Löwenstein House (Aachen)
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The building known as Haus Löwenstein at market no. 41, corner of Pontstraße in Aachen was built parallel to Aachen town hall and completed around 1344. Along with the cathedral and town hall, it is one of the few Gothic buildings that survived the great city fire of 1656.
History
The original use of the house is unknown. The still preserved Staufer cellar vaults, which were made of the same stone and in the same style as in the somewhat older House in Brussels directly across the street from Pontstrasse, suggest that it may have been a restaurant or a wine house. Later it was used as a residence for wealthy Aachen citizens. It was named after Anna Löwenstein, its first known owner. Presumably, the Löwenstein family was a noble family whose name was originally Lewe. The addition of stone to the name came about because, in contrast to the buildings that were mostly made of wood and clay at that time, the house was made of solid rubble . For the year 1478 there is a no further documented Ida von Löwenstein as a resident. The later owners included the mayor Adam Munten, a canon, a banker and a merchant. In addition, the house served as a meeting point for the Löwenstein guild and, during the Reformation, as a place for Lutheran services. At the end of the 19th century the Löwenstein house was merged with the neighboring Zum Wolf house and together they were given a neo-Gothic plaster in 1905. Since then, the common entrance for both houses has been in Haus Zum Wolf .
Finally, the city of Aachen acquired both houses in 1969 and had them largely restored and redeveloped in the 1970s under the leadership of Leo Hugot . The houses were separated again in the facade and the medieval structure of the Löwenstein house was brought to light again and the coats of arms of the formerly independent areas incorporated into Aachen were added. The entrance to both houses is still in the Zum Wolf house and was decorated with a baroque brick portal as part of the restoration work , which comes from the former monastery on Marienbongard and is dated to 1758.
A special feature of the Löwenstein house is the figure of St. Nepomuk in the niche below the corner tower, which dates from 1747 and is reminiscent of the Bohemian cleric Johann von Nepomuk .
Current
Today the Löwenstein house is owned by the city and provides rooms for the council and city administration. It is also used by the Central Carnival Archive and Museum of the Aachen Carnival Committee .
literature
- Richard Pick : Das Haus zum Löwenstein , in: From Aachen's past. Contributions to the history of the old imperial city . Creutzer, Aachen 1895, pp. 556–573 ( digitized version )
- Wolfgang Richter, Wolfgang Peukert: The beautiful houses of Aachen , Westarp Verlag Mülheim / Ruhr, p. 16-18
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Löwenstein House. In: Kulturserver NRW. Retrieved March 4, 2017 .
- ↑ http://www.route-charlemagne.eu/stations/Haus_Loewenstein/index.html ( Memento from March 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 35.6 ″ N , 6 ° 5 ′ 1 ″ E