Sightseeing in Darmstadt
Darmstadt , once an administrative seat of the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen , was the residence of the Landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt from 1568 to 1806 and then the capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse until 1919 and of the People's State of Hesse from 1919 to 1945 . Many of the city's sights date from these times, especially from the late years of the Grand Duchy under Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig , who founded the Darmstadt artists' colony in 1899 and thus made Darmstadt a center of Art Nouveau . Before that, Georg Moller , chief building officer and court building director of the Grand Duchy from 1810, had decisively shaped the face of the city.
Darmstadt was almost completely destroyed in the so-called fire night of September 11, 1944 during World War II. While buildings of great importance were being repaired, a single house in Darmstadt's old town , the “Golden Crown” from 1656, remained undamaged. The sights of the city are therefore limited to individual buildings or small ensembles and only in rare cases to larger, coherent complexes.
Mathildenhöhe and Rosenhöhe, center of Art Nouveau
Mathildenhöhe
The Mathildenhöhe, at 180 meters above sea level, the highest elevation in Darmstadt's city center, was a garden of the grand ducal court as early as the 19th century and was redesigned in the style of an English landscape park in 1833 . This created the plane tree grove that is still preserved today . The garden was named after Mathilde Karoline Friederike von Wittelsbach , the wife of Grand Duke Ludwig III. , named. Between 1877 and 1880, a water reservoir was built on Mathildenhöhe to supply Darmstadt with water, and in 1897 the Russian Chapel was built. In 1897 a development plan was drawn up by Karl Hofmann . The development of the southern Mathildenhöhe by the artist colony founded by Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig in 1899 led to the current shape from 1900 onwards, which was created by the wedding tower from 1906 and the exhibition building from 1908 (standing on the water reservoir), both designed by the architect Joseph Maria Olbrich , is controlled.
The Darmstadt " catacombs " are located below the Mathildenhöhe . This actually wrong name stands for the vaulted cellars, tunnels and corridors that are located underground between Dieburger Straße and Lucasweg and extend up to Mathildenhöhe. While catacombs are mortuary vaults, this facility was created to house 19th century beer cellars . Because Darmstadt's population grew from 10,000 people around 1800 to 70,000 “beer-thirsty throats” around 1900, the warehouses of the twelve small breweries that had settled in the Watzeviertel became cramped . A sophisticated system of vaults was then carved into the rocks on and below the Mathildenhöhe. The soft rock offered the advantage of keeping the temperature in the beer labyrinth constant at nine degrees Celsius. Should it be cooler, you beat the winter ice in Woog , and cast it into so-called " cooling Dome ", is open towards the surface, dome-shaped cavities could be cooled so that the barrels on four degrees - without electricity . This gradually replaced the beer catacombs with the invention of the cooling machine at the beginning of the 20th century.
One of the catacombs is the brewery tunnel, which is hidden under Dieburgerstrasse and Alexanderstrasse. The brewery used it to divert cooling water, but it was built much earlier. It once measured 2.5 kilometers along its entire length and connected the Holy Kreuzberg (now the seat of a dance school) with the castle . The origin and the purpose of the elaborate tomb are not documented anywhere, which of course feeds the legend of a secret passage. Others suspect an escape route in the corridor, still others harbor the boring and yet probable suspicion that it is some kind of medieval aqueduct .
There is a water reservoir under the exhibition halls at Mathildenhöhe. The elevated tank was built between 1877 and 1880 based on plans by the engineer Otto Lueger. It consists of two clinker- walled chambers, each with six barrel vaults connected by longitudinal straps . The two chambers, which were part of the Darmstadt water network opened in 1880, have a capacity of 4800 cubic meters. At that time there was a lack of clean drinking water due to the population explosion. Now finally cholera could be combated effectively. In 1994 the "buffer storage" was shut down and emptied. Since then, the water in the brick room has stood ten centimeters high.
At the beginning of July 2014, the city of Darmstadt announced that the Mathildenhöhe exhibition hall would be renovated for 9.8 million euros. This should support the application as a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2019. Director of the Mathildenhöhe Institute has been Ralf Beil since 2006 , who moved to the Wolfsburg Art Museum on February 1, 2015 .
