Historic old town (Görlitz)

Historical old city City of Goerlitz
Coordinates: 51 ° 9 ′ 22 ″  N , 14 ° 59 ′ 0 ″  E
Height :	199 m above sea level NN
Area :	30 ha
Residents :	2425  (Dec. 31, 2011)
Population density :	8,083 inhabitants / km²
Postal code :	02826
Area code :	03581
Location of the historic old town
View over the old town of Görlitz

The historic old town is a district of Görlitz and a magnet for tourists. In addition to many listed buildings, there are all sorts of legends about the Görlitz old town.

history

Schwarze Gasse in the old town of Görlitz

The old town of Görlitz

After the settlement area of ​​the city expanded, the beginnings of today's old town emerged in the middle of the 13th century. In addition to a fortification , consisting of over 20 watchtowers, a kennel and a city ​​wall , the Görlitz town hall was also built as the seat of the administration and the lower and upper market as trading places. At the end of the 15th century, the Kaisertrutz was added to the Görlitzer ramparts. In the Middle Ages, the city fell victim to several fires. Many buildings were irretrievably destroyed. Parts of St. Peter's Church also had to be renewed.

Görlitz grew into a rich trading town. This was favored by the favorable location on two of the most important trade routes in Europe, the Via Regia and the Neisse-Talrand-Straße. Architecturally, the old town is the scene of many style encounters. Renaissance , Baroque and Gothic can be found in the cityscape. Görlitz owes this multitude of buildings and styles to the fact that it remained almost undamaged during World War II . During socialism, the structure of the building fell into disrepair and plans were drawn up to completely remove the old town. In 1989 the first boreholes were drilled, in which the explosive charges were to be deposited. These holes can still be seen on some facades. The turnaround brought investors and thus money to the city. The then Lord Mayor of Wiesbaden , Achim Exner , was made an honorary citizen of Görlitz because of his support for the preservation of the old town .

Festivities

Görlitz Old Town Festival

The most popular and best attended event in town is the annual Old Town Festival. It has a medieval flair that covers the Görlitz old town on the last weekend in August every year, from Friday to Sunday. Jugglers , musicians and all kinds of gastronomic specialties from the Middle Ages (and the present) attract people from all over Germany.

At the end of the festival there is a fireworks display on the Obermarkt .

There have been discussions in the past about skipping the festival because funds were scarce. Instead, a voluntary road toll was introduced, from which the spectacle is partially financed.

ViaThea

Basically it is called street theater . During this festival, the entire old town is transformed into a stage for artists from all over the world for a weekend.

Attractions

→ Main article : List of cultural monuments in Görlitz-Altstadt, A – K

→ Main article : List of cultural monuments in Görlitz-Altstadt, L – Z

The Neisse weir with four-wheel mill

The Brüderstraße with a view of the Schönhof

Church towers of the city church of St. Peter and Paul

Old Town Bridge

The old town bridge, reopened on October 20, 2004, serves as a border crossing for pedestrians between the German and Polish parts of the city.

Three- and four-wheel mill

The Dreiradenmühle is located on the Polish side of the city and is today, just like the Vierradenmühle on the German side, a restaurant directly on the Neisse next to the old town bridge. The four-wheel mill also offers the opportunity to dine on a terrace in the middle of the Neisse.

The town hall

The historic town hall is still the seat of the registry office today and is an eye-catcher and tourist attraction. There is an old paternoster lift inside the building .

Schönhof

The Schönhof located on the Untermarkt is the oldest Renaissance building in Görlitz. It was built in 1525 by the council builder Wendel Roskopf the Elder.

The city towers

The Nikolaiturm , the Dicke Turm and the Reichenbacher Turm gave the city the nickname “City of Towers”. All three are former guard posts of the historic city wall and served the tower guards not only as a lookout point, but also as a place of residence. During the tourist season, the towers can be visited with an expert guide.

St. Peter and Paul Church

Colloquially it is called St. Peter's Church. The two towers are striking for the silhouette of the city. Along with the state crown and the old city wall towers, it is a symbol of the city. Legend has it that a young worker had an accident while mounting the ball on one of the spiers. The worker slipped while doing his work and could still hold on to the tower. Despite all efforts to save the man from falling, he hit the surrounding cobblestones. The place of the fall was marked with a special paving stone. However, this incident has not been proven.

Waid - and Renthaus

The oldest non-ecclesiastical building in the city, at that time the storage place and storage place for the cloth dyeing plant Waid from the 15th century, is today a training center for handicrafts and monument preservation e. V. It is right next to St. Peter's Church.

