Grass house

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Grass house Aachen

The building on the Fischmarkt in Aachen , known as the Grashaus, is not only one of the oldest houses in the city, it is also of historical importance as Aachen's first town hall. It was completed in 1267, but probably stands on even older foundation walls from possibly Carolingian times . The grass house owes its name to the grass, a medieval village green on which executions as well as public festivals and allegedly also the funerals of the executed took place.

history

It was built at a time of social change. The up-and-coming bourgeoisie, who became rich through trade and the manufacture of cloth, increasingly demanded a say from the emperors and kings ruling in Aachen from the 12th century onwards. On January 8, 1166 it came to the awarding of the town charter by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and on the basis of the so-called Karl privilege of all to an exemption from the inhabitants Lehnshörigkeit and for duty-free treatment in the Aachener Reich . From 1250 onwards, a city council headed by two mayors took over the administrative business of the royal jury , which from then on was primarily responsible for the judiciary. The associated construction of a town hall, burgerhuys , also called domus civium and burger grass , had a symbolic character and at the same time was an expression of the self-confidence of an aspiring citizenry. This building was also approved by King Richard of Cornwall , crowned in Aachen in 1257 , who contributed to the costs with a generous financial donation.

After the grass house had become too small and no longer sufficiently representative as a town hall for the many festive occasions, the incumbent mayor Gerhard Chorus built the new Aachen town hall on the foundation walls of the ruined royal hall of the Carolingian imperial palace in the middle of the 14th century . From then on, the old town house served next to the already existing royal jury at Katschhof, initially as a further courtroom and later as a prison and place of execution until the French occupation.

During the great fire in Aachen on May 2, 1656, the grass house was badly damaged and extensively restored a few years later. Little is known about the interior layout at that time. The council chamber was probably upstairs. Occasionally it was also assumed that the town house consisted of two other buildings, a wing structure and a narrow stair tower, especially since a bricked-up door and a drawing carved in wood were discovered during the later renovation of the badly crumbled building between 1886 and 1889. However, this could also have been a question of access to a toilet that was housed in a bay window. In a back building there was probably a granary and a salt store. Originally there were two other arched openings in addition to the current archway, which was probably enlarged in the 16th century, the outlines of which can still be clearly seen in the masonry. The street floor is about one meter higher than in the Middle Ages in relation to the old foundation wall of the building.

Later, in the lower and in the 18th century, prison cells were set up in the upper part of the building, which must have been very dark, not least because of the extensive brickwork of the three pointed arched windows . The cells often bore the names of those sentenced to death who were waiting there for execution. However, the conditions of detention were apparently so catastrophic that the French administration no longer wanted to accommodate detainees in the grass house and had a new prison set up in the monastery of the Minorites near St. Nikolaus in Großkölnstrasse, which was dissolved in 1802 .

On the upper floor of the wall there are seven blind arcades with statues in their niches. For a long time it was assumed that these figures were the oldest representation of the seven electors who elected the Roman-German emperor from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. But the historian Armin Wolf , formerly a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt, suspects that three ecclesiastical and secular princes are depicted here, who elected Rudolf I of Habsburg as king in 1273. This represents the figure in the middle, the arcade of which clearly towers above the other six. He also holds the Holy Lance in his hand as a symbol of the king . Wolf also questions the time of its creation: the statues were not erected under King Richard of Cornwall in 1267, as originally assumed, but at least six years later, as the British only received three votes: those of the Archbishops of Cologne and Mainz as well as the Count Palatine near Rhine . On the other hand, according to Wolf, six electors and the seventh, the King of Bohemia, Ottokar II. Přemysl , himself claimed Roman-German kingship and therefore did not take part in this election. After all, according to Wolf, the statues are the oldest known representation of the royal voters. The figures that exist today are, however, only replicas that were replaced in 1882 as part of a comprehensive restoration of the figure frieze according to plans by the Aachen builder Robert Ferdinand Cremer , the figures themselves being made by the Aachen sculptor Wilhelm Pohl between 1886 and 1889. The originals have been considered lost since the end of the Second World War, only the remains of a single statue are still in Frankenberg Castle .

Entrance gate with old archway and inscription under the ledge

After the end of the French occupation, the grass house was no longer used, so it fell into ruins and was even supposed to be demolished in 1837. But Aachen's art lovers arranged for a complete restoration and renovation almost fifty years later. Only the front was preserved; the rest of the building had to be rebuilt according to the old templates, but also expanded with a new side wing. Also around 1888, the inscription on a stone band below the cornice on the upper floor was renewed, which, according to the Aachen chronicler Peter von Beeck, was apparently carved into the grass house under King Richard of Cornwall as early as 1267 and describes the beginning of the so-called Aachen hymn : VRBS Aquensis, VRBS REGALIS, REGNI SEDES principalis, PRIMA REGUM CVRIA translated ". city of water, King city, headquarters of the kings, the first royal court of the kingdom" This inscription was supplemented by the words: HANC DOMVM FECIT MAGISTER HENRICVS Anno Domini MCCLX SEPTIMO regnante REGE RICARDO . "This house was built by Master Heinrich in the year of the Lord in 1267 under Richard's government." After this major renovation phase, the grass house housed the Aachen city archive .

Current

The city archive was relocated to the former Rheinnadel GmbH building on Reichsweg in 2012 for reasons of space . Since 2015, the grass house has been the Europe stop on the historic Route Charlemagne city ​​tour . In the grass house there is now the EUROPE DIRECT Information Office Aachen , the European Horizons Initiative , the Charlemagne Prize Foundation and the European Classroom .

literature

  • Emil Fromm: Festschrift on the occasion of the opening of the library building of the city of Aachen . In: Journal of the Aachen History Association . tape 19 . Verlag der Cremersche Buchhandlung (C. Cazin), Aachen 1897 ( digitized version ).
  • Richard Pick : The grass house in Aachen. In: ders .: From Aachen's past. Contributions to the history of the old imperial city. Aachen, 1895, pp. 213-269 ( digitized version ).
  • Carl Rhoen : On the building history of the grass house. In: From Aachen's prehistory. 2, 1889, p. 81.

Web links

Commons : Grass House  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Armin Wolf: Who are the seven statues on the Aachen grass? Explosive consequences for legal history , in: MPG-Spiegel , Vol. 2 (1987), pp. 9-11.
  2. ^ Joseph Laurent : The newly established archive and library building of the city of Aachen . In: Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsverein , Vol. 19 (1897) Issue 1, pp. 1–20, ( digitalized )
  3. ^ Entry in German inscriptions online .
  4. ↑ Website of the EUROPE DIRECT Information Office Aachen.
  5. ↑ There is a lot of Europe within these walls . Aachener Zeitung from January 15, 2015.

Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 28.3 "  N , 6 ° 4 ′ 57.9"  E