Hotel Kaisershof (Hamburg)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Hotel Kaisershof, 1845. On the right, a corner of the Patriotic Building

The former Gasthof Kaisershof in Hamburg , later referred to as the Hotel Kaisershof ( Hôtel zum Kaisershof , sometimes also Kaiserhof ), was built in 1619 as an upper-class palace. In 1726 the city bought the building "in order to have an elegant inn for distinguished guests".

The Kaisershof was one of the more important private Renaissance buildings and at times one of the leading hotels in the Hanseatic city. Demolished in 1873, the lavishly designed facade on the gable end was retained by being moved to the Hamburg Museum of Art and Industry .

Location and building

The narrow side of the building at the gable was at Neß (last house number 10) in the old town diagonally across from the Hamburger Bank, founded in 1619 . The long side was facing the street Trostbrücke (formerly also town hall / near the old town hall ) and the old Hamburg town hall and at the back was the old stock exchange at Trostbrücke and Nikolaifleet .

The architectural peculiarity of the building was its sandstone facade in the pure Renaissance style , with numerous stone carvings and relief images on the gable side (width: about 9.50 m long side: about 35 m), which goes back to Flemish-Dutch influences. After the house came into the possession of the municipal treasury, Johann Leonhard Prey prepared an appraisal on the condition of the building in which he recommended a renewal of the portal and the removal of the spheres and pyramids originally placed on the gable. This gable ornament no longer exists since the repair by the municipal building yard. In contrast to the front side, the facade on the eaves side, with the protruding tower, was designed as a simpler brick facade with few ornaments in the round arches above the windows arranged in pairs.

The building was demolished in 1873 after the gable side had previously been removed stone by stone and rebuilt in the northern courtyard of the Museum of Art and Crafts in St. Georg . Today it is the oldest preserved facade of a secular building from the old town. In addition, the only surviving stone Renaissance facade of a bourgeois residential building from the first half of the 17th century, as the few surviving houses of this time, such as the Krameramtsstuben in the Neustadt (partly from garden houses from around 1620) are the oldest houses in the old Hamburg city center Old and New Town) are executed in visible framework.

Guest house and exchange office

The renaissance facade of the imperial court, around 1790

Already in connection with the expansion and the beautification of the town hall in the middle of the 17th century, the proposal was made to buy the house of the heirs of those von Holten in order to create a larger square in front of the town hall front. In fact, the free city of Hamburg only bought the house in the old economic and political center of Hamburg in 1726 as an inn for distinguished travelers. For a short time, from November 1726 to January 1727, an exchange office was set up in the Kaisershof to prevent profiteering in the exchange of foreign small coins for the new Courantmark of the Hamburg Courantbank and to bring this money to the people. Since the city wanted to offer something “for high guests”, the leaseholder of the Kaisershof received express permission to “hold masked balls in winter”, and “every chamber was allowed to have an oven”, a special feature of the fire police.

Freemason and "oldest lodge house in Germany"

Freemasons frequented and gathered in this area : In 1743 the “Loge St. Georg zum Kaiserhof Hamburg, No. 196 “founded according to the classic English Masonic tradition. At that time, the hotel was leased to François Guillaumot, who also became the lodge brother. The lodge was a so-called daughter lodge of the oldest lodge in Germany, which was founded in 1737 in the wine tavern "d'Angleterre" in the Bäckerstrasse, initially without a special name, after which it called itself for a few years "Loge d'Hambourg", from 1743 Absalom . Regarding the later social structure of the members of the St. Georg Lodge who frequented the imperial court, Appel writes: “Typically a list from 1760, when St. Georg had 117 members. Of these, 38 were noble cavaliers, 3 counts, 9 barons, 31 gentlemen with the status 'von', 6 officers, 12 scholars with academic training and 18 merchants. ”With its gable end preserved in the Museum of Art and Industry, the Kaisershof is the oldest (at least in remnants) preserved lodge house of the German Freemasons.

Court seat

In 1757 the lower court temporarily moved to Kaisershof, as the extension of the town hall, which had been used as a courtroom for 200 years, was demolished. The newly built town hall extension for the Lower Court was occupied in 1759.

Use of the hotel in the 19th century

The municipal building was also operated as a hotel in the 19th century. During the great fire of 1842 the roof structure caught fire several times. While two houses next to the Kaisershof became uninhabitable, the Kaisershof and others in Neß could be saved. Nevertheless, the area with the stock exchange, town hall and bank was completely destroyed. Instead of the old town hall, the road connection to the new stock exchange building ( stock exchange bridge ) and the building of the Patriotic Society , which had also previously used the Kaisershof, were built. In the 19th century the Kaisershof also served as a "patriotic building".

After the city fire, the Kaisershof, which was certainly worth seeing, but perceived as antiquated, was in competition with the new upscale hotels that were built especially in the area of ​​the already preferred streets on the Inner Alster . In 1871 the building was sold “for demolition” to the “Commerz- und Diskontbank” founded in Hamburg at the time, which built a bank building there and on the neighboring property, which is still used by Commerzbank today, expanded several times .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm Melhop: Alt-Hamburgische Bauweise , Hamburg 1925, 386 S., S. 52ff
  2. ^ Udo Pini : A guest in old Hamburg . Munich 1987 (Hugendubel-Verlag), 272 S., S. 104
  3. Ulrich Nabel: The Dutch influence on the bourgeois brick building in Hamburg in the 17th century , in: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History Vol. 31 (1930), pp. 217–242, here: p. 225.
  4. ^ Cipriano F. Gaedechens, Association for Hamburg History: History of the Hamburg City Hall Hamburg 1867, p. 22
  5. On the development of the name Absalom cf. the article on the “Imperial Court Lodge” with the sources there for the foundation of Absalom
  6. ^ Rolf Appel: The Kaiserhof Lodge . Print shop Ruhe, Barsbüttel near Hamburg 1993 (250 years of St. Georg), p. 13
  7. Karin Wiedemann: From the court arbor to Sievekingplatz , 1991 in Hamburgischer Richterverein - Kultur - Courthouse in Hamburg
  8. Carl Heinrich Schleiden: Attempt a history of the great fire in Hamburg from May 5th to 8th 1842 Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1843, p. 82

Web links