Wertheim House (Frankfurt am Main)
The Wertheim house , also known as Wertheym , is a half-timbered house built around 1600 at the Fahrtor in Frankfurt am Main . It is the only house in its original condition with exposed half-timbering in Frankfurt's old town that survived the air raids on Frankfurt am Main almost unscathed. The house is a listed building. Little attention was paid to it until the old town was destroyed. Today it is considered typical of the Frankfurt architectural style with its massive ground floor with sandstone arcades, the two cantilevered half-timbered upper floors and the slated attic. Since the 1970s, its appearance and status as the last of more than 1200 half-timbered houses in the old town has contributed to promoting the desire for comprehensive reconstructions of representative old town houses in the Frankfurt citizenship.
location
The Wertheim house is located at the Fahrtor opposite the Saalhof in the immediate vicinity of the Main Quay , where a fortified port facility was already in the Hohenstaufen era. The name Fahrtor or Zur Fahr is a reminder of the ford that gave the city its name and its importance as a traffic junction.
As part of the city expansion approved by Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian in 1333 , a new city wall with several gates was built to protect the access from the bank of the Main into the city. The Fahrtor was the most important of them because it led directly to the Römerberg . The Badstube or Fahrbadstube house , located directly next to the Fahrtor, was first mentioned in 1340. It originally belonged to the Collegiate Monastery of St. Leonhard , but was merged with the Wertheim House as early as 1450 .
Opposite Wertheim was the house Freudenberg (Am Fahrtor 6, on the corner of Saalgasse ), formerly Brabant called . It was a classicist building with three upper floors that was built after 1833. The house survived the war unscathed and was only demolished in 1970 for the then new building of the historical museum , as was a Gothic gate entrance, a remnant of the house of Roter Krebs (Am Fahrtor 4).
To the west, the neighboring house at Mainzer Gasse 1 followed, the parent house of the Passavant family . It had a common fire wall and the same storey height as the Wertheim house , so it should have been built at the same time. The Passavant parent company was destroyed in the war, with the exception of the remains of a console on the firewall.
To the west of the Passavant headquarters was the Villa Souchay , which was also destroyed in the war . Cornelius Carl Souchay had it built in Classical style in 1809 instead of the Zur Scheuer building. He furnished it generously and made it the focus of a literary salon . In the Villa Souchay his son lived Eduard Souchay and his granddaughter Cecile Charlotte Sophie Jeanrenaud with her widowed mother. On September 9, 1836, she became engaged to the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in the house , and died here on September 25, 1853.
During the reconstruction, instead of the destroyed houses, the parish hall of the Evangelical Paulsgemeinde was built , which was redesigned from 2015 to 2017 into the conference center of the Evangelical Academy in Frankfurt .
history
The Wertheim house is first mentioned in 1383. The name goes back to its owner at the time, who probably came from Wertheim . Originally, the name only referred to the corner house on Alte Mainzer Gasse , while south of it in the direction of the Main there was still the bathroom belonging to the Leonhardsstift , which was combined with the Wertheim house after 1450. After the drive gate was built in 1456–60, the house came up against the city wall.
The current building was built around 1600, probably shortly after the salt house . The corbel on the northeast corner of the house is very similar to that of the salt house. The arched arcades, however, are much simpler than those of the Salzhaus or other town houses from the same period, such as the Haus zur Goldenen Waage . House Wertheim probably served as a warehouse . Goods could be stored and traded in the open basement between the arcades and in the cellar vaults, especially during trade fairs in spring and autumn.
From the 17th to the 19th century, Wertheim's house served as a customs house and guard house for the city guard. Like most half-timbered houses in Frankfurt, Haus Wertheim used to be plastered or slated. As part of the old town rehabilitation of the Association of Active Old Town Friends, which began in 1926 , Haus Wertheim was renovated and the half-timbered exposed. Even then, there was a café and a restaurant on the ground floor.