Alice Hospital
Artist colony
An artist colony is the Art Nouveau building on Mathildenhöhe with the artists' houses as well as exhibition and studio buildings during the artist group's existence from 1899 to 1914.
Wedding tower
Darmstadt's landmark is the 48-meter-high wedding tower, which has an observation floor that offers a beautiful panoramic view of the city and the surrounding area. It is also known locally under the name “five-finger tower”.
Russian chapel
→ Main article: Russian chapel
Another striking building on Mathildenhöhe is the Russian Chapel. The water basin in front of the Russian Chapel was made by Albin Müller . The construction costs of the chapel were borne by the last Russian tsar from his private assets. The reason was the origin of his wife Alix from Hessen-Darmstadt. In front of the church is an Art Nouveau fountain that was built in 1914. It was built on the occasion of the third exhibition of the Darmstadt artists' colony, also based on a design by Albin Müller.
Plane grove
The grove, laid out around 1830, was supplemented with sculptures and reliefs by the sculptor Bernhard Hoetger in 1914 . With his works he wanted to express the connection between man and nature, especially the cycle of life: spring, summer, sleep and resurrection.
Swan temple
The Swan Temple, also known as the Albin-Müller Pavilion, stands at the upper end of Christiansenweg and thus forms a gate to this stairway that leads over Alexandraweg to Prinz-Christians-Weg.
Rosenhöhe
The Rosenhöhe, a landscape park created in 1810 with a collection of roses added later, forms a unique total work of art in combination with the Mathildenhöhe, the Art Nouveau houses and the wedding tower. Part of the park is used as a burial place for the family of the former grand dukes.
Palaces and castles
Residential palace
The Darmstadt Residence Palace is located in the center of the city center. It is a building complex from six centuries, with the last building changes in the 18th century by Landgrave Ernst Ludwig. Once upon a time, under George I, the castle, surrounded by a moat, secured the western flank of the city of Darmstadt. On the night of the fire in 1944, the castle burned down to the outer walls. After the reconstruction, which lasted until the 1960s, the external condition of the pre-war period was largely restored.
Today the castle is largely used by the TU Darmstadt . In the bell building is the castle museum , which among other things houses the Grand Ducal Hessian porcelain collection and was the exhibition site of the Holbein Madonna for many years . The German Poland Institute has been housed in the Herrenbau since 2016 .
Kranichstein hunting lodge
The Kranichstein hunting lodge, which was built for Landgrave Georg I in 1578, is located in the north of Darmstadt. Today it houses an exhibition of hunting weapons and equipment from the years up to 1769, with numerous paintings illustrating the prince's hunt. There is also a hotel in the building complex.
Frankenstein castle ruins
The castle ruin Frankenstein, a historic fortress or fortified castle with two towers, castle walls and a powder tower in front, is located 370 m above sea level on the Schlossberg, southeast of the Darmstadt district of Eberstadt, on the boundary of the Mühltal district of Nieder-Beerbach . Frankenstein Castle owed its fame to business-minded marketing, after which it was portrayed as the namesake for Mary Shelley's famous book Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus . Of course there is no scientifically tenable proof of this. And only in the last few decades also because one of the largest Halloween festivals in Germany has been taking place at the castle since the 1970s .
Churches
City Church
The town church goes back to a Marienkapelle, which was raised to the parish church in 1369. The nave was built in the late Gothic period , the choir probably in the first half of the 15th century. In particular the net vault of the choir is remarkable, which remained undamaged in the last war. The nave and tower were rebuilt by 1952. Behind the high altar is an epitaph of Landgravine Magdalena zur Lippe, which Landgrave Georg I dedicated to his wife in 1589. Under the church is the princely crypt (1587), which contains rich stucco ornamentation.
St. Ludwig Church
If you look up Wilhelminenstraße from Luisenplatz, you can see the mighty classicist dome of the Ludwigskirche. It was built by Georg Moller between 1822 and 1827 as the first Catholic church in Hessen-Darmstadt since the Reformation .
