Commercial building (Bremen)
The commercial building in Bremen is a representative building from the early 17th century and the seat of the oldest German Chamber of Crafts , the Bremen Chamber of Crafts , founded in 1849 . It stands at Ansgarikirchhof and has been a listed building since 1973. After heavy war damage, the commercial building was after the war rebuilt .
history
Wall tailor's house from 1619/21
The house in the style of the Weser Renaissance was built from 1619 to 1621 on behalf of the wall tailors (they operated the retail trade with cloths in Bremen) as a representative meeting house with a ballroom. The initiative went back to the wall cutter Diedrich Dieckhoff the Younger (1560–1624), who had become a councilor in 1597 and supported the construction with considerable donations.
It consists of two houses standing at an angle to each other, one of which (along today's Wandschneiderstraße) presents a magnificent gable to the Ansgarikirchhof and the wing at right angles to it turns an almost symmetrical gable to the same place. Under the right, northern gable adorned with a niche figure of Mercury, one entered through a column portal decorated with figures (with Justitia, Hercules, Minerva) into a spacious hall, above which, similar to the town hall, the large ballroom was arranged. It was aligned perpendicular to the Ansgarikirchhoff facade and measured 25 by 11.60 meters. The rich stone carving of the facades is by Johann Nacke (master craftsman in 1618, died in 1620) and from 1620 by Ernst Kroßmann (from Lemgo, citizen of Bremen since 1613, died in 1622), to whom the high-quality figurative jewelry is also attributed.
In addition to the official business and meetings of the cloth merchants' guild, family celebrations such as weddings also took place in the wall tailor's house for wealthy citizens outside the guild, so that the designation food and wedding house became established. The painting Wedding in Cana from 1660 by the painter Franz Wulfhagen probably hung in this ballroom, was in the building until around 1862 and is now in the Focke Museum .
Kramer office since 1685
Since 1657, the wall tailor's company, which had probably taken over the costs of the construction (24,269 Bremen marks ), got into increasing financial problems. In 1675 the council decreed that all weddings could only take place in this building. Due to other declining incomes of the wall tailors, they only had to sell the building to the rival guild of Kramer in 1685 for 5,000 Reichstaler . It was now called the Kramer-Amtshaus and was still used as an event building. The purchase was documented by a sandstone tablet that no longer exists.
The events in the Kramer-Amtshaus also included appearances by the jugglers , the Poppendantzers or the Linen Dantzers (tightrope walkers). State guests took quarters here, including on December 9, 1709, Tsar Peter the Great . Auctions took place here and in 1825 12 concerts were reported. From 1849 to 1861, preacher Ludwig Sigismund Jacoby from the Episcopal Methodist Church used the premises to promote his church.
In 1780 a renovation took place under the direction of the silk shopkeeper, Ernst Trüper (1714–1797). The two halls lying one above the other were divided. The painted beam ceiling above the hall on the ground floor was clad. In 1792, the existing cellar in the northern inn was extended by 5.5 meters to the west. A sign that testifies to this can be seen today in the Alte Gilde restaurant .
A new constitution had been in force in Bremen since 1849, according to which a Chamber of Commerce was introduced and greater freedom of trade was postulated, which was implemented in 1861 through an ordinance with the abolition of the previous trade privileges. This sealed the fate of the Kramerinnung. The new Chamber of Commerce looked for a domicile for itself and bought the building from the Krameramt in 1861 with considerable support from the Senate for 35,000 Louisdor (today 8 million euros).
Commercial building since 1861
After the introduction of the freedom of trade , the Bremen Chamber of Commerce , which had existed since 1849, bought the office building on September 24, 1861 for 35,000 thalers of gold ; The purchase price came from the Bremen state, which from then on owned the house. For the new use of the commercial building from 1863 onwards, major renovations were made to the interior of the building from 1862 to 1863 according to plans by the architect Simon Loschen . Above all, the larger northern portal was moved to the center, the smaller portal was omitted. In 1874 an extension for the technical institute was built on the courtyard side. In 1912/1913 the interior of the building was rebuilt again, but this had no influence on the design of the facade.
The Ansgar monument was erected in 1865 as a marble group on a sandstone plinth between the Ansgar church and the commercial building based on a design by Carl Steinhäuser . The occasion was the 1000th anniversary of Archbishop Ansgar's death . In 1944, the monument was destroyed by the collapsing tower of Ansgari Church.
Reconstruction from 1948 to 1959
The commercial building was almost completely destroyed by a bombardment during World War II on October 6, 1944. The entrance portal was specially secured by splinter protection walls and was therefore preserved.
