House Mennicken

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Street front of the Mennicken house (1974)

The house Mennicken , also known as House Signon and House Grand Ry known is a Grade II listed building at Werth place in the Belgian municipality of Eupen ( German-speaking Community ). The former merchant's house was built in 1744 for the Grand Ry family, probably based on a design by Johann Joseph Couvens , and the exterior has hardly been changed since then. From the Grand Rys, through numerous owners, it finally came to the Mennicken family in 1880, after whom the house was subsequently named. Today the building, which has been protected as a cultural monument since March 25, 1983 , is also known as Haus Signon. It goes back to the current part-owners, the Signon family.

history

Where the Mennicken House stands today, there used to be a house called “de poorte” ( German  “the door” ), the first known owners of which were members of the Brüll family. From her it came to Welter Voss through Adam Leyendecker in 1704. His daughter Katharina was married to Aegidius Blankart, who became the owner of the property after Welter's death. The couple's heirs sold it to Renier de Grand Ry in 1741, from whom it came to his brother, the Eupen cloth manufacturer and merchant Johann Aegidius de Grand Ry. He had the building demolished and a residential and commercial building built on the old foundations for himself and his family in 1744. The plans for this were presumably provided by Johann Joseph Couven, because comparisons of the style of the ornamentation and preserved sketches of Couven for the interior design make it seem likely that the Aachen master builder designed the new building.

House Mennicken around 1912

Johann Aegidius de Grand Ry left the house to his wife, a née Bevers, when he died. It was bought by the Monschau cloth manufacturer Wilhelm Scheibler from her heirs on May 13, 1786 for 20,000  Reichstaler . In 1795 Adolf Scheibler and his wife Dorothee became the new owners. They sold the building in 1803 for 80,000 francs to the Amsterdam company Bock and Koenen , who only two years later sold the house to the cloth manufacturer Jean Fremerey for just 55,000 francs. His family owned the property until 1855. In that year it was bought by the cloth merchant and textile machine manufacturer Eduard Rinck, from whom Jakob Severin Joseph Grandjean acquired it in 1869.

Advertising poster for the Mennicken liquor factory

In 1880 he sold to the Mennicken family, who set up a liqueur factory with an attached schnapps distillery and a wholesale business with colonial goods in the house. Economic problems forced the widow Mennicken to sell the precious interiors of three rooms at the beginning of the 1910s, the total value of which was estimated at 90,000  marks in gold currency. One ensemble acquired the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld , another room went to the family Stracke in Cologne , from which it came to the Couven Museum in Aachen in 1947 .

The building remained the property of the Mennicken family until 1933, when it was divided. The southern part, three axes wide, was separated from the rest of the house and came into the possession of the Gerckens family, while the pharmacist Franz Muszynski became the new owner of the remaining ten axis wide part. This since 1953 is part of the sign-on family, together with the family Gerckens the entire facade of a restoration underwent.

On July 19, 2013, the decree of 1983 was changed so that the house with the surrounding buildings and back buildings of the entire block between Gospertstrasse, Auf'm Hund and Hisselsgasse as well as the house facades of the entire Werthplatz were included in a monument "protection area".

description

Haus Mennicken is a town house typical of Eupen, the builders of which gained wealth and reputation with the manufacture and trade of fine cloth. They are all constructed in two parts: a large, representative residential building facing the street, which is adjoined at the rear by a multi-wing production and storage area. These work areas behind the representative residential buildings facing away from the street are called Schererwinkel. The Mennicken house follows this typical structure. It consists of a large, three-storey residential building with a façade facing Werthplatz and a three-wing extension on the rear side, which used to be a workshop area, but is now also used as a living space. The building ensemble is the largest town house in Couvens in Eupen. Bricks and bluestone , which used to be painted white, were used as building materials .

The three storeys of the residential building decrease in height from bottom to top. They are closed off by a hipped gable roof with tile roofing and a weather vane , under which a two-story attic is hidden. The strict, symmetrical facade facing Werthplatz shows 39 arched windows with stone frames and three wedge stones each . They divide the front into 13 axes. A shop window in the southeastern area that was broken out in 1932 disturbs the symmetry a little. The three axes on each side as well as the central axis are highlighted in a risky manner by pilasters in a rustic look . The central axis is crowned by a semicircular gable . In his tympanum there is a colored succinct relief with the goddess of fortune Fortuna that her cornucopia pours. The representation documents the wealth and the claim to power of the Eupen merchants of that time. The goddess is surrounded by symbols of trade: cloth coupons, wine barrel, ship anchor and globe.