During the air raids in World War II , the Wertheim house was the only one of around 1250 half-timbered houses in the old town to remain largely undamaged. As early as 1940, the fixed vaulted cellars of the old town houses had been connected with each other by underground passages and an exit was made on the Römerberg next to the extinguishing water basin at the justice fountain . During the devastating air raid on March 22, 1944 , a firestorm arose that cremated the entire wooden old town between the cathedral and the Römer. The Frankfurt fire brigade was against the wildfires powerless. However, she managed to use water veils to create an escape route from the emergency exit on the Römerberg to the banks of the Main, which thousands of people could use to save themselves. The water veil also protected the Wertheim house from the flames, as did the late classical Freudenberg house opposite . The two buildings were also spared from high-explosive bombs.
After the end of the war, the building, which was always privately owned, went unnoticed for a long time. The old town was rebuilt from 1952 without considering the historical building fabric and with a completely different street grid. The old town was now much less densely populated and, unlike before the war, no longer a tourist attraction. It was not until 1963 that Haus Wertheim was placed under monument protection as part of a renovation. Nevertheless, the completely intact Freudenberg House was demolished in 1970 for the new building of the Historical Museum . It wasn't until the mid-1970s that attitudes towards Frankfurt's historic half-timbered buildings changed. Monument conservationists pointed out that, despite the war damage, there were still more than 3000 half-timbered houses in the city, especially in the suburbs. From 1981 to 1983, after lengthy political disputes, the half-timbered houses on Saturday Mountain were reconstructed, and from 2012 to 2017 several historic streets were built as part of the Dom-Römer project .
architecture
According to the official monument topography, Haus Wertheim is a “representative half-timbered house of the Renaissance with an arcaded stone ground floor and double cantilevered upper floors in a decorative wood structure; Gable slated (oversized dormers modern) ”. The eaves-facing east facade to the Fahrtor is about 19.6 meters long, the narrow northern gable end to the Alte Mainzer Gasse is about 6.5 meters wide. The approximately 7 meter long Badstube house with the gable facing the Mainkai is attached to the Wertheim house in the south . Its ridge is about one meter lower than that of Haus Wertheim. Its east wall, which used to be built directly onto the drive gate, is plastered and completely windowless.
The east facade of Haus Wertheim has 7 arcades made of red Main sandstone , the pillars and corbels of which are not entirely symmetrical. The third arch from the south, in which the house entrance is located, is about a third narrower than the others. Only the corbel on the northeast corner is richly adorned with a lion's head, tooth cut , egg stick and acanthus ornaments.
The first floor protrudes about one and a half factory shoes , the second floor about one shoe. The parapet of both half-timbered floors is richly decorated with footbands, fire rams, crossed diamonds and crossed circles. The windows are arranged in groups of two and three, with half-timbered man figures in between . Only the corner posts have carvings on both upper floors, the other struts and beams are undecorated. The half-timbering shows clear connections to similar buildings on the Middle Rhine , for example the old house in Bacharach .
The top floor is completely slated. The four hipped dormer windows on the east side, each with two windows, have only recently been added.
literature
- Manfred Gerner , half-timbered in Frankfurt am Main . Frankfurter Sparkasse von 1822 (Polytechnische Gesellschaft) (Ed.), Verlag Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-7829-0217-3 , pp. 28-29
Web links
- State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.): Haus Wertheim In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hessen
- Anita Strecker: The last framework. Frankfurt for beginners. In: FR online . October 24, 2008, accessed January 27, 2018 .
- Haus Wertheim on the website Harald-Reportagen.de with photos from the 1950s to 1970s
- Website of the restaurant Haus Wertheym
Individual evidence
- ↑ "1383. Gertrud etzwane pledges Johannis eliche Husfruwe to Wertheym the grace of God the Huss and Gesess Wertheym ”, in: Johann Georg Battonn : Local description of the city of Frankfurt am Main . The description of the old town, namely the last part of the upper town and the beginning of the lower town. tape 4 . Association for history and antiquity , Frankfurt am Main 1866, p. 112 ( online in Google Book Search [accessed January 27, 2018]).
- ↑ Heinz Schomann , Volker Rödel, Heike Kaiser: Monument topography city of Frankfurt am Main (= materials for monument protection in Frankfurt am Main . Volume 1 ). Revised 2nd edition, limited special edition on the occasion of the 1200th anniversary of the city of Frankfurt am Main. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7973-0576-1 , p. 40 .
- ↑ Survey from 1946, printed in Gerner, Fachwerk in Frankfurt am Main , p. 28
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 34 " N , 8 ° 40 ′ 55.2" E