The Anne Chapel

The family chronicle of the merchant Hans Frenzel reports on a vow that the "rich" Frenzel made. He wanted to build a chapel for St. Anne because her intercession had given him an heir. After the birth of his son Johannes, the rich merchant had this chapel built against the concerns of the council for 8,500 guilders in the years 1508–1512 by the city architect Albrecht Stieglitzer instead of the demolished ducal palace. As early as 1505 Frenzel had announced his intention to the council. It was not until 1508 that the legal clarification of the associated earthworks could begin. Building chapels and churches and filling them with priestly posts, which were part of it, was not an ordinary city citizen's right. It was the responsibility of the territorial lord, in agreement with the bishop. Even the Fuggers were only allowed to add a chapel near St. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg . What happened there in Görlitz was a haughty rarity. The consecration took place on Pentecost 1512 . From then on seven priests officiated at the Annenkapelle.

When the interior was thoroughly renovated in 1987, the foundations of three altars came to light in the choir polygon. In its function as a kind of mansion chapel, the Annenkapelle originally had a gallery with a tracery parapet, the remainder of which has adorned the arbor above the newly built staircase on the south side since 1900 . The room below the former gallery has since been separated as a gym from the neighboring school by a school auditorium above. The auditorium also has the old tracery windows between the inward-facing pillars and the original ribbed vault in the traditional Prague scheme. After the Reformation the Annenkapelle became deserted. In 1620 it was temporarily used as a reformed church for the occupation of the "Winter King" Frederick V of the Palatinate who had been expelled from Bohemia . From 1642 it was used as a meeting place for the “Small Priest College” and, from 1730, the church of the “Poor, Breeding and Orphanage”, which until 1900 stood in place of the adjoining school building. From 1845, the Annenkapelle served as a place of worship for the Catholic community on an interim basis. In 1903 the orphanage was demolished, and the Annenkapelle then served as a gymnasium and auditorium for the girls' middle school. Since the renovation of the auditorium in 1992, it has also served as an exhibition space and for the Oberlausitzer Kunstverein, which was also revived in 1992, as well as concerts.

Say

The three-legged dog

This legend tells the story of a three-legged dog that searches its way through the old town to the Görlitz kennel every Christmas night. The dog must not be disturbed, as otherwise terrible things can happen to you, as legend has it that a young city guard had to learn who wanted to prevent the dog from entering the kennel.

The headless rider

A rather unknown legend. A memorial plaque on Peterstrasse tells of how a headless coachman haunted Görlitz's old town with his hearse.

The block monk

The sad story of a little girl who was violated and murdered by a cruel monk. This legend is based on a crime that is said to have taken place. A monk, unable to keep his celibacy , assaulted a little girl. Fearing that his deed might be discovered, he murdered the child and laid the body to rest under a grave slab in the church. A wanderer who happened to be in church accidentally became an accomplice and helped solve the crime. At the former Löwen pharmacy, which burned down in 1945 before the end of the war, two stone sculptures were attached in Fleischergasse. One showed the child's mother who was looking longingly in the direction of the church. Opposite her was the head of an unsightly man who was probably a representation of the monk in question.

The linden tree in the churchyard

The Görlitz case law was considered hasty and impatient when it came to imposing the death penalty. This is how a robber knight's servant had to experience it. The latter denied, even under torture, that he was involved in his master's robbery. The council still sentenced him to death. On the way to the execution, the condemned man was allowed to visit his parents' grave. He tore out a small linden tree that was growing on the grave and planted it upside down. He told his astonished executioners that it would be proof of his innocence if these branches found support and the roots blossomed. In the following years the tree grew and flourished. The youth has since been considered pardoned.

Another legend tells of the theologian and pastor Martin Moller, Primarius at St. Peter's Church. In the 16th century it was assumed that he would spread the teaching of Crypto-Calvinism and not speak the word of God. Here the legend tells that he had a tree planted on his grave, also with the branches in the ground. As this tree grows it should be evidence that it taught the word of God.

The night smith

Probably the best known Görlitz legend tells of a hardworking blacksmith and his new journeymen. The once so hardworking blacksmith began to get lazy and put his work on the journeyman. One day when the journeyman was not in the forge, a rider appeared and asked the blacksmith to make a gate. The blacksmith also passed this work on to his journeyman. While he was working on the gate, the master got drunk in his local pub. The day before it was finished, the journeyman had disappeared and the forging looked bewitched - it could not be finished. A ring on the gate broke every time after the last hammer blow. The blacksmith worked all night, but in vain. That night the blacksmith disappeared forever and with him the said gate. The journeyman and the rider are said to have dealt with Lucifer personally. In the restaurant of the same name you can still hear the blacksmith knocking today.