The five steps of a semicircular bluestone staircase lead up to the main portal with a profiled frame, which lies in the central axis of the house. Above the lintel of the door is a skylight that used to have thin fan-shaped bars. Above it, framed by volutes , hangs a wedge with acanthus and the inscription "ANNO 1774" framed by Rocailledekor .

To the north of the house there used to be an archway with a passage to the rear Schererwinkel. Since this was demolished and a house built over, the former workshop area can only be reached through a narrow alley from Gospertstrasse. Its three-story wings surround a paved inner courtyard in a horseshoe shape . The central wing is divided into seven axes by windows, the two side wings into eight axes each. The central axis of the central wing is projected as a risalit with corner blocks made of bluestone and crowned by a triangular gable.

Little of the original baroque furnishings has been preserved inside . Exceptions include a wide wooden staircase from the 18th century with a baluster parapet and richly carved posts as well as a fireplace with shell motifs, which are typical of couves. In his essay he has a Flemish painting that depicts Jesus at Jacob's fountain . In 2013, a set of furnishings with a marble fireplace , chimney top, two doors and wall paneling, sold in Krefeld in 1912, returned to the Mennicken house. The Krefeld Kaiser Wilhelm Museum was founded at the end of the 19th century as a museum of arts and crafts , but is now a museum for modern art in which there was no more space for the “Eupener Zimmer” after extensive renovation . After thinking about an installation in the Eupener Haus Grand Ry (Klötzerbahn 32) and in the seat of the Prime Minister of the German-speaking Community , the valuable Rococo ensemble was finally allowed to return to its original location .

  • Round gable with relief

  • Upper area of ​​the main portal

  • Baroque staircase

  • Rooms with original Rococo furnishings

literature

  • Town houses In: Michael Amplatz u. a .: The architectural and art monuments of Eupen and Kettenis (= Eupen history. Volume 10). Markus-Verlag, Eupen 1976, pp. 66–125, here: pp. 119–121.
  • Marcel Bauer, Frank Hovens, Anke Kappler, Belinda Petri, Christine Vogt, Anke Volkmer: On the way in Couvens footsteps. Grenz-Echo Verlag, Eupen 2005, ISBN 90-5433-187-9 , pp. 127-129.
  • Heribert Reiners : The art monuments of the districts of Aachen and Eupen (= The art monuments of the Rhine Province . Volume 9, Section 1). L. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1912, p. 221.
  • Administration of the German-speaking Community (Hrsg.): Eupen (= monuments directory. Volume 5a). Administration of the German-speaking Community, Eupen 1989.

Web links

Commons : Haus Mennicken  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ under protection remission (PDF; 78 kB)
  2. ↑ a b c d e town houses In: Michael Amplatz u. a .: The architectural and art monuments of Eupen and Kettenis. 1976, p. 119.
  3. ↑ Information about Mennicken House on ostbelgienkulturerbe.be , accessed on October 13, 2017.
  4. ↑ Marcel Bauer u. a .: On the way in Couven's footsteps. 2005, p. 127.
  5. ↑ a b c Marcel Bauer u. a .: On the way in Couven's footsteps. 2005, p. 129.
  6. ↑ a b Krefelder Museum is preparing the return of the "Eupener Zimmer". February 13, 2017 , accessed October 12, 2017.
  7. ^ Georg Tilger: The chimneys of the Couven Museum. Cat. No. 10-14. In: SchönWarm. The culture of heating between the Renaissance and the Imperial Era. Fireplaces, stove tiles, iron stoves and stoves in the collections of the museums of the city of Aachen. Couven-Museum, Aachen 2009, ISBN 3-929203-71-5 , p. 48 ( PDF ; 3.2 MB).
  8. ↑ Document server of the German-speaking Community: Amendment C - 2013/33060. (PDF; German (French))
  9. ^ Couven Guide. Information flyer of the tourist office Eupen, 2009 ( PDF  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice .; 772 kB).@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.eupen.be  
  10. ^ Haus Mennicken on ostbelgien.net , accessed on October 13, 2017.
  11. ↑ Marcel Bauer u. a .: On the way in Couven's footsteps. 2005, p. 128.

Coordinates: 50 ° 37 '56.8 "  N , 6 ° 2' 16.8"  E