Concordia Society House
The Society House Concordia ( Latin concordia , Eintracht 'to cor , heart' ) is under monument protection standing town house in Wuppertal - Barmen at the addresses Werth 46-50, Concordienstraße 2-4 and 1-3 Linde. It was built in its original form in 1818 and has been home to the Concordia company founded in 1801 ever since . It forms the southern end of Johannes-Rau-Platz (town hall forecourt) and, together with the Barmen town hall and the Kleine Flurstrasse public baths , is the remainder of the historical development in the old town center of Barmen.
history
19th century
The oldest yearbook of the First Company to Gemarke noted that "in 1801 some friends of social pleasure combined with the intention of following the Beyspiel in Elberfeld existing social connection (NKJV casino company) to build a Societät here itself to there in friendly circles which the To be able to enjoy evenings dedicated to relaxation ”. The 25 founding fathers named their civil society Concordia and tried to meet the interests of the Barmer women through musical performances and dance events . For this purpose, the master builder Wilhelm Buchholz built the first social building on Wertherstrasse (today Werth ) in classicist style with a medium risalit and a gable from 1816–1818 . Due to the industrial growth of Barmen and the sudden increase in the population, the demands on urban planners and administrators also increased. Since many of the decision-makers from the city and district were involved in Concordia , local and regional political projects were often initiated here.
The musical performances had reached a considerable level and made an expansion necessary due to the lack of alternative rooms in Barmen. After two years of construction, the concert hall was inaugurated in February 1861 . This offered space for over 400 visitors, had star-shaped ceiling lighting and was the first concert hall on the continent with an organ from the Ibach house. Major soloists such as B. Johannes Brahms on February 16, 1884 and conductors such as B. Hans Knappertsbusch , who was born in Wuppertal, gave concerts here. The Gesellschaftshaus was the think tank and the meeting place for the founding of the Barmer Beautification Society on December 8, 1864 and the Barmer Art Society on February 25, 1866.
New building around 1900
In the 1870s and 1880s, the Concordia Society House developed into a bourgeois festival hall, and the old building no longer met the requirements of the time. On June 8, 1896, the company decided to build a new clubhouse at the same location. The inauguration took place on January 17, 1900. A certificate dated January 25, 1900, attached to the keystone , describes the course of the construction project: “The construction was carried out on the site and on the neighboring properties of the old society building, which had been built in 1817, that were acquired through purchase . The demolition of the building began on June 10, 1897. The plans and designs that emerged victorious from a competition (among twelve German master builders) are the work of the architect Schreiterer and Below in Cologne , who were also entrusted with the construction management ... The sculptural work on the magnificent main façade was carried out by Johannes Degen, Cologne, in Mittelberger Sandstein , the stucco and woodwork (in the late Rococo style) inside by Heinrich Pallenberg , Cologne. ”The art glazing was made by the Cologne-Lindenthal glass painting company Schneider and Schmolz .
A decision was made in favor of the finest Cologne addresses, which gave the Barmer building the character of a baroque city palace. A contemporary description of the interior of the building said that "while the spacious rooms of the ground floor as shops were vermiethet and more splendid husbandry spaces halls of the piano nobile of society itself reserved. The splendid portal and an equally rich staircase lead to the cloakroom on the first floor. In the middle of the main front, the actual gentlemen's lounge opens up , which is joined on one side by the billiard room , the playroom, the reading room and the management room , while one to the side is a large and a small dining room , as well as a very attractive empire room . Follow salon . In addition to this long, uninterrupted flight of splendid rooms, which the Pallenberg zu Cöln company has proven itself in furnishing, the main floor contains the large concert hall, a smaller reunion hall and the ladies' room. This part of the house, which has a large staircase for performances and balls , can be connected to other rooms or used separately as required. "
With the curved gable shape of the numerous dwelling houses , the building had a lively roof landscape , with which the architects drew on the existing form of the Bergisch town house from the late Baroque era . The preserved Bergisch entrance portal is also original, with its lightly decorated battle window and mirror -inverted floorboard windows, whereby the baroque forms of Austrian - Bohemian provenance and Bergisch - Brandenburg tradition were dealt with in a playful way . One day after the reopening in 1900, the Bismarck monument was inaugurated near the Concordia . This deliberately designed urban situation had a political connection for the Gesellschaftshaus Concordia , in which the term Concordia was politically reinterpreted with Otto von Bismarck as the celebrated accomplisher of German unity . In the historical Concordia the bourgeoisie was among themselves. Everything of rank and name went in and out here to devote themselves to the fine arts . Politics was pursued, people presented and celebrated themselves, but also engaged in Christian charity with “noble deeds” for the “lower” social classes.
