Bleaching District

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The Bleichenviertel (left of Kaiserstraße) in a city map from the late 19th century.
A photo from the Bleichenviertel in 1892. The 19th century buildings in the foreground are outside the city walls and are larger than the Baroque buildings behind them. The electoral palace and St. Peter's Church can be seen in the background .
The Neubrunnenplatz in the Mainz Bleichenviertel, approx. 1840, with a view of the Große Bleiche towards the Peterskirche , as well as the building of the casino "Hof zum Gutenberg"

The Bleichenviertel is a district in Mainz that is located on the northern edge of the Mainz-Altstadt district . It consists of blocks of a predominantly square floor plan: the main axes consist of three streets, Große Bleiche , Mittlere Bleiche and Hintere Bleiche , all of which run parallel to the former city wall and Kaiserstraße . These are crossed by cross streets, for example from Zanggasse . Here it differs significantly from all other quarters of the old town, with the exception of the Lauterenviertel , which was only recreated two centuries later by landings during the straightening of the Rhine.

From the Middle Ages to the 17th century, there existed the “bleaching meadows” - an undeveloped area within the city wall, which was built from Roman times and which was crossed by two streams, Zeybach and Umbach . Laundry washed in these streams could be bleached in the adjacent meadows. The tanning trade also settled near these waterways.

As part of the fortification expansion , the area was drained and released for development in 1656 under the rule of Elector Johann Philipp von Schönborn . The quarter was protected by the bastions Paul, Leopold, Felicitas and Damian. Towards the Rhine it was delimited by the old winter harbor (ship winterization) and the castle district. The quarter was separated from the bastions by the shooting garden. The streets of the Bleichenviertel ran directly towards the Münstertor, which, covered by the main stone, established the road connection to the west. At the end of the quarter against the Münstertor there was the Johanneshospital (garrison hospital or invalids' house) with its anatomy and on the rear bleaching the Lappenhaus, the military laundry facility, the building yard and the tack room. In the course of the settlement policy, which was intended to counteract the decline in population of the city during the Thirty Years War , the Bleichenviertel was built here in the course of the following years on its current layout. The economic focus of the new district was a market square, on which the Elector Lothar Franz von Schönborn (nephew of Johann Philipp) had a baroque fountain built with an obelisk , which today is the namesake for Neubrunnenplatz .

The area Grosse Bleiche 49/51, Bauhofstrasse 1, 3/5, Mittlere Bleiche 40, Schießgartenstrasse, created between 1742 and 1774, is designated as a monument zone and is characterized by the merged block perimeter development of aristocratic courts and electoral stables. This zone is of the greatest urban impact and importance due to the symmetrical formation of entire block facades and to be regarded as a high-level document of uniform building organization.

Today the quarter is characterized by banks and commercial buildings in the Große Bleiche as well as a high proportion of migrants and international grocery stores in the other Bleichen and cross streets. In the end of the district facing the Rhine there are also some ministries of the state government of Rhineland-Palatinate . Hence this area is often referred to as the "government district"; Because of the location of the Electoral Palace, the area on the Rhine side of Bauhofstrasse is also called the "Schlossviertel", also because the Middle and Rear Bleiche do not have these names beyond Bauhofstrasse.

Alf Lechner - constellation , stainless steel, 1995, large bleach 54, height 7 m

Individual evidence

  1. ^ After the copper engraving: Siège de Mayence en l'année 1689. by Georg Joseph Cöntgen
  2. ^ Karl Anton Schaab : The history of the federal fortress Mainz, historically and militarily based on the sources. Self-published by the author, Mainz 1835
  3. ^ Helmut Mathy : The Residence in Baroque and Enlightenment 1648-1792 . In: Franz Dumont, Ferdinand Scherf , Friedrich Schütz (Hrsg.): Mainz - The history of the city . Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1998 (map: Electoral capital and residence city of Mainz, by Johann Peter Schunck, 1784).

literature

The Stadioner Hof , a baroque building that is used as a bank branch, with adjoining post-war buildings in the Große Bleiche
The Golden Ross barracks is also a baroque building in the Große Bleiche
  • Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany: Cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate, Volume 2.2, ed. on behalf of the Ministry of Culture from the State Office for Monument Preservation (3rd edition, 1997), as the entries on Große Bleiche and Neubrunnenplatz and Neubrunnenstrasse

Coordinates: 50 ° 0 ′ 8.1 ″  N , 8 ° 15 ′ 52.8 ″  E