Johannistal (Leipzig)

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The Johannistal 1873, on the right the new observatory , in the back the development of the Talstrasse

The Johannistal is a depression in the south-eastern suburb of Leipzig . Here is the oldest allotment garden in Saxony and the second oldest in Germany, the allotment garden association Johannistal 1832 eV

location

The Johannistal joins the Seeburgviertel to the east . The formerly larger area is now bordered by Stephanstrasse in the west, Johannisallee in the east and the buildings on Prager Strasse in the north and Liebigstrasse in the south. Within these limits, the area has the dimensions of 500 meters long and 150 meters maximum width. The distance to the inner city ring is only 600 meters.

history

The grounds of the Johannistals belonged from time immemorial the Johannis Hospital , which was under municipal administration since the 1391st At its western end there were large sand pits, the so-called council sand pits. The name of the Sandgasse leading to the Johannistal in the Johannisvorstadt, the forerunner of the later Seeburgviertel, and the Sandtor referred to this .

Powder houses and the first Jewish cemetery in the gardens of the Johannistal around 1850

In the central part of the area, the gunpowder houses of the Leipzig merchants were at a safe distance from the city . These were small huts on a fenced-in area and between them high masts for lightning protection . In 1814 the city council approved the construction of a Jewish cemetery next to the powder houses. It was the city's first Jewish cemetery .

At the beginning of the 19th century, the sand pits were exhausted and the area was rather overgrown. In 1832 the widow Amalie Winter from the Johannisvorstadt approached the head of the Johannis Hospital and city council member Moritz Seeburg with the request to clean up a piece of land in the sand pit and create a garden. When the annual rent was three talers , the request was approved and she became the first garden tenant. In 1832 a place in the garden was named after her. Since numerous other garden requests emerged, the city council decided, at the instigation of Seeburg, to transform the area into an allotment garden and to transfer the lease to the hospital. As a job creation measure, the project was quickly implemented and the "Johannistal" was founded at the St. John's Festival in 1833 with a solemn inauguration ceremony, which officially bore this name from then on. The Midsummer Festival was celebrated as a large folk festival over the next few years.

In August 1833 three linden trees were planted on the northern border of the Johannistal and one more in May 1834. They were named König-Anton- Linde, Friedrich-August- Linde, Constitutional Linden (according to the Saxon constitution of 1831) and Marienlinde (after Princess Maria (1796-1865)). The linden trees gave the later Lindenstrasse, now An der Verfassungslinde. Today there are four linden trees with the original names on the Johannistal area.

The complex comprised over 200 gardens. The aim of creating gardens for the self-sufficiency of the poorer classes was not achieved in so far as many people could not afford the annual rent of three talers. The intention to still want to take care of oneself from the gardens must have been great, because in the middle of the 19th century a police station was built in the Johannistal. In the 1860s around 10% of the rent had to be spent on guarding the parcels.

In the middle of the 19th century a sponsor erected a monument to the Saxon King Anton (1755–1836) in the Johannistal , a sandstone block with a cast iron bust. The bust was stolen in 1917. In 1858, the sponsor of the Moritz Seeburg facility, who died in 1851, was given a memorial stone by his widow, which is still there today. In 1860/1861 the new university observatory was built on the grounds of the powder houses , and in 1864 the last burial took place in the Jewish cemetery due to lack of space.

  • Johannis festival scene around 1840

  • One of the four linden trees

  • The police station in Johannistal

  • The King Anton Monument

  • The Seeburg Stone 2011

The reduction of the Johannistaler Gardens began towards the end of the 19th century, initially with the construction of Stephanstraße and the development between it and Talstraße, the old western border of the complex, whereby a strip of land about 160 meters wide was used. Now the observatory was right on Stephanstrasse. Further buildings on Liebigstrasse followed in 1892 with the gynecological clinic and the university's skin clinic in 1931.

In 1912 the gardens were taken over by the city council. The lease was now 15 pfennigs per m² and year. At the end of the 1920s, several public parks were built in Leipzig. A public park was also planned for the Johannistal. To prevent this, the garden tenants founded an allotment garden association in 1927 and were able to maintain the gardens.

In 1937, the National Socialist rulers removed the Jewish cemetery in Johannistal and turned it into garden land. The garden was also badly affected by the air raid on Leipzig on December 4, 1943 . After the Second World War , one of the Leipzig rubble railways led into the Johannistal. The allotment gardeners were able to successfully defend themselves against this with the Soviet military administration . But there were already 25,000 m³ of rubble from the Augustusplatz area.

During the GDR era, the allotment gardens provided important services. The allotment gardeners in the Johannistal were required to produce 38 tons of fruit and vegetables per year. From 1955 the loss of garden land continued. From 1955 to 1961 the new building of the Physiological Institute of the University (Carl-Ludwig-Institut) was built at the end of Liebigstraße including gardens, in 1976 the administration building of the combine chemical plant construction Leipzig-Grimma on Leninstraße (Prager Straße) and in the 1990s University nuclear medicine buildings.

The Johannistal 1832 association still uses 141 listed gardens of the former 221 on an area of ​​4.85 hectares.

literature

  • Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z . PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , p. 274
  • Thomas Biskupek: Inventory Johannistal . Leipziger Blätter, No. 12, 1988, pp. 88-95
  • Irene Altmann: The St. John's Festival in Leipzig . In: Leipziger Osten, No. 2, Verlag im Wissenschaftszentrum, Leipzig 1994, ISBN 3-930433-00-1 , pp. 11-13

Web links

Commons : Johannistal  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ kgv-johannistal.de. Retrieved April 1, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Gina Klank, Gernot Griebsch: Lexikon Leipziger Straßeennamen , Verlag im Wissenschaftszentrum Leipzig, 1995, ISBN 3-930433-09-5 , p. 20
  3. ↑ The linden trees of the Johannistal. Retrieved April 1, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Police station in Johannistal. Retrieved April 1, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Leipziger Blätter No. 12, p. 91

Coordinates: 51 ° 19 ′ 59.1 ″  N , 12 ° 23 ′ 25.9 ″  E