Pauluskirche
The Pauluskirche was built between 1905 and 1907 as the center of the "Ink Quarter" according to plans by Friedrich Pützer .
Church of the Resurrection (Arheilger Church)
The Resurrection Church is the old village church of the village Arheilgen, which was independent until 1937. It has been called the "Resurrection Church" since 1960 and is the church of the Evangelical Lutheran Resurrection Community in Darmstadt-Arheilgen.
The old Arheilger church probably goes back to a Carolingian chapel, which was probably replaced by a Romanesque church building in the 12th century, which was consecrated to Saint Kilian. The Franconian apostle and martyr Kilian is the patron saint of the diocese of Würzburg, to which the village of Arheilgen was added in 1013 as part of the Gerau royal court.
Historic buildings
Octagonal house
House of History (formerly the State Theater)
The former court theater and later state theater has been the seat of the Historical Association for Hesse, the city archive and the Hessian state archive since 1994. It is located right next to the Hessian State Museum.
The classicist building was built by Georg Moller in 1819 and housed the Darmstadt theater until the Second World War. With the exception of the portico, the building was almost unadorned. It burned down in 1871 and was enlarged and rebuilt in a significantly higher way by 1879. In the Second World War it was destroyed again and stood for a long time as a makeshift ruin . Finally, in the early 1990s, it was rebuilt, but with a change in use as an archive. The foyer, which was rebuilt in the style of the time around 1879, is particularly impressive.
The old main building of the TU
The old main building of the Grand Ducal Technical University of Darmstadt was built by Heinrich Wagner between 1893 and 1895.
Central Station
The building with some Art Nouveau elements was designed by the Darmstadt architecture professor Friedrich Pützer . The building, completed in 1912, is a unique architectural monument . It consists of the representative reception building connected to the platforms in the main hall and the adjoining royal train station. The main building and the Fürstenbahnhof were extensively renovated from 1998 to 2002 in accordance with listed building standards, the redesign of the forecourt should be completed by the end of 2005, the renovation of the main hall in 2008.
Mozart Tower
Coordinates: 49 ° 52 ′ 12.2 " N , 8 ° 37 ′ 42.5" E
The Mozart Tower near the main train station was built in 1938 as an air defense tower. Its original name was Richthofen Tower . After the Second World War it was loosened and now serves as a gallery and venue for concerts.
Art Nouveau bathroom
The Darmstadt Art Nouveau Bath is a public swimming pool in Darmstadt . The official name was "Darmstädter Stadtbad" . The Art Nouveau bath was built between 1907 and 1909. The architect was August Buxbaum . It shows Art Nouveau in particular with regard to its decor , while the external form is more based on neoclassicism .
Modern architecture
Master Buildings
With reference to the first exhibition of the artist colony in 1901, the exhibition Mensch und Raum was shown on Mathildenhöhe in 1951 . The drafts for the Darmstadt master buildings were presented. The buildings by internationally renowned architects were typical of the reconstruction phase after the Second World War, eleven planning contracts were awarded. Due to a lack of financial resources, the city was only able to realize five, some in a reduced form. These were
- the Georg Büchner School by Hans Schwippert ;
- the Ludwig George High School of Max Taut ;
- the Women's Hospital of Otto Bartning and Otto Dörzbach ;
- the single home , an apartment house, by Ernst Neufert ;
- the kindergarten children's world of Franz Schuster .
Hydraulic engineering hall of the TU
The institute building with a 15 meter high water tower and a free-spanning concrete roof shell construction was built from 1955 to 1956 according to plans by Ernst Neufert .
Art Gallery
The exhibition building of the Kunstverein Darmstadt was designed by Theo Pabst and built in 1956.
State Theater
The State Theater was built from 1968 to 1972 based on a design by Rolf Prange . The building houses the large house with 956 seats, the small house with 482 seats, the Kammerspiele with 130 seats as well as all workshops, magazines and administrative rooms.
Laboratories and test halls for mechanical engineering at the TU
The halls, completed in 1976 and designed by Gerd Fesel , stand on the Lichtwiese. In 1978 they were recognized by the Hessen Chamber of Architects and the Hessian state government as an exemplary building in Hessen due to the congruence of function, construction, material and shape.
