Greth
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The Greth or Gred in Überlingen is a former municipal warehouse and trading house of the Überlingen grain trade, which was important in the imperial city era. Today it serves as a commercial building, cinema and restaurant . The late baroque - early classicist building with a medieval core dominates between the lake promenade / landing area and the Hoftstatt due to its size and also the old town lake front due to the three-storey hipped roof . On the basis of the Baden state building ordinance, it was registered as a cultural monument in 1936/1937 .
history
The history of the building goes back to the late 14th century: Dendrochronological investigations showed that calibration pillars in the eastern part of the building date from 1382. Archaeological work shows that there was already a high medieval settlement on the property. The first written evidence is the Gredordnung (a kind of customs ordinance ) from 1421.
Matthäus Merian's bird's eye view from 1640 (or 1643) and the siege picture from 1670 provide a view of the medieval building : they show a tower-like, three-storey stone building with a high roof and staggered gables on the seafront, and two large gates open to the ship landing on the ground floor down. This type of construction of the old Greth is most closely related to the so-called stone house and the Petershauser Hof in Überlingen . East of the Greth, the late medieval Greth Hörlein stood at the entrance of today's Löwengasse to the Hofstatt.
In addition to being a warehouse, customs, weighing and trading house, the Greth also served as a place for citizens' oaths , public announcements and other events (referred to as the dance house in 1555 ). The latter is attested by a ten-meter-long depiction of a St. George's motif , created in 1539, with a winged dragon on the first floor. So far, however, no indications have been found as to the connection between the dragon motif and the use of the hall.
From 1787
After the roof of a new extension building on the "old" Greth collapsed in 1787, the city council decided on February 7th, 1788 to have the Teutonic order builder Franz Anton Bagnato rebuild or rebuild the warehouse . The construction contract was signed at the beginning of March. Bagnato planned to double the medieval stepped gable building, integrating it into the late baroque - early classicist new building under a mighty, 13 meter high hipped roof . Today's building was completed after only six months, in October 1788. The new building was not kept in baroque colors, but rather "thrown in white and framed with stone color" in a classicist sobriety .
On the ground floor, the two grain halls - to which the two highlighted and decorated entrances to the inner spiral staircase were also located on the city side - opened up to four mighty gates each to the lake for the ships and to the courtyard for wagons. The office rooms and the apartment of the Greth master as well as other rooms of the Greth staff were set up on the upper floor, the three floors in the hipped roof served as bulk floors. It was divided into the Mainauer Greth (named after the neighboring Mainauer Hof) for the trade in bread grain, the Mittel -, the Haber - and the Schmalzgreth for the food trade. The Kornhaus in Rorschach on Lake Constance , built between 1746 and 1749 by Bagnato's father Johann Caspar Bagnato , was a representative model for the new Greth .
After the decline of the grain trade, the two large grain halls subsequently served, among other things, as an equipment room for the volunteer fire brigade and the municipal workshop, as well as an urban storage room and for the spa administration rooms. The Leopold-Sophien-Bibliothek and (after the division in 1937) the city library had been housed on the upper floor since 1920 . During a renovation in the 1950s, the Greth was given a yellow-red-brown color scheme with white shutters , based on the Teutonic Order Castle on the Mainau .
Refurbishment 1997/1998
After the city library, the Leopold-Sophien-Bibliothek and the traffic office moved into the former hospital Torkel building and the stone house , the fundamental renovation of the building began in September 1997 . The wooden inner construction and the roof structure were repaired and partially supplemented with steel girders to relieve the burden .
While the existing medieval to baroque wall and ceiling plaster inside could be preserved, the plaster damaged by moisture in the halls had to be renewed. The dragon motif was rediscovered during this work. The furnishings from the 18th and 19th centuries, including doors, gates, floorboards, windows and tiled stoves , were also retained, as were the many thousands of hand- painted plain tiles on the hipped roof, which were supplemented with matching old tiles. The yellow-red-brown facade design from the 1950s was not repeated, but instead (based on the historical design from 1788) a white base coat with light gray architectural elements and blue shutters was chosen.
The extensive renovation was completed in November 1998. A spacious market hall was created in the approximately 350 m² eastern hall, while the western hall, which is roughly the same size, houses a restaurant and a shop. A larger retail space, offices and another restaurant have found space on the first floor. A cinema with three halls was built on the three attic floors . In the cinema lounge in the north gable in front of an oval window , you can see the Greth bell with the inscription Leonhart Rosenlecher gos mich in Costantz anno 1655 .
In spite of its large dimensions, the building manages with just one central staircase and an elevator , which are accessible from the main entrance at the landing area. This was only possible because the stairwell of the neighboring municipal gallery Fauler Pelz could be connected as an escape staircase, which is reached by means of a footbridge from the first attic floor across Löwengasse.
Grain market
The location of the former imperial city enabled traffic across the Überlinger See from Swabia to Constance and Switzerland . Several important streets (from Stockach , Pfullendorf and Meersburg ) crossed in Überlingen, which was of particular importance for the grain market .
The trading day began with the sound of the Greth bell in the northern gable of Greth at the Hofstatt. In the heyday of the Überlingen grain trade in the 16th century, up to a hundred people found work in the Greth trading house as greth masters, marketers, sub-buyers, grain knives or servants. For every sack of grain sold, buyers and sellers had to pay a pfennig Grethgeld to the city, which guaranteed the quality of the grain sold. According to the first ordinance of 1421, not only grain was traded, it also provides for taxes for the sale of wine, honey, wax, iron, copper, wool, cloth, thread and other goods. However, the main trade was later limited to grain.
Ueberlingen had an important grain market until the middle of the 19th century, but it became less and less important as there was considerable competition to Ludwigshafen and Friedrichshafen on the northern shore of Lake Constance . New and contemporary port facilities were built there. As Friedrichshafen in 1850 a railway connection was awarded and the ferry traffic to Romanshorn was set up Überlinger grain market began to sink completely into insignificance. The city then turned to tourism as a new source of income.
literature
- City of Überlingen (ed.): Überlingen. Image of a city. Looking back on 1200 years of history in Überlingen. 770-1970. Konrad, Weißenhorn 1970.
- Alois Schneider, Regional Council Stuttgart, State Office for Monument Preservation, City of Überlingen (ed.): Archaeological City Register Baden-Württemberg, Volume 34: Überlingen. Regional Council Stuttgart / State Office for Monument Preservation, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-927714-92-2 .
- Peter Findeisen, State Monuments Office Baden-Württemberg, State Surveying Office Baden-Württemberg: Town Center Atlas Baden-Württemberg. Volume 4.3: City of Überlingen. Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Württemberg, Landesvermessungsamt Baden-Württemberg, 1994, ISBN 3-89021-565-3 .
- Volker Caesar: The Gred building in Überlingen. (PDF; 751 kB). In: Preservation of Monuments in Baden-Württemberg March 2001. State Office for Preservation of Monuments / Regional Council Stuttgart, 2001, ISSN 0342-0027
- Stefan Uhl: The "Greth" in Überlingen. Existence and building history of a municipal department store and grain store. (PDF; 88.5 MB). In: Southwest German contributions to historical building research. Volume 4, State Office for Monument Preservation / Regional Council Stuttgart (Ed.), Working Group for House Research, Regional Group Baden-Württemberg. Esslingen 1999, ISSN 2366-9233
Web links
- Information about Greth at ueberlingen-bodensee.de
- Pictures of Greth at Photo Marburg
Coordinates: 47 ° 45 '57.3 " N , 9 ° 9' 36" E