The forged piece is said to be the former cemetery gate of the Nikolaifriedhof, which today closes the rear gate in the courtyard of the museum in the baroque building at Neißstraße 30 . The rings are complete, however.

Bloody water

Originally, the site of the Kaisertrutz and the houses surrounding it was a swampy terrain with ditches. In the middle of it was a muddy pond in which the frogs croaked. That was the weakest point of the Görlitz city fortifications, which is why the city fathers decided, according to the new defense order of 1490, to build a huge bastion here, the Kaisertrutz. When the Swedes occupied the city during the Thirty Years' War , they successfully “defied” the encircling imperial and Electoral Saxon troops. Anno 1630, on November 26th, so the chronicle reports, one saw big red spots on the ice in Görlitz am Graben in front of the Reichenbacher Tore . Then the mayor went out with many hundreds of people, the gatekeeper went into the water and brought up individual pieces of ice, which however melted into clear, clear water. Likewise, on January 4, 1631, a real well of blood was discovered again in the same moat, which horrified many thousands of people. In the same year on October 31st, the city was occupied by the imperial.

Note: In the past, colored snow, e.g. B. Blood snow like here in Görlitz, interpreted superstitiously. This phenomenon was seen as a harbinger of future hardships. The French Dr. Saussure, who was one of the first naturalists to observe red snow on the Great St. Bernhard in 1778 , suspected that the red color was caused by red dust. Today's biologists know that "blood snow" is a common occurrence in the Alps . It is produced by millions and millions of unicellular algae , which within a few days cover red spots the size of a room on the snow and feed on organic matter from wind-blown dust.

The old "Reichenbacher" wobbles

The following event should illustrate how the legends about some buildings and streets in the city of Görlitz and its surroundings came about. It happened in June 1950 when an apprentice from the Jahnsmüller & Schroda silverware workshop climbed the tower and the tower keeper accompanying him made him aware that the tower had been overtaken by the ravages of time. After all, the building, which was mentioned as early as 1375, showed some cracks, so that it would soon be on the Obermarkt (1950 Leninplatz) and the Reichenbacher Tor would block access to the old town. And then one day a heavy piece of the console stone fell onto the street from a height of 20 meters. On closer inspection it turned out that even more such stones were preparing to plunge into the depths. Half of the streets were then closed, and the tram was no longer allowed to pass through Obermarkt. The councilors now had to walk to the town hall on Untermarkt. A permanent policeman made sure that the heavy truck trains drove around the tower at a reasonable speed. Dr. Ing. Mann, Professor of Structural Analysis at the Technical University of Wroclaw and Professor Dr. Ing. Rüth from the Technical University of Dresden were consulted. So it came about that the Reichenbacher tower was provided with a heavy anchor layer made of 50 millimeter thick round steel with turnbuckles 6 and 15 meters high. The tower keeper describes this as a “corset” when he tours the tower. The eyesores on the outer wall, caused by the turnbuckles, were covered with the coats of arms of the cities that once belonged to the Six Cities League . But that alone was not enough, the 50-meter-high tower was only provided with foundation walls 1 to 1.20 meters deep, these tower foundations had to be widened, so they needed reinforced concrete. The whole 50 meter high tower had to be placed on a reinforced concrete wreath. All water pipes near the Reichenbacher tower had to be removed or repositioned without damaging the structure. For this purpose, all cracks in the masonry had to be sprayed out with liquid cement paste according to a special patent using compressed air equipment at high pressure. When the apprentice found out about this construction process from the tower keeper, he rightly asked how the builders could put the reinforced concrete slab under the mighty tower. The tower keeper answered him with a smile: “Well that was very easy! So we called the mountain ghost who was rummaging around the crown of the country . ”He had lifted the tower a little way up and held it until the bricklayers had done their work calmly and carefully. Then he carefully put the tower back on its base. This joke will probably lead to a rebirth of a legend in 100 years from a pleasant gimmick. Some Görlitz legends may have originated in a similar way. Therefore, they are certainly based on a true event.

literature

• Karl Haupt: Görlitz legends. Viadukt Verlag, Görlitz 2012, ISBN 978-3-929872-20-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ goerlitz.de: Statistical monthly figures for the city of Görlitz, December 2011 . (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 18, 2012 ; Retrieved June 11, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.