Old Market (Potsdam)

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Alter Markt (southeast side), 2018. From left to right. To right: Nikolaikirche with the construction site of the reconstruction of the tympanum relief, former Scharrenstraße, Old Town Hall , marble obelisk , Knobelsdorff or Lehmannsches house , Brauerstraße (under construction), Barberini Palace , City Palace (theater wing) , Fortunaportal . Only the area to the left of Brauerstraße is original, the other structures are reconstructions or buildings based on historical models.
Alter Markt (north side), 2018. From left to right. To the right : City Palace (theater wing) , Fortunaportal , distant view of Friedrich-Ebert-Straße over the building lots of blocks III and IV, SLB (in the background) , marble obelisk , Nikolaikirche , Staudenhof (in the background at the Nikolaikirche), steeple of the Peter and Paul Church , Old Town Hall and so-called Verbinder - today the Potsdam Museum, Knobelsdorffhaus with Café Central.
City plan by Heinrich Berghaus, 1840

The Old Market is a central square in Potsdam's old town and forms the historical core of the city. Its simultaneous function as market, castle, church and town hall square is unique. It is bordered by the Staudenhof site in the north, the Old Town Hall and the Barberini Palace in the east, the City Palace in the south and the former FH site in the west. The Nikolaikirche and the obelisk are on the square .

With the exception of the Nikolaikirche with Karl Friedrich Schinkel's central building, the Old Market is essentially a spatial creation by Frederick the Great and his architects from the second half of the 18th century based on international models, mainly from Italy and France. In contrast to the Neuer Markt , the Alte Markt was badly damaged or completely destroyed on the night of Potsdam in 1945. It has been rebuilt since 1990.

history

The city ​​palace was originally built from 1666 on the orders of the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm . A castle that protected the Havel crossing at the Long Bridge had already stood in the same place . The old market was redesigned as a Roman piazza under Frederick the Great in the middle of the 18th century and all buildings, including the city palace, were redesigned or given a new facade. Famous buildings of the time, preferably from Italy , but also from France and the Netherlands , which Friedrichs Baumeister tailored to the Potsdam proportions, served as models.

The weekly market of the royal city of Potsdam took place on Tuesdays and Saturdays at the old market. In addition to the church and the obelisk, the market was shaped by the town hall , the market wing of the city palace and the Barberini palace . The Potsdamer horse tram ran through the market since 1880, and the Potsdam tram since 1904 . Alexander von Humboldt lived in an apartment on the east side of the city palace and wrote essential parts of his text Kosmos there , the former street Am Schloß bears his name in his honor. In the middle of the 19th century, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV had the Barberini Palace communalized and made the ballrooms accessible to the public. The remaining rooms were made available to Potsdam associations. After the end of the monarchy , the city ​​council met in the former palace theater on the north side of the city palace. Other rooms were used by the city administration and the city palace became a museum.

After only a few buildings of the historical ensemble had survived the bombings of the Second World War , the square was redesigned. After 1945 the Nikolaikirche and the old town hall were rebuilt, the marble obelisk with Russian marble was restored in 1979. The shaft of the obelisk originally showed medallions of the four Hohenzollern rulers who had a lasting impact on the image of Potsdam: The Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm and the kings Friedrich I , Friedrich Wilhelm I and Friedrich II. During the restoration, they were replaced by portraits of four important architects from Potsdam : Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff , Carl von Gontard , Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Ludwig Persius , to remove the reference to the Hohenzollern. The rebuildable Potsdam City Palace was blown up in 1960 after a Politburo decision of the SED and the remains were removed. The partly badly damaged buildings on the south side of the square were also completely demolished and the square redesigned into a socialist city center. The old market was open on its south side and lost the character of a closed square. To the west, between 1971 and 1977, a modern, functional teaching building was built for the “Institute for Teacher Education” for central teacher training, which was inaugurated in 1977 by Margot Honecker , and shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new theater began on the site of the city palace. The shell of the building was demolished after a few years, after the city council had decided in 1990 to adapt the development of the cityscape to its historical shape. After a new venue for the Hans-Otto-Theater had been opened on the shores of the Tiefen See , the temporary theater building built for this purpose, also known as the tin can because of its corrugated iron facade , was dismantled again in 2007 and the gradual reconstruction of the square began.