The reconstruction began in 1948 (year in the frieze) under the direction of Gustav Ulrich with the reconstruction of the frieze-adorned ground floor. In 1951 the ground floor was completed and the Chamber of Crafts and the District Craftsmen moved in. From 1955 to 1956 the upper floor was added, but for the time being it was given a makeshift roof. The south gable to Hutfilterstraße was designed in 1955 at the suggestion of monument conservator Rudolf Stein with preserved parts of the Wrissenberg gable from house 34 at Langenstraße . The originally too small gable from the Baroque era with Rococo elements from 1756 had to be raised by a tier and also widened. From 1957, the basement was renovated for public use and had served as an air raid shelter from 1935. On April 28, 1958, a restaurant with the name Alte Gilde was inaugurated and leased in the vaulted cellar with its square pillars . The reconstruction of the two east gables from the Weser Renaissance took only five months and was completed on December 20, 1959. In 1965 it was finally possible to design the facades in terms of color and some gilding. 1970 to 1972 the large rooms on the ground floor - the vestibule, main hall and guild hall - were redesigned according to plans by Karl Dillschneider . The hall and hall received teak paneling . In 1997/98/99 conversions and renovations took place on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Bremen Chamber of Crafts . The previous large, right-hand guild hall was now called the craft hall . The old chamber hall became a cloakroom. The large Neuer Kammersaal on the upper floor of the right, northern large Kosthaus was renamed the Wandschneidersaal . The newly created small hall on the first floor, to the left of the entrance, was named the Guild Hall . In 1999 the facade was renovated.
Since its reconstruction, the building has been the seat of the Bremen Chamber of Crafts, which acquired the house from the city on May 12, 1959.
Today's shape and meaning
The two gables on the long side, like the large central arched portal with the Corinthian columns, no longer give the impression of a building made up of two houses. Although the building consists only to a small extent of the original structure, it embodies the aspiration, style and decorative forms of Bremen building like no other in Bremen 15 years after the completion of the town hall: the facade made entirely of sandstone, the allegorical figural decorations and the early examples of the auricle style are remarkable, the "overall composition of the two gables ... signifies the breakthrough from the Renaissance to the Baroque" (stone). The portal to the Ansgari cemetery is largely original, with the allegories of Justitia flanked by Minerva and Hercules . The ensemble symbolizes justice, wisdom and strength. Above, in the left gable, the destroyed figure of Venus has been replaced by the sandstone figure of a stonemason and on the right in the Mercury gable the Roman merchant god with the figure of a bricklayer, both by Georg Arfmann , around 1959. The completely destroyed baroque south gable, practically nothing about its original appearance is known because another building between Hutfilterstrasse and the commercial building had blocked the view, was freely reconstructed from surviving parts of two war-destroyed town houses and many additions. The small square facing Hutfilterstrasse was not built up again.
Surroundings
On the square in front of the commercial building, the Ansgarikirchhof, is the Ansgar column by Kurt-Wolf von Borries . It commemorates the medieval Ansgarii Church , which was destroyed during the war, and was erected in 1965 to commemorate the 1100th anniversary of the death of St. Ansgar .
Literature and drawings
literature
- Dieter Riemer : The Bremen Chamber of Crafts and its commercial building - 150 years . Ed .: Chamber of Crafts Bremen, Bremen 2011.
- Karl Dillschneider: Three hundred and fifty years of a commercial building (1619–1969). In: Communications of the Association for Lower Saxon People , Issue 83 (new Issue 46), Bremen 1969
- Karl Schäfer: Krameramtshaus , in: Mitteilungen des Gewerbe-Museum, Bremen 1906, p. 49.
- Ernst Grohne : The commercial building as a building and art monument. In: 75 Years of the Bremen Chamber of Commerce, pp. 65–76, Bremen 1924.
- Rudolf Stein: The old wall cutter's house (commercial building) in Bremen from 1619/21 and its restoration from 1948 to 1959 . In: Deutsche Kunst- und Denkmalpflege , pp. 37–51, 1964.
- Rudolf Stein: Bremer Barock und Rokoko , Bremen 1960, pp. 60–74.
Drawings, pictures
- Friedrich Wilhelm Kohl : The Krameramthaus in Bremen , lithograph, Bremen 1845; both portals still visible.
- Georg Hunckel: Lithograph before the renovation 1863, published by JG Kohl, Bremen 1870.
- Simon Loschen (?): Neo-Gothic entrance hall, picture index of the State Office for Monument Preservation, drawing around 1862.
- Simon Loschen (?): Neo-Gothic staircase, drawing around 1862.
- Simon Loschen (?): Neo-Gothic convent hall, drawing around 1862. In this main hall there was a frieze with 26 depictions of the history of development and the heads of philosophers, artists, writers and scientists.
- The new commercial building in Bremen ; colored wood engraving. In: Illustrierte Zeitschrift (?), Bremen 1865.
- The Kaisersaal in the Bremen commercial building . Wood engraving around 1870; The hall is shown with its furnishings from 1862/63. The Kaisersaal was next to the main hall on the upper floor. It contained the busts of 26 of the oldest German emperors and the coats of arms of the German states.
- Carl Ludwig Fahrbach : Commercial building. Oil painting from 1891, owned by the Bremen Chamber of Crafts.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Monument database of the LfD
- ↑ Food here means: festive meal for a company.
- ^ Heinrich Sasse: Das Bremer Krameramt , Bremisches Jahrbuch 33, 1931, pp. 109–157 and 35, 1935, pp. 254–270.
- ↑ Kai von Häfen: 150 years seat of what is probably the world's oldest chamber of crafts. In: Weser-Kurier of September 24, 2011, p. 13.
- ↑ k: art in public space bremen
Coordinates: 53 ° 4 ′ 43.7 " N , 8 ° 48 ′ 10.2" E