Kaiserhalle (Bonn)

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The Kaiserhalle was a traditional meeting place for Bonn students and high school students on Bonn's Kaiserplatz . Erected in the 1870s, it was bombed in 1944, rebuilt in 1955 and demolished in 1970 as part of the underground construction. Today the central Bonn bus station is located here .

prehistory

In 1844 the Bonn-Cölner Eisenbahn -Linie opened, for which Bonn was a terminus station , which was located directly on Poppelsdorfer Allee ; The trains were then turned back towards Cologne on a turntable. Ten years later, the rails were extended up the Rhine to Rolandseck station and the avenue to Poppelsdorf Castle was cut . The turntable was removed and an event hall with an open terrace was built on the open space.

After the war of 1870/71 and the proclamation of the German Empire, streets and squares were named after Kaiser Wilhelm I - in an exuberant patriotism . In Bonn, these were the part of Poppelsdorfer Allee from the Electoral Palace to the new railway line, which became Kaiserplatz , the parallel street on the railway line , now called Kaiserstraße , and the newly built festival hall named Kaiserhalle . In order to hide the mundane railway tracks a little, a fountain was created in the line of sight of the new Kaiserplatz for "embellishment": the Kaiserbrunnen .

Kaiserhalle

The Kaiserhalle was built in the 1870s according to plans by the district architect in Siegburg Wilhelm Eschweiler. It was the student center of Christian fraternities . Associations such as Corps Borussia Bonn , the Student Union of Catholic Theologians Rhenofrankonia , the Landsmannschaft Salia Bonn or KDStV Staufia Bonn , celebrated their foundation festivals and Festkommerse around 1900, preferably in the Kaiserhalle, where they were partly founded, as did the Germania Gymnastics Association (1877 founded in the Kaiserhalle) or the Skiclub Bonn (founded there in 1907). During the Empire and the subsequent Weimar Republic , the terrace with its shady chestnut trees was populated by color- bearing (or in full weight ) fraternity students singing and drinking, together with civilian officers of the Hussar regiment "King Wilhelm". Buntbemützte students and schoolboy went to Sunday services for brunch in the Imperial pub (the way the Catholic Bonn Minster and the Protestant Kreuzkirche is almost equidistant). In Bonn the scene was divided: in the royal court the noble students, in the reading the intellectual students, in the citizens' association the denominational and bourgeois students and in the Kaiserhalle the fraternity students .

At the same time, the National Socialists used the centrally located Kaiserhalle for their agitation : the SA gave out warm soups to the unemployed free of charge . After 1933, the student associations were gradually brought into line. In 1936, a pedestrian underpass for the railway tracks was created to connect and connect to Poppelsdorfer Allee and the location of the Kaiserhalle was upgraded again. During the Second World War, the Kaiserhalle was bombed in the most devastating of the bombing raids on Bonn in the Allied air war on October 18, 1944. It was not rebuilt until 10 years later - in the typical style of the 1950s, but again with a large, tree-planted, shady terrace - and was inaugurated on May 27, 1955. As before, the Kaiserhalle became a meeting place for students and high school students.

In 1968 the beating fraternity students had withdrawn into their homes and left the field to the revolutionary, long-haired and bearded “socialist fellow students” . For the citizens of Bonn, the Emperor Fountain and the Imperial Hall were now the meeting place of bums who like times with Persil turned the fountain to bubble bath or summer at night naked bathing when they let off steam from the beat cellars of the opposite - lying - behind the railway line civic association came.

In 1969, in the course of efforts to create an infrastructure suitable for a federal capital, the construction of an underground tunnel from the main station - under Kaiserplatz to the Hofgarten and further, in a large arc to Bundesstrasse 9 - to Bundeskanzlerplatz (today part of the Stadtbahnbahn Bonn – Bad Godesberg ), for which the Kaiserhalle was demolished on November 2, 1970.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eduard Trier, Willy Weyres (Ed.): Art of the 19th Century in the Rhineland: Architecture II, Profane Buildings and Urban Development , Schwann, Düsseldorf 1980, ISBN 3-590-30252-6 , p. 530.
  2. ^ History of Rhenofrankonia , Student Association of Catholic Theologians Rhenofrankonia
  3. ^ History , Skiclub Bonn
  4. ↑ http://ak-ansichtskarten.de/ak/index (search image no. 7216790)
  5. ^ General-Anzeiger Bonn, January 30, 1973, January 30, 1933 in Bonn
  6. ↑ http://www.ingo-daniels.de/kaiserhalle.htm
  7. ^ A b Paul Metzger: Bonn am Rhein in old views , Volume 1, Second Edition, Zaltbommel 1978, ISBN 978-90-288-3043-1 , p. 36. ( online )
  8. ↑ Der Kaiserplatz - Of Nudists and Baroque Buildings , Bonn City, August 16, 2011

Coordinates: 50 ° 43 '54.5 "  N , 7 ° 5' 59.1"  E