Forest spiral
The Waldspirale is the name of a residential complex designed by the Viennese artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser and completed in 2000. The developer is Bauverein Darmstadt . The building is Hundertwasser's last work before his death. It has seven floors equipped with apartments. For reasons of cost, however, most of them are not in the Hundertwasser style like the facade, but are built with straight lines and right angles. There is a restaurant on the top three floors. From the viewing terrace you can see the Frankfurt skyline as well as the Taunus and the foothills of the Odenwald.
darmstadtium
The darmstadtium is a science and congress center opened in 2007. It is very centrally located opposite the residential palace. The ultra-modern architecture of the Viennese architect Talik Chalabi integrates part of the medieval city wall with a defense tower.
Places
Luisenplatz
Luisenplatz is the central square in Darmstadt. This is where the pedestrian zone begins and all major bus and tram lines stop here. It was created in the 18th century. The Ludwigsmonument stands in the middle . At the edge are the regional council, the Merckhaus, the Carreé, the Luisencenter and the headquarters of the Sparkasse Darmstadt. Around Christmas time, the largest Christmas tree in Darmstadt is on Luisenplatz.
Market square and old town hall
The square was created in the 14th century as a trading center. In 1996, the renovation of the square was completed: the paving with Indian granite was arranged in a radial pattern. The market fountain built in 1546 has also been restored. Another market fountain was built in 1780.
The old town hall on the south side of the market square was built in 1598. Today the registry office and the Darmstadt Ratskeller brewery are located there .
Parks and the like
Herrngarten
The Herrngarten is the largest and oldest park in the city. Its roots go back to the 16th century when it emerged from three larger and several smaller gardens. Landgravine Caroline had the garden extended and redesigned in the English style in 1766. The Goethe monument with a naked young man as a poet genius was created in 1903 by Ludwig Habich . Two years later, Habich also created a memorial stone for Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and near Rhine (1895–1903), who died in childhood . In 1918 the garden was nationalized and changed in the direction of the Bürgerpark: playgrounds were set up and a modern semicircular steel and glass building was converted into a café. The park was destroyed in the Second World War, but is now very popular again. You can use the beer garden and restaurant here every six months from spring to autumn.
Prince George Garden
Adjacent to the Herrngarten, a garden with a variety of historical ornamental and useful plants was created in the 18th century. In this small park, formally laid out based on French models, the Prinz-Georg-Palais and the Pretlack garden house are located in the main and transverse axes as focal points. Just as the garden with tea house and hedge theater still exists today, it was designed by Prince Georg Wilhelm as a system. As a geometric-formal composition, the Prinz-Georg-Garten is a gem of horticulture in the Rococo style with sundials and rushing fountains.
Prince Georg Palace
The Prinz-Georg-Palais was built around 1710 under Landgrave Ernst Ludwig, presumably by the architect Louis Remy de la Fosse , the master builder of the Darmstadt Palace. It is surrounded by a garden that is typical of the Rococo : with lawns, borders, fountains and sundials. The current name of the complex refers to Prince Georg Wilhelm , who used it as a summer residence between 1764 and 1782.
The name of the palace, which is also in use, Porzellanschlösschen , goes back to the establishment by Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig . Here he summarized the Grand Ducal Hessian Porcelain Collection, consisting of porcelain and other ceramic products. In 1908 he opened the collection to the public as a museum. From 1899 until the museum moved in, the first studios for the artists of the Darmstadt artists' colony were set up here.
The building survived the Second World War almost undamaged. The collection that had meanwhile been relocated was therefore able to move in again as early as 1951. The palace was last completely refurbished from 1992 to 1999 by the Hessian state government. The 100th anniversary of the collection was marked in 2008 with the anniversary exhibition “Breakfast at Court. 100 years of princely porcelain ”.
Pretlack's summer house
The current extent of the Prinz-Georg-Garten has existed since 1765. At that time, the older part described above was combined by Prince Georg Wilhelm with the so-called Pretlack's garden , which was connected to the south. It was originally owned by Lieutenant General Johann Rudolf von Pretlack , a son-in-law of Landgrave Ernst Ludwig. Around 1711, Pretlack had a five-wing garden house built on the east side of his garden, which was painted inside with several views of the garden and outside with trees, tendrils and garlands.
