Kaiserstrasse (Mainz)

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Kaiserstrasse with a view of the Christ Church

The Kaiser Street is about one kilometer long Wilhelminian Boulevard in Mainz . It is the main axis of the Mainzer Neustadt, laid out by