Hirschgraben (Speyer)

View of the middle part of the Hirschgraben from the tower of the Bernhardskirche. Behind the row of parked cars you can see the stone stairs that lead to St. Guido-Straße on the Weidenberg . The white building complex formerly St. Guido is now the synagogue with the Beith-Schalom (House of Peace) parish hall

Integrated into a residential building on Hirschgraben: the only remaining higher section of the Speyer city ​​wall . Late Salian ashlar wall from around 1100. The Romanesque battlements can still be seen on site, which can be clearly seen in the late Gothic brick elevation. To the left of the downpipe of the gutter in this area one of the four preserved crossbow slits. At the roadside the Kontreeskarpemauer , behind which the now filled deer ditch was.

Map of the old Speyer city fortifications by Maximilian Dörrbecker, entered in the modern city map

The old cemetery wall, which today encloses the Adenauerpark, seen from the Hirschgraben.

The Hirschgraben was a defensive moat of the Speyer city fortifications in the area between the Red Tower (north-western corner tower of the inner ring) and the Weidentor. Today the Hirschgraben is a street from Speyer , which runs north of this now filled trench in an approximately west-east direction and connects Bahnhofstrasse in the west with Wormser Landstrasse in the east. The road climbs towards Bahnhofstrasse. To the east over the intersection with the Wormser Landstrasse you drive into the Petschengasse, which leads from the Hochgestade into the Rhine lowlands.

To the north of the Hirschgraben, the Old Cemetery Speyer had been located since 1502, at the southeast corner of which the St. Bernhard Church of Peace was built in 1953/54 as a symbol of the reconciliation between Germany and France. To the west of the church, in the direction of Bahnhofstrasse, surrounded by the old cemetery wall, is today's Adenauerpark, developed from the cemetery that was inactive for decades, a quiet and green oasis in the middle of the city, diagonally across from the Speyer main train station , directly across from the former freight yard (now a monument).

To the south of the road behind the filled in Hirschgraben, the terrain rises a few meters. There is a small hill, the so-called Weidenberg, where one of the four big monasteries of Speyer, St. Guido, was situated for a good 1000 years. The last monks moved from there in 1991 to the rectory of St. Bernhard. Halfway through the ditch, stone stairs lead up the small hill. Pedestrians can reach St. Guido-Straße through the passage in the remains of the city wall.

Excerpt from the Hirschgraben from the list of cultural monuments of the city of Speyer

designation	location	Construction year	description	image
Cemetery Chapel of Our Lady	Hirschgraben 1, on the old cemetery location	second decade of the 16th century	small late Gothic hall building, second decade of the 16th century, nave raised in 1842; Mount of Olives on the south side of the choir, around 1500; Inside are tombs from the 16th to 18th centuries	more pictures
Residential and commercial building	Hirschgraben 2 location	1911/12	Corner apartment and commercial building, two-part mansard roof, country house style, 1911/12, architect Peter Graf, Heidelberg, extensions 1925, architect Ludwig Boßlet
Catholic St. Bernhard Church	Hirschgraben 3 location	1953/54	historicizing sandstone block building with free-standing bell tower, 1953/54, architects August Josef Peter and Ludwig Ihm ; overall structure with rectory and ramp	more pictures
Residential building	Hirschgraben 4/6 position	1925	Typical hipped roof construction, 1925, architect Heinrich Müller, on a medieval city wall

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Rudolf Müller: The walls of the Free Imperial City of Speyer as a framework for the city's history. District group Speyer of the Historical Association of the Palatinate, Speyer 1994, DNB 941851907 , p. 190.
2. ↑ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments in the district-free city of Speyer (PDF; 4.9 MB). Mainz 2016, page 12