This painting was already lost in the course of the 19th century, but was extensively restored in 2001 in the course of a general renovation according to contemporary templates, so that this building is now a special gem again. Inside there is now a small library with a reading room, which offers a completely free loan of books as a special feature, the reading of which can also be enjoyed in the park.
The importance of the palace and the surrounding garden is also made clear by a report by the Hessischer Rundfunk , which wrote: “There is no garden like this anywhere else in Hessen. Designed according to the geometrical-formal principles of a 'French garden', the Prinz-Georg-Garten is an elegant art and garden-historical example of a 'pleasure and kitchen garden' of the Rococo. "
Castle garden
The palace garden is the restored garden in the moat of the residential palace of the science city Darmstadt . The palace garden was originally laid out as Darmstadt's botanical garden .
Big woog
The Große Woog is a natural swimming lake in the center of Darmstadt. It was created in 1567 as a fire water pond , has been used as a bathing lake since 1820 , and was extensively equipped with bathing and competition facilities in the first half of the 20th century. The entire facility is under monument protection.
Prince Emil Garden
The Prinz-Emil-Garten is located in the west of the Bessungen district directly on Heidelberger Strasse. The park was laid out from 1772 on the model of an English landscape park on behalf of Friedrich Karl von Moser by the Dieburg garden master Nikolaus Andreas Siebert .
After Moser's fall and resignation from the cabinet, Hereditary Prince Ludwig X bought the park in 1780. The park is then named after its next owner, Prince Emil von Hessen und bei Rhein (1790-1856), to whom it passed in 1830. Through further changes of ownership and through the centuries, the appearance of the garden changed considerably; In 1927 the city of Darmstadt finally acquired the property from the Grand Duke.
The park today has a pond with a small waterfall, which was restored in 1987/88 . Of the originally existing buildings (including an artificial Gothic ruin, a chapel, a Russian-style farmhouse and a Chinese pavilion), only the Prinz-Emil-Palais, built between 1775–1778, burned out in 1944 and restored in 1950, still exists today. A water-filled ditch (“ Aha ”), which originally visually closed off the park on the west side and allowed an unobstructed and unobstructed view of the Rhine plain at the time, disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century.
Memorial to the fallen of World War I in the northern garden area
The new pond system with seating area and pavilion
The Prinz-Emil-Schlösschen with the main facade facing west towards the pond
View of the garden palace from the south towards the inner courtyard
The modern east facade of the U-shaped complex
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Orangery
The orangery was built in Bessungen from 1719 to 1721 by the architect Louis Remy de la Fosse . The small castle, which was used as a theater for a time after the Second World War, was originally a winter hostel for the orange trees in the park. Today the building is used for concerts and conferences. The adjoining park was designed by court gardener Johann Kaspar Ehret . The baroque complex is arranged symmetrically and consists of lawns, fountains and avenues. Even today, the tropical fruits can still be admired in summer.
Steinbrücker pond
The leisure center around the Steinbrücker Teich is one of the most popular leisure areas for Darmstadt's citizens. It is an artificially created lake with an island inside, which was part of the former walled hunting area of the Grand Duke Ludwig of Hesse in the Darmstadt city forest. Today the meadows and the forest around the pond form a popular local recreation area, with a wide range of leisure activities such as pedal and rowing boat rentals, mini golf, a pony farm, barbecue areas and a popular restaurant .
Backhausteich
At the Jagdschloss Kranichstein there is the rather quiet and romantic Backhausteich, which those looking for relaxation from Darmstadt and the surrounding area like to walk and cycle around.
Botanical Garden
The Darmstadt Botanical Garden was laid out in 1874 on the present site in the east of the city and is now part of the TU Darmstadt.
Vivarium
The vivarium was opened in 1965 on a four- hectare site on the eastern edge of the city. The zoo shows over 700 small animals in 150 species.
