Künstlerhaus (Leipzig)
The Künstlerhaus in Leipzig was the club house of the Leipziger Künstlerverein. The building on today's Nikischplatz , built from 1899 to 1900 and destroyed in World War II, was a building in Leipzig Art Nouveau .
competition
The Leipzig Artists' Association founded in 1858 in the Schützenhaus on Wintergartenstrasse , an association of visual artists and architects , met in different places, most recently in the Italian Garden , Lessingstrasse 30. In March 1899, the association's building committee decided to launch an architectural competition to build a new clubhouse .
The competition participants had the difficult task of planning a new building on a plot of land at the end of Bosestrasse, which had previously been considered non-buildable. The plot of land between today's Nikischplatz and Zentralstraße is in the outer southern corner of Nikischplatz, where two residential buildings at right angles to each other approach each other up to a small distance of 8.50 meters, so that only this width borders the public street. In addition, there is a public passage across the property to Zentralstrasse, which was entered in the land register as an easement and which had to be retained in the event of development. The L-shaped building site with an area of more than 2,000 m² and a depth of over 60 meters was therefore almost not for sale.
The first prize went to the competition design "Spring" by the Leipzig architect Fritz Drechsler . Drechsler was then commissioned with the execution; the building is now considered his main work. Despite limited financial resources, he was able to engage a large number of younger local artists for the artistic design of the building, which was completed in 1900. 20 sculptors and painters from Leipzig took part in the construction and furnishing, among them Max Klinger , Carl Seffner , Adolf Lehnert , Johannes Hartmann , Franz Bender and Werner Stein .
architecture
The structure of the building, especially the roof zone, gave the house an idiosyncratic appearance. The narrow facade facing Nikischplatz was determined by the large glass surfaces of the studio windows. The upper kidney-shaped window by Franz Bender was surrounded by a colored majolica relief created by Adolf Lehnert .
Between two large stone pillars that ended in ancient herms , slightly moving horizon structures closed off the façade, consisting of light iron bars, from the roof terrace. Other design elements were decorative reliefs and colored ceramics.
Inside the house there were many white surfaces with colored effects in the form of glass windows, colored woodwork and decorative painting in between. The richly intertwined Art Nouveau lighting fixtures were particularly elaborately designed.
The remarkable club room served as the domicile of the Leipzig architects until it was destroyed. Fritz Drechsler won a Grand Prix at the World Exhibition in St. Louis in 1904 for designing the music room .
The painter and sculptor Max Klinger was an honorary member of the artists' association. So he committed u. a. his 50th and 60th birthday celebrations in the Künstlerhaus. Two works of art in the building illustrate his outstanding position in the world of artists in Leipzig. In the bronze relief "Eva, Adam handing over the apple of knowledge", created by Carl Seffner, to the left of the portal of the house, Adam Klinger's facial features were shown. The sower on a relief by Johannes Hartmann in the dining room also looked like Max Klinger.
opening
The Künstlerhaus was inaugurated on October 27, 1900. The address of the new building was Bosestrasse 9, the square in front of the house was named Platz am Künstlerhaus . After the death of the Gewandhauskapellmeister Arthur Nikisch , who lived on the other side of the square across from the Künstlerhaus, it was renamed Nikischplatz on July 25, 1922 . This also involved the change of address for the Künstlerhaus in Nikischplatz 2.
At the opening of the house, the architect Fritz Schumacher organized a gala performance in which, after the Largo by Georg Friedrich Handel and a prologue composed by Schumacher himself, the festival play “Palaeophron and Neoterpe” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , for which Schumacher had designed the set, was performed .
Spaces
In the artist house there were studios, apartments, club and club rooms as well as utility rooms. The exhibition rooms were on the ground floor, the banqueting and dining rooms as well as the library and board rooms on the first floor. In addition to the Leipzig Artists 'Association , the General German Art Cooperative and the Association of Leipzig Architects had their headquarters here, as did the Leipzig Artists' Association , the Leipzig Annual Exhibition and the General German Art Cooperative .
In addition, there were several public guest rooms in the house, the Künstlerhaus restaurant , an artist café, a bowling alley on the ground floor and a dining room on the first floor. There was concert entertainment every evening in the restaurant.
Until 1937 the house was also a center of the Jewish Cultural Association , the Jewish Theater Association played here.
destruction
The Künstlerhaus was completely destroyed by the air raids on December 4, 1943, along with many other historical buildings in Leipzig city center.
In May 1951, the ruins were removed down to the limestone portal on Nikischplatz that is still standing today.
The preserved portal was renovated in 2013 with donations and given the historical "Kuenstler-Haus" logo, which was modeled on it. Two new house signs were installed, the ceremonial unveiling of these took place on December 5, 2013. In addition, the restored monument was re-erected. The memorial stone created by the sculptor Hans Zeißig for three artists who fell in World War I shows a Pegasus struck by lightning . The stone that stood in the public passage to Zentralstrasse was undamaged when the house was destroyed.
gallery
Stairwell
Portal Zentralstraße 10 with sculptures by Johannes Hartmann
Bronze relief "Adam and Eve" by Carl Seffner on the portal, Adam has the features of Max Klinger
In the courtyard, on the right the "artist bar"
Advertisement of the restaurant in the Künstlerhaus (1906)
Memorial to fallen artists
literature
- The new artist house in Leipzig. In: The art. Monthly magazine for fine and applied arts. Fourth volume. Applied arts - the "decorative arts". Volume IV, Publishing House F. Bruckmann, Munich 1901, pp. 234–239.
- Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z. Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2005, p. 328, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 .
- Wolfgang Hocquél : Leipzig. Architecture from the Romanesque to the present. Passage-Verlag, Leipzig 2010, p. 319 f., ISBN 3-932900-54-5 .
- Forgotten avant-garde. Künstlerhaus and Nikischplatz. ( Leipziger Blätter , special issue), Passage-Verlag, Leipzig 2016, ISBN 978-3-95415-055-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ulla Heise: City of Berlin. In: A guest in old Leipzig. Heinrich Hugendubel Verlag, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-88034-907-X , p. 35.
- ↑ a b c Ulla Heise: Künstlerhaus. In: A guest in old Leipzig. P. 128.
- ↑ a b The lengths of the parcel that still exists today were measured in the ALK Leipzig 1: 500 as of October 13, 2010.
- ↑ a b Ulla Heise, Nortrud Lippold: Leipzig on foot. 22 city tours. Forum Verlag / VSA-Verlag, Leipzig / Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-87975-543-4 , p. 122 f.
- ↑ Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig: Letter of congratulations with letterhead from the Leipziger Künstlerverein on the 80th birthday of its honorary member Hugo Licht (February 21, 1921, inv. No. Dipl. BIII / 18.2)
- ↑ Gina Klank; Gernot Griebsch: Lexicon of Leipzig street names. Verlag im Wissenschaftszentrum Leipzig, Leipzig 1995, p. 157, ISBN 3-930433-09-5 .
- ↑ The art. Born in 1901, p. 238 f. (the wording of Schumacher's prologue is also printed there)
- ↑ Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig: negative demolition of the rubble of the Leipziger Künstlerhaus , May 1951 (Inv.-No. W 8430 a)
- ↑ a b City of Leipzig: Photo session Künstlerhaus. Portal renovation and new house board. Media information from December 3, 2013 (PDF; 29.09 kB)
Coordinates: 51 ° 20 '22 .4 " N , 12 ° 22' 5.2" E