World War II and post-war period
During the Second World War , the Allied air raid on Barmen in the night of May 29th to 30th, 1943 destroyed the impressive citizen's palace down to the surrounding walls and was rebuilt in a simplified form during the reconstruction. Instead of the two-storey iron / glass construction, the building was given an outer masonry with sandstone cladding.
The building with the ornately decorated facade is particularly noticeable today because of its large pillars above the artistic portal, which support a wrought-iron balcony . While you can rummage at a painting dealer in the basement on the front, at the end of Schuchardstrasse is the entrance to the former FITA Palace, which housed a multi-theater cinema with 1,400 seats and separate boxes from 1948 to 1998 . The cinema was formed from the formerly two large hall of the Concordia.
Todays use
In 2006, the Dortmund architect Niederwörmann was commissioned to redesign the former cinema. Up to ten practices should be used as a medical center in the ex-cinema. Previously uses as already nightclub , event gastronomy , indoor - playground or third municipal theater venue discussed in Wuppertal, none has been realized so far these plans.
The rest of the building block is used as business shops, business premises, offices and apartments. On the second floor, the playroom, the lounges and two large halls of the Concordia Society are reserved for socializing, concerts, art exhibitions, lectures and celebratory meetings.
literature
- Hermann J. Mahlberg , Hella Nußbaum: The departure around 1900 and the modern age in the architecture of the Wuppertal, afterglow of an epoch, Verlag Müller Busmann KG, 2008, ISBN 978-3-928766-87-6 , pages 120-122
- FW Bredt: Concordia. A study of the century from Wupperthal, publisher: Barmen, Luhn 1901.
- Florian Speer : From the construction of the first community building of the Concordia zu Barmen civil society 1816–1818. In: “Art and Architecture. Festschrift Prof. Dr. Hermann J. Mahlberg “, Wuppertal 1998, pp. 32-40. ISBN 3-928766-32-5 .
Web links
- Entry in the Wuppertal monument list
photos
Concordia Society House , (2008)
Upper portal view, (2009)
Lower portal view, (2009)
Concordia seen from Johannes-Rau-Platz, (2008)
Building decorations in Lindenstrasse, (2009)
Entrance to the former FITA palace in Lindenstrasse (2009)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry in the Wuppertal monument list
- ↑ a b c d e Entry in the Wuppertal monument list
- ↑ Bredt (1901), page 1
- ↑ barmen-200-jahre.de ( Memento from April 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), greeting from Wolfgang Baumann
- ↑ Bredt (1901), page 54
- ↑ Kunst-Glasmalerei Schneiders & Schmolz GmbH Koeln-Lindenthal: List of a number of already executed glass paintings together with a few illustrations . Cologne 1902, p. 34 .
- ↑ Bredt (1901), pp. 52–53
- ↑ wuppertal.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ), Schöne Drei Concordia
- ↑ talgeschichten.de , Oops, now I'm coming! Half a century of cinema in Wuppertal
- ↑ barmen-200-jahre.de ( Memento from November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), chronicle from 1900 to 1999
- ↑ hatzfeldpost.de (PDF; 8 kB), Park-Lichtspiele Wuppertal-Hatzfeld
- ↑ a b wz-online, December 7, 2006 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Ex-Fita-Palast: Disco or a medical center?
- ↑ wolfgang-mondorf.de ( Memento of the original from January 4, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , private website of Wolfgang Mondorf
- ↑ dielinke-wuppertal.de, January 25, 2007 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ), Fita-Palast, proposal of the council group of the party of democratic socialism
Coordinates: 51 ° 16 ′ 16 " N , 7 ° 12 ′ 3.9" E