art, Vol. 30, self-published by the Association for History and Antiquity, Frankfurt am Main 1913
Fried Lübbecke : The face of the city. According to Frankfurt's plans by Faber, Merian and Delkeskamp. 1552-1864 . Waldemar Kramer publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1952
Heinrich Schüßler: Frankfurt's towers and gates . Waldemar Kramer publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1951
Carl Wolff, Rudolf Jung: The architectural monuments of Frankfurt am Main - Volume 2, secular buildings . Self-published / Völcker, Frankfurt am Main 1898

Individual evidence

↑ Achilles Augustus von Lersner: The widely-famous Freyen imperial, electoral and trading city of Franckfurt am Main Chronica [...] . Second book, self-published, Frankfurt am Main 1706, p. 10. This information is not documented by Lersner, who is already critical to read. It seems doubtful, since city archivist Georg Ludwig Kriegk, who knew the Criminalia files, in his work German Citizenship in the Middle Ages . Rütten and Löning, Frankfurt am Main, 1868 on p. 253 states that the punishment of gouging out one's eyes was carried out for the last time in Frankfurt in 1558.