Justice building at Reichenspergerplatz
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The Justice Building at Reichenspergerplatz is a historic building in Cologne-Neustadt-Nord (Reichenspergerplatz 1, 50670 Cologne). The building in which the Cologne Higher Regional Court , the Cologne Public Prosecutor's Office and parts of the Cologne District Court ( land registry , commercial register , probate court, depository department, church exit point, foreclosure court and paying agent ) are located is a listed building . Since the end of 2017, the building has also been the seat of the victim protection officers of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
history
The higher regional court Cologne was on June 21, 1819 by King Friedrich Wilhelm III. founded as the Rhenish Court of Appeal . It was given its current name of the Higher Regional Court with the entry into force of the Reich Justice Act on October 1, 1879. The building was built according to drafts drawn up by the Prussian Ministry of Public Works under the direction of the secret building councilor Paul Thoemer . The planner Thoemer, a Berlin architect who specializes in courthouses , had already built the judicial building on Appellhofplatz in 1893 . Its capacities were no longer sufficient by 1907. That is why a new court building , also designed by Paul Thoemer, was planned for the Higher Regional Court and for the civil chambers of the Regional Court, the project “Justice building on Reichensperger Platz”. The building supervisor Reinhold Ahrns and the government builders Hans Erberich and Hans Lucht were entrusted with the local construction management and the sculpting work was carried out by Karl Menser from Bonn . The plan provided for a plenary hall, 35 meeting rooms and 400 business rooms as well as some apartments for employees. At that time it was the largest secular building in Cologne with a floor area of 12,500 m². Excavation work began on October 10, 1907, and the courthouse was opened on October 7, 1911.
It supplemented the justice building on Appellhofplatz , which today houses the Cologne Administrative Court and the Cologne Finance Court . At the time of the inauguration in 1911, the courthouse was the largest in Germany and had the most modern equipment, with electric light, telephone collection system, elevator and electrical dust extraction system.
After the Second World War, the building was in ruins. It was rebuilt in the 1950s, although large parts of the facade decorations were not restored. In the 1980s and 1990s, the building was extensively renovated, during which the main staircase was restored to its original form with a dome .
architecture
The historicist building with basement covers an entire block and is surrounded by five streets. The main facade with the entrance to Reichenspergerplatz, named after the lawyer and politician August Reichensperger , is designed as a concave quarter arch. It is a feudal five-storey building complex in neo-baroque style, the central project of which is framed by two protruding side wings, which also end in pavilion-like projections . The 72 meter high roof turret , which was specially installed at the request of Kaiser Wilhelm II , was destroyed in the Second World War and was not rebuilt afterwards. In the middle of this facade is the richly designed risalit with the main portal . The jewelry consists of columns , pilasters , capitals , consoles and sculptures . Three large courtyards (courtyards A, B and C) and four small inner courtyards illuminate the inner wings of the building. Another attraction within the building is the memorial for the fallen judicial employees of the First World War , which is located on the first floor in hall H.
Justitia , the goddess of justice, is depicted in a frieze above the main portal . After the main portal, one arrives at the high entrance hall, which - as in many courthouses of that time - with its open, symmetrical staircases forms the highlight of the interior design. The conference rooms and business rooms can be reached via the central staircase with skylight. The building also has seven more stairwells, each at the corners of the building and the middle of the outer corridors, in order to get to another floor. The corridors with a total length of more than four kilometers connect the building wings. There are also several elevators within the building.
bunker
In front of the building under the lawn of Reichenspergerplatz is an air raid shelter from 1942, consisting of an M-shaped tube with multiple kinks, 1.50 m wide and 2.20 m high and about 200 m² floor area. The non- iron reinforced concrete ceiling is about 30 centimeters thick and about 30 centimeters below the lawn edge. The bunker was officially approved for 180 people. The Cologne Higher Regional Court used the facility as a file repository until 1979. It was only rediscovered in 2009 and can now be viewed on the first Sunday of each month.
Started
Bunker tube
Except ventilation system
Toilet facility
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literature
- Georg Dehio , edited by Claudia Euskirchen, Olaf Gisbertz, Ulrich Schäfer: Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmäler. North Rhine-Westphalia I Rhineland . Deutscher Kunstverlag Munich / Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-422-03093-X , p. 754.
- Wolfgang Meyer: The Justice Building Reichenspergerplatz in Cologne ... published by the Higher Regional Court of Cologne, 2011 (12 pages)
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Franz Josef Ploenes, Justice without space , in Justice Coloniensis , 1981, pp 320-322.
- ^ Wolfram Hagspiel : Cologne in photographs from the imperial era . Regionalia Verlag, Rheinbach 2016, ISBN 978-3-95540-227-3 , p. 143.
- ↑ Klara van Eyll, Old address books tell , 1993, p. 202 .
- ↑ Alexander Kierdorf, Cologne: An Architecture Guide , 1999, No. 120.
- ↑ Anne Krick in rundschau-online.de from September 6, 2013: Reichensberger Platz guided tours through the “fear bunker” , accessed on September 12, 2016.
- ↑ Bunker at Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger online from July 20, 2015 (or July 21, p. 26).
- ↑ Bunker at Express online from May 30, 2015 .
Coordinates: 50 ° 57 ′ 16.4 " N , 6 ° 57 ′ 45.4" E