Grabbe House

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Grabbe House
Grabbe House, former penitentiary

Grabbe House, former penitentiary

Data
place Detmold, Bruchstrasse 27
Construction year 1752-1754
Coordinates 51 ° 56 '8.8 "  N , 8 ° 52' 35.1"  E Coordinates: 51 ° 56 '8.8 "  N , 8 ° 52' 35.1"  E

The Grabbe House is a former penitentiary and birthplace of the poet Christian Dietrich Grabbe . The secular building has been listed as a monument of the city of Detmold in the Lippe district ( North Rhine-Westphalia ) since September 5, 1983 .

history

Hospital (left) and penitentiary, view from 1790

A penitentiary was built in 1752 on the Bruchberg in Detmold, in the vicinity of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit . At the time, such facilities were used not only to house lawbreakers, but also to tramps, beggars, the mentally ill and orphans. By then, the same people were housed in the hospital or orphanage, which was now overcrowded. Johan Tönnies Wend bought the neighboring property for 600 thalers, demolished the house and started the new building. The construction costs amounted to almost 5000 thalers. The first eight inmates moved in on May 14, 1754. The penitentiary was initially under the administration of the district administrator of Campen and the superintendent Caspar Curtius. In the period between 1763 and 1801 there were already construction works due to hygienic deficiencies.

On June 1, 1801, Adolph Henrich Grabbe from Ahmsen was hired as disciplinarian. His son Christian Dietrich Grabbe was born on December 11, 1801 in his official residence . Well-known prison administrators were Colonel Ernst Johann von Schröderß (until 1801), the archivist Johann Ludwig Knoch (together with Schröderß) and the archivist Christian Gottlieb Clostermeier (1801–1829).

A major renovation took place in 1833/37, when the house was transformed into the Princely Criminal Court. Together with the hospital, the building became the property of master blacksmith Wilhelm Wißmann in 1851 and was rebuilt again. In 1888 the shop windows were installed by H. Wißmann. Although the building had already been included in the Lippe monuments list in 1923, it was threatened with demolition at the beginning of the 1960s: In contrast to the neighboring houses, the former penitentiary protruded into Bruchstraße and hindered the car traffic at the time. As a solution, arcades were built into the facade for pedestrians in 1965 . After the building was bought by the city of Detmold in 1989/90 - Bruchstrasse had meanwhile become a pedestrian zone - these were dismantled.

The Grabbe House has been the seat of the Grabbe Society since 1938 with the Lippe Literature Archive on the top floor. The Gothland café has been located on the street side since 1990 and the Detmold State Theater studio in the rear building .

architecture

The former prison is an elongated, single-storey quarry stone building with a mansard roof . The archway to Bruchstrasse shows the initials WW and the year 1851, the year of the renovation. The entrance was originally on the western side of the courtyard and was only moved to the gable side during the renovation. The roof was already removed at the time of construction. This was where the disciplinarian's living quarters, his writing and registration room and some rooms for female prisoners were located. The male prisoners were housed on the first floor.

Archaeological research

With the transition of the building to the city and the associated renovation measures, archaeological investigations were carried out in and around the house from 1988 to 1989. It turned out that the foundation of the outer masonry apparently came from a previous building from before 1752. In addition, the remains of a building of unknown size have been excavated in the northwestern part. A massive barrel vault was discovered on the eastern eaves wall under the modern screed floor . In the courtyard, a canal or tunnel was exposed that was 22.5 m long from the moat to the cellar wall. Nine gold coins from the years 1686 to 1752 were found in the tunnel. A well opened in the front building, which was later covered by a sandstone slab and then built over.

literature

  • Alfred Bergmann : The Detmold prison as the site of Christian Dietrich Grabbe's childhood and youth. At the same time a contribution to the history of the prison system in Lippe at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century . Grabbe Society, Detmold 1968.

Web links

Commons : Grabbe House  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Grabbe-Haus in the monument register of the city of Detmold , accessed on October 2, 2014
  2. ↑ Herbert von Kaven : Detmold churches and schools . In: History of the city of Detmold (=  special publications of the natural science and historical association for the state of Lippe ). tape 10 . Maximilian-Verlag, Detmold 1953, p. 231-232 .
  3. ↑ a b c Helmut Luley: Archaeological investigations on the site of the former prison in Detmold, Bruchstrasse 27 (Grabbe's birthplace) . In: Lippe messages from history and regional studies . 59th volume. Self-published by the Natural Science and Historical Association for the Land Lippe eV, Detmold 1990, p. 79-83 .
  4. ^ Heinrich Röhr : Dear old Detmold . Verlag Hermann Bösmann, Detmold 1962, p. 4 .
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Bender: Archivist out of passion - Johann Ludwig Knoch (1712-1808). (PDF) Retrieved October 2, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Biography at the Lippische Landesbibliothek. (PDF) Retrieved October 2, 2014 .
  7. ^ A b Otto Gaul : City of Detmold (=  The architectural and art monuments of Westphalia . Volume 48 / I ). Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster 1968, p. 120 .
  8. ↑ a b Kreis Lippe, Landesverband Lippe (Ed.): 20 years of the Open Monument Day in Lippe . Detmold 2012, p. 56 .
  9. ↑ Landestheater Detmold: location Grabbe-Haus. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 6, 2014 ; accessed on October 2, 2014 .
  10. ↑ Helmut Luley: Archaeological Investigations ... p. 84-88 .