Gereon Gate

Gereonstor (painting by Jakob Scheiner ; 1877)

The Gereonstor was a city ​​gate in the form of a double tower gate within the medieval city ​​wall of Cologne . Its location was in the north of Cologne's old town on today's Christophstrasse / Von-Werth-Strasse, is named after the nearby St. Gereon Church and was closed in 1881.

History of origin

Arnold Mercator - Cologne cityscape from 1570 : Gereonstor ("S. Gereons loch")

The Gereonstor was part of the Cologne city fortifications built on the left bank of the Rhine from 1180, the semicircle of which was about 7.5 km long. It was one of seven double tower gates, had round towers and three storeys. The gate system consisted of an outer and an inner gate, between which there was a gate hall . Its specialty was the medieval machicolation on the upper battlements , which suggest that the gate was built from 1215 onwards. Therefore, the Gereon Gate was built at the same time as the other city gates, the construction of which is considered completed in 1260. The other gates belonged to the category of central tower gates with side terraces at the level of the wall (such as Friesentor and Severinstorburg ).

The Gereon Gate is first attested in 1259, it was first mentioned in a document in June 1401 when the Gereons Chapel was built as "poerthe (n) ... off Sente Gereon". In medieval Latin it was called "Porta Sancti Gereonis". On the field side, around 1227, a wide road at the height of today's Gladbacher Strasse led northwest to Subbelrath (Sibbewilre) and on to Mechtern ; Today's Subbelrather Straße, which leads to the northwest, is only 300 meters away from the former location of the gate. In 1281, 13 gates (12 and the Ulrepforte ) and 65 towers were inventoried , the Cologne cityscape from 1570 by Arnold Mercator shows a total of eleven gates. His cityscape mentions the Gereon Gate as “S. Gereon's loch ”, he drew the three-storey gate while it was walled up. The city-side wall closure of the gate was probably created as early as the 14th century. A narrow, low gate was left in the wall, which mostly remained locked. The city-side area around the Gereonstor remained largely uninhabited until the late Middle Ages. The neighboring Gereonsmühlenturm - named after the city gate - functioned as a windmill and was built around 1400 from columnar basalt and tuff, was first mentioned in 1446 and renewed in 1558 due to its dilapidation.

function

The Gereon Gate is one of the oldest gates in the city wall and was probably intended as a decoration from the start. This can also be seen from the fact that it remained walled up for over 400 years because there was no direct transport connection. On the field side, there was a small wall around the gate from the late Middle Ages . Later it functioned - like the Hahnentor and the Bayenturm - as a city prison until the 18th century and was considered the strictest prison in Cologne. Mercator's designation as "S. Gereon's loch ”already indicates its use as a prison in the late Middle Ages, because the prisons were then also called“ holes ”in Middle High German.

A total of six prisons were housed in the Gereon Gate. For safety reasons, one did not even have a staircase, but was only accessible via a rope in the supervisor's kitchen. Torture was a prison practice of the time; a thumbscrew from this period can still be seen in the Cologne City Museum. The felons who were in Gereonstor prison were called "chain men" in Cologne because they were chained to their legs with heavy irons. The first chief of the Cologne city regiment known by name, Colonel Gerhard von Kiberin, was also held here after his arrest on June 2, 1683 as a political prisoner of the Nikolaus Gülich revolution . After Gülich's uprising, the city prison was stormed between September 24 and 27, 1683 and freed from Kiberin and other prisoners.

It was not until 1830 that the Gereon Gate was opened again as a passage. On September 22nd, 1871, the Prussian soldiers returned from France from the Franco-German War and marched through the Gereonstor to Neumarkt . At that time it had already lost its function as a city prison.

Laying down

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  Gereon Gate (1877)

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  Gereonstor (from: CF Kaiser, Cölner Thorburgen and fortifications: 1180 - 1882 , 1884, sheet 42)

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  Gereonstor: the half tower No. 32 of the city wall near the Gereonstor is prepared for demolition on June 11th, 1881

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  Gereonstor: Celebrations during the demolition on June 11, 1881

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  Gereonstor: Land side during the demolition on June 11, 1881 (right behind the St. Gereon gate)

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  Gereonstor: demolished on June 11, 1881

The Gereonstor, which was walled up before 1877, belonged - like the other Cologne city gates and the entire city fortifications - to the Prussian military treasury. The City Council of Cologne decided on February 26, 1881 to acquire the area of ​​the city wall and the associated military area, and on February 28, 1881, the Lord Mayor Hermann Becker signed the purchase contract for the acquisition of the fortress site. On May 5, 1881, the purchase contract between the City of Cologne and the War Ministry (military treasury) became legally effective through confirmation by Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck , through which the city acquired the area of ​​122.5 hectares for a purchase price of 11.74 million marks. On November 4th, 1881 the Prussian military treasury handed over the middle third of the fortress paleon from Weyertor to Gereonstor to the city administration. Only on June 5, 1883, the part from Weyertor to the Rhine became municipal property, on July 5, 1895 the rest of the Gereonstor followed north to the Rhine.

Commemorative plaque for the demolition of the Gereon Gate in 1881 at the Christophstraße / Mediapark underground station

Even before the formal acquisition of property, the city began to pull down the medieval city wall at 14 Gereonshof / corner of Von-Werth-Strasse on June 11, 1881. Four days earlier, 20 pioneers prepared the underground blasting preparations. On the morning of June 11, 1881, the citizens of Cologne marched in droves to Gereonshof, where an explosive device with a thud cracked the first breach in the city wall at half tower No. 32. Mayor Becker celebrated the first breakthrough in the wall with the words: “What our ancestors had to build so that Cologne would become big, we have to blow up so that Cologne doesn't become small. … New life is blooming from the ruins! ”The Gereonstor was considered the best preserved city gate in Cologne's city wall, but had to give way instead of the Hahnentor originally intended for demolition. As early as October 1, 1882, the boulevard-style ring road between Gereons- and Weyertor was opened to traffic on the former city wall area .

Others

There is a picture of the Gereonstore on a founder's house at Venloer Straße 16. A memorial plaque attached to the corner building at Von Werth-Straße 1 on June 11, 1981 commemorates the breakthrough in the wall. Another memorial plaque is located at the Christophstraße / Mediapark underground station .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ute Grefe, Cologne in early photographs 1847-1914 , 1988, p. 53.
2. ^ Karl Wilkes , Inventory of the documents of the Xanten Abbey Archives , 1952, No. 998.
3. ↑ latam viam, que de porta sancti Gereonis ducit Sibbewilre : "a wide road that leads from Gereonstor to Subbelrath."
4. ↑ Udo Mainzer, Stadttore im Rheinland , 1973, p. 25.
5. ↑ Pierre Monnet / Otto Gerhard Oexle, Stadt und Recht im Mittelalter , 2003, p. 416.
6. ↑ Helmut Signon / Klaus Schmidt, all roads led through Cologne , 2006, p 121st
7. ↑ Klaus Schlegel, Cologne and his Prussian soldiers , 1979, p. 92.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Peter Fuchs (Ed.), Chronicle of the History of the City of Cologne , Volume 2, 1991, p. 156f.
9. ↑ Fred Kaufmann / Dagmar Lutz / Gudrun Schmidt-Esters, Cologne street names: Neustadt and Deutz , 1996, p. 11.
10. ↑ Gabriele Isenberg / Barbara Scholkmann, The Fortification of the Medieval City , 1997, p. 45.
11. ^ Carl Dietmar / Werner Jung, Small illustrated history of the city of Cologne , 2002, p. 183.

Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 40.8 "  N , 6 ° 56 ′ 38.2"  E