  • View of the city ​​palace around 1772

  • 1837: View from the south of the old market, the Nikolaikirche still without a dome

  • Old market around 1900

  • Theater wing of the City Palace with Fortunaportal , Barberini Palace (back left), 1928

  • Eight corners on Schwertfegerstraße, behind it the Nikolaikirche

  • Plögerscher Gasthof on Schloßstraße / corner of Hohewegstraße

  • Schloßstraße and Steubenplatz, on the right the city palace

  • Destruction in World War II

  • University of applied sciences adjoining to the west, 2012

  • Demolition of the University of Applied Sciences, 2018

Buildings

In the 2020s, five true-to-original and four simplified replicas of the earlier development of the block to the west will be built on the site of the former university of applied sciences . The replicas that are true to the original are the Plögerschen Gasthof on Schloßstraße, the Klingner House on Schloßstraße / Alter Markt, the Palazzo Giulio Capra on the Alter Markt and the Palazzo Porto Barbarano and the southwestern eight-corner house on Schwertfegerstraße. The corner house on Alten Markt / Schwertfegerstrasse, the southeast eight-corner house on Schwertfegerstrasse, the northeast eight-corner house on Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse and the hotel "Zum Einsiedler" on Schloßstrasse are intended for the simplified replica . In between, around 40 adapted new buildings with a mixture of living, gastronomy, trade and culture are being built. One third of all apartments are socially subsidized, with the remaining two thirds the rent is ten percent below the local rent index.

The former building of the university of applied sciences (for the house see Institute for Teacher Training Potsdam ) was freed from asbestos in October 2017 and demolished by mid-2018. A special feature was the Klingner house on the corner of Alter Markt 17, which was built by Johann Boumann according to plans by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff and destroyed in 1945. Together with the Knobelsdorffhaus , the building formed an ensemble of buildings opposite, which took up the triangular gables of the southern market wing of the Potsdam City Palace . The palazzi are modifications of Italian originals by Andrea Palladio .

Various initiatives in Potsdam collected signatures against these plans and sought a petition against the redesign and preservation of the building of the former institute for teacher training. Despite a sufficient number of signatures of more than 10 percent of those entitled to vote, the citizens' petition was rejected by the city council, which the administrative court found admissible after a complaint by the initiators in March 2017.

Construction project northwest of the Alter Markt (Block III and Block IV of the lead building concept):

  • Residential and business quarters (under construction since 2019)
  • Steubenplatz with Steuben memorial (in planning)

Closer surroundings of the old market:

Web links

Commons : Alter Markt  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friedrich Nikolai, Description of the royal residence cities Berlin and Potsdam and all the peculiarities located there, Berlin 1779, p. 869, "On the square itself stand the Nikolaikirche and the obelisk".
  2. ^ Friedrich Mielke: Potsdam architecture - the classic Potsdam. Munich 1981.
  3. ↑ Hans Kania: Potsdamer Baukunst: A representation of your historical development. Potsdam 1923.
  4. ^ Helmut Caspar: Princes, heroes, great spirits, historical monuments from the Mark Brandenburg. Berlin Edition 2004, pp. 77–78.
  5. ↑ Christina Emmerich-Focke: Urban planning in Potsdam 1945–1990. Potsdam 1999.
  6. ↑ PNN - Obelisk on Alter Markt completely renovated; November 24, 2014 .
  7. ^ Hans-Joachim Giersberg: Friedrich as builder. Siedler-Verlag, Berlin 2001.
  8. ↑ Friedrich Nikolai: Description of the royal residence cities Berlin and Potsdam and all the peculiarities located there. Berlin 1779, p. 863.
  9. ↑ The author of the most recent Gontard monograph, Astrid Fick, confesses that the Noack House has a "model not known". In: Astrid Fick: Potsdam - Berlin - Bayreuth, Carl Philipp v. Gontard and his bourgeois houses, Immediatbauten and Stadtpalais, Petersberg (Imhof Verlag) 2000, page 87.
  10. ^ Herbert Pée, Die Palastbauten des Andrea Palladio, Würzburg (Konrad Triltsch Verlag) 1941, p. 30 (on the Chiericati).
  11. ↑ Peer Straube: FH demolition: University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam is gone . In: Potsdam's latest news . August 16, 2018 ( pnn.de [accessed August 17, 2018]).
  12. ^ Museum Digital
  13. ↑ Potsdam center
  14. ↑ Planning for the center of Potsdam is picking up speed. , MAZ Online, March 2, 2017
  15. ↑ potsdamermitte.de: Integrated guiding building concept .
  16. ↑ https://www.pnn.de/potsdam/ Wiederaufbau-in-potsdams-mitte-ruecken-bald-die-bagger-an/ 24940120.html
  17. ↑ Waiting for Steuben .

Coordinates: 52 ° 23 ′ 45 ″  N , 13 ° 3 ′ 40 ″  E