Inner West Suburb
The Innere Westvorstadt is a residential area in Leipzig , immediately west of the city center. The term is mainly used in historical, urban and regional contexts. In common usage, the area is (also around the colonnaded street Kolle called) and Dorotheenplatz that instead of Reichel's garden was built, rather colonnades quarter called. The northern part, around the Schauspielhaus and the bar mile Gottschedstrasse , on the other hand, is known as the theater district. The Leipzig Theater , the University of Music and Theater , the Theaterhaus Schille and resident artists in Kolonnadenstrasse shape the quarter artistically.
location
The quarter is immediately west of the center of Leipzig. It is bordered by the main roads Jahnallee and Ranstädter Steinweg in the north, Goerdeler-, Dittrich- and Martin-Luther-Ring in the east, Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße in the south, and Friedrich-Ebert-Straße in the west. Neighboring districts are the Waldstrasse district in the north, the Bach district with the Johannapark in the west and the music district in the south.
After the municipal subdivision of 1992, the inner west suburb together with the Bachviertel, the Johannapark and the former area of the German University of Physical Culture (DHfK) form the district center-west .
history
Gardens in front of the city
In the Middle Ages, only the Naundörfchen in the northernmost tip of today's Westvorstadt (between Goerdelerring and Ranstädter Steinweg) was settled. The Via Regia , an important west-east long-distance trade route, ran on today's Ranstädter Steinweg.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Leipzig grew beyond its city walls, with the first residential areas emerging to the north, east and south. In the river landscape west of the city, extensive development was not yet possible because of the risk of flooding. Generous gardens were laid out here by wealthy merchants for relaxation and representation. The most important were the gardens of Apels and Richters as well as the gardens of Kleinbosische and Lurgenstein . The current structure was shaped by Apple's garden in particular. The paths laid out in the form of a fan determine today's road network and the colonnades of the main path gave the colonnade street its name.
Development since the 19th century
After the merchant Erdmann Traugott Reichel acquired Apels Garten in 1787 , the area got its first larger buildings. In Reichel's garden created summer homes, businesses and homes, where people such as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , FA Brockhaus and BG Teubner lived and worked. The area-wide development is closely linked to Reichel's grandson Carl Heine . Since the river was regulated, drained and parceled out of the garden in 1840, the area was almost completely built on until the end of the 19th century. Encouraged by Leipzig's rapid growth, neighboring gardens such as Rudolph's Garden and Lurgenstein's Garden were also built on. The most important buildings of this time were the Catholic Church , the Central Hall and the Great Community Synagogue .
Around the turn of the 20th century, the growing economic importance of Leipzig was reflected in the quarter. Due to the proximity to the city center, many buildings gave way to large, public and representative buildings, especially on the Promenadenring. The commandant's office, the Kosmoshaus, the Künstlerhaus , the Centraltheater and the building of the Alte Leipziger Versicherung were built around Gottschedstraße . For this purpose, the Pleißemühlgraben was also vaulted in 1898/99 .
By the Nazis saw the first senseless destruction. On November 9th and 10th, 1938, the Great Community Synagogue and the Ez-Chaim Synagogue were destroyed. The latter was donated by Chaim Eitingon and opened in 1922 as the city's second largest synagogue. Numerous relocated stumbling blocks are evidence of a lively Jewish life in what was then Inner Westvorstadt. During the air raids on Leipzig in World War II , the central and southern parts of the district were destroyed across the board and, by Leipzig standards, very badly.
After 1945
Reconstruction after 1945 made slow progress. In 1954/55 the Central Theater was initially redesigned as the Schauspiel Leipzig . Some plans for the area-wide demolition or a thoroughfare across the district, as they appear in some concepts from the 1950s, were not implemented. Rather, the first cooperative residential buildings were built between 1958 and 1960, in the vicinity of which the old Promenadenstrasse (now Käthe-Kollwitz-Strasse) and Westplatz were relocated in 1960/62. The district close to the center hardly changed until the 1980s. A renovation concept from 1982 finally envisaged the experimental renovation of the other old buildings and the construction of prefabricated buildings in between in the old streets. The new building, which was completed in 1990, still characterizes the colonnaded district with bay windows, loggias and ornamented facades. Kolonnadenstrasse was one of the state's model streets in the last few years of the GDR. Many artists have settled there today.
The existing old buildings, especially in the northern part, were renovated from 1990 onwards. The VEB Drahtchemie factory complex on Zimmerstrasse, located in the middle of the residential area, was shut down and replaced in 1995-97 by the post-modern new “Dorotheenhof” building based on a design by the Florentine architect Adolfo Natalini . At the same time, Dresdner Bank (now Commerzbank) had a large office complex built between Dittrichring and Zentralstrasse. During this time, other remaining vacant lots were closed by new residential and commercial buildings. In the 1990s, Gottschedstrasse developed into a popular “pub mile” with a large number of restaurants and associated “outdoor seating” on the footpaths.
The previously vaulted Pleißemühlgraben was brought back "to light" south of Gottschedstrasse in 1997. In order to cope with the lack of parking space, a five-storey car park was built in 1998 between Altem Amtshof and Otto-Schill-Straße. Since 2001, a striking memorial has been commemorating the destroyed Great Community Synagogue, which traces the floor plan of the destroyed building on an area of 12 × 12 meters, on which there are 140 empty bronze chairs. The former headquarters of the Alte Leipziger Versicherung on Dittrichring, which served as the "House of German-Soviet Friendship " during the GDR era , has been used since 2002 as the second building of the "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" University of Music and Theater after its renovation . The population of the inner west suburb rose from 4440 in 2000 to around 6200 in 2014.
literature
- Vera Denzer, Andreas Dix, Haik Thomas Porada (eds.): Leipzig. A regional study in the Leipzig area. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2015. Section Westvorstadt , pp. 182–185.
- Hanns Börner, Niels Gormsen , Hella Müller: The lost Westviertel. Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-936508-34-5
- Pro Leipzig (Ed.): Innere Westvorstadt - A historical and urban planning study. 1998.
Individual evidence
- ^ Center-West. In: Vera Denzer, Andreas Dix, Haik Thomas Porada (eds.): Leipzig. A regional study in the Leipzig area. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2015, p. 184.
- ↑ a b Center-West. In: Vera Denzer, Andreas Dix, Haik Thomas Porada (eds.): Leipzig. A regional study in the Leipzig area. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2015, p. 182.
- ^ A b Niels Gormsen : The structural development of the Kolonnadenviertel after 1990. Bürgererverein Kolonnadenviertel e. V.
- ^ Center-West. In: Vera Denzer, Andreas Dix, Haik Thomas Porada (eds.): Leipzig. A regional study in the Leipzig area. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2015, p. 185.
Websites
- History of the neighborhood. In: Website of the citizens' association Kolonnadenviertel e. V. Accessed September 4, 2018 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 20 '17.1 " N , 12 ° 22' 4.4" E