Vortex garden
Darmstadt's only public park in private ownership is in the garden of "Haus Martinus" on Mathildenhöhe, just below the Russian Chapel. The vortex garden is laid out according to the principles of permaculture and was designed according to the principles of the balance of natural eco-systems. The leitmotif are vortex spirals, which find artistic expression as the elementary movement of living systems. You can find them in the Vortex Garden in water features, in the egg shapes as symbols and in ornaments that were modeled on crop circles . The owners have opened the Vortex Garden to the public as a "place of change, vitality, renewal, relaxation".
Hofgut Oberfeld
The Hofgut Oberfeld is part of the Oberfeld, an area used by agriculture and allotment gardeners in the east of Darmstadt, which is a popular local recreation area for city residents and a fresh air corridor for the city. Hofgut Oberfeld, formerly Hofmeierei, was the court domain of the Grand Dukes of Hesse-Darmstadt and later the state domain of the State of Hesse. The farm buildings are under ensemble or monument protection. At the initiative of the Oberfeld domain e. V. (IDO), a non-profit association of Darmstadt citizens, the Hofgut Oberfeld Foundation has been the owner of the estate and leaseholder of the domain land since July 2006. The conversion of the Oberfeld estate to an ecological farm with direct marketing has begun. An initiative “Lernort Bauernhof” has started work. The association Lebensweg e. V. wants to build living and working places for handicapped people in connection with the estate.
Forest cemetery
The forest cemetery on the western edge of Darmstadt, opened in 1914, is characterized by the distinctive architecture of the cemetery buildings. In addition to numerous well-known personalities from the Darmstadt region, the victims of the night of the fire on September 11, 1944 were also buried in a mass grave here.
additional
literature
- Roland Dotzert (Red.): Stadtlexikon Darmstadt. Edited by the Historical Association for Hesse on behalf of the City of Darmstadt City Administration. Theiss, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-8062-1930-3 .
- Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany: Cultural monuments in Hesse: City of Darmstadt. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1994, ISBN 3-528-06249-5 .
- Bettina Clausmeyer-Ewers: Prinz-Georg-Garten Darmstadt. Formally designed pleasure and kitchen garden of Prince Georg-Wilhelm of Hesse-Darmstadt. Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2004, ISBN 3-7954-1350-8 .
- Bernd Modrow, Claudia Gröschel: Princely pleasure. 400 years of garden culture in Hessen. Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2002, ISBN 3-7954-1487-3 .
- Alexa-Beatrice Christ (Red.): 250 years of the Prinz-Georg-Garten Darmstadt - Prinz-Georg-Palais and Großherzoglich-Hessische Porzellansammlung Darmstadt. Surface Book, Darmstadt 2014, ISBN 978-3-939855-38-5
Web links
- Information about the Herrngarten Darmstadt on mein-da.de
- Information about the Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt
Individual evidence
- ↑ 350 years of the Golden Crown
- ↑ Tabea Köbler: Off to the underworld! P-Verlag, Darmstadt 2009.
- ↑ Isolde Ness: Do you know Darmstadt ?. West town. 2009, ISBN 3940179078 .
- ^ Cultural monuments in Hesse. City of Darmstadt. ed. by the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Hesse in collaboration with the City of Darmstadt's Magistrate, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1994, ISBN 3-528-06249-5 , p. 329
- ↑ "Refurbishment target: Unesco title" in hr-online on July 3, 2014 ( Memento from July 29, 2014 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ monopoly. Magazine for Art and Life Art ticker from July 25, 2014: Ralf Beil is the new director of the Wolfsburg Art Museum ( Memento of the original from July 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 26, 2014
- ↑ On the history of our church Evangelical Lutheran Resurrection Community, Darmstadt-Arheilgen.
- ↑ Darmstadt Ratskeller brewery
- ^ "Pretlack, Johann Rudolf Victor Freiherr von". Hessian biography. (As of July 10, 2010). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). This spelling of the name is also given on the information boards in the Prinz-Georg-Garten. A not uncommon (incorrect) spelling of the name is Prettlack or Prettlack'scher Garten .
- ↑ "Mysterious, but beautiful" Frankfurt Rundschau from July 14, 2010.
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