House to the Green Shield

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The house to the Green Shield

The house at the Grünen Schild in Judengasse 148 in Frankfurt am Main is considered the ancestral home of the Rothschild family , since Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his wife Gutle lived there from 1784 or 1786 .

location

Judengasse 1861

The house on the Green Shield was on the east side of Judengasse, which was called Börnestrasse from 1885. It was the eighth house south of the synagogue , at its widest point opposite the confluence of the narrow alley Am Judenbrückchen . It led from Predigergasse over Wollgraben on the Staufenmauer to Judengasse through the middle of the three gates that separated Judengasse from the rest of the city until 1808, and was originally so narrow that the adjacent houses had no doors or windows facing the street.

History and architecture

In the very densely built-up Judengasse in Frankfurt, the house on the Green Shield was considered one of the most beautiful. It was first mentioned in 1540 and has served as a residence for various families over the years. It burned down during the Great Jewish Fire in 1711, but was immediately rebuilt.

The house had a facade width of 4.70 meters and was 13 meters deep. The building was basically a duplex. The right half of the house as seen from Judengasse was called “Die Arche” because there was a small, carved ship above the door arch. In the second half of the 18th century, this right half of the house belonged to the reputable and wealthy Schiff family, who ran a money and exchange business in the house.

The building had four floors. The rooms on the upper floors had three windows facing the street, close to one another. These living rooms were so narrow that there was only room for beds and cupboards on the side walls. One of the special features of the house was that there was a well with its own water pump on the ground floor. Another special feature were two cellars - cellars were rare in the houses on Judengasse. The vaulted cellar under the house was accessible through a trap door in the office. The second cellar was under the courtyard. His entrance led through a secret passage that was cut out in a corner of the building basement and could be entered through a covered door under the staircase. The cellar under the courtyard was connected to that of the neighboring house, which also had a secret passage so that in the event of danger one could switch between the houses without being recognized.

From 1783 onwards, Mayer Amschel Rothschild acquired the house at the Green Shield in two transactions. He paid 11,000 guilders for it; a price that was well above that of comparable houses outside the Judengasse. As a Jew, however, Rothschild was unable to purchase a house or property outside of Judengasse. During the time when Mayer Amschel Rothschild was doing business there, one entered the house from the street through a small anteroom. A door opened from the anteroom and led into the small two-lined room which Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his wife used as a bedroom. The business premises were in the courtyard. Mayer Amschel Rothschild died in 1812, a few years before MA Rothschild & Sons became one of the most successful banking houses in Europe. In 1813, his son Amschel Mayer relocated the bank's headquarters to a new classical building in Fahrgasse . Gutle Rothschild lived in the Haus zum Grünen Schild until her death in 1849, although her children offered her other housing options several times.

After Gutle's death, the house was used by the Baron Amschel Meyer von Rothschild Foundation established in 1849 for the poor Israelites of the city of Frankfurt am Main . This foundation was commissioned to maintain the parent company and to use it for charitable purposes. The house was also used as a museum for the Rothschild family. As a result, it was the only building that survived the demolition of Judengasse at the end of the 19th century. In 1886, the foundation acquired the land from the city and had the double house completely renovated by Franz von Hoven . The previous cubature also changed : It was widened a little in order to build solid stone firewalls instead of the original half-timbered side walls; the facade was set back by about 1.30 meters in the street alignment of the new Börnegasse , which was significantly wider than the old Judengasse. The rooms facing the street were correspondingly smaller than before. For the new facade, the old, ornate half-timbered beams were reused as far as possible, as were the stone structural elements and the wrought-iron window grilles on the ground floor.

The house stood until the Second World War . It was destroyed in one of the British air raids on Frankfurt am Main in 1943 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the literature, different dates are given for both the purchase and the move into the house. After Amos Elon, Mayer Amschel acquired the house in 1784 and moved there in 1786 (p. 86 and p. 87); According to Niall Ferguson, Mayer Amschel paid two purchase amounts, the first of which in 1783 and did not move into the house until 1787 (Ferguson 2002, p. 64)
  2. ↑ Johann Georg Battonn : Slave Narratives Frankfurt. Booklet 5: Containing the description of the end of the old town and the beginning of the new town. Publishing house of the Association for History and Antiquity , Frankfurt a. M. 1869, p. 300f. online in the google book search
  3. ^ A b Rudolf Jung , Julius Hülsen: The architectural monuments in Frankfurt am Main . Third volume. Private buildings. Heinrich Keller, Frankfurt am Main 1914, p. 252-258 ( digital copy [PDF]).

Web links

Commons : Haus zum Grünen Schild  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 48.6 ″  N , 8 ° 41 ′ 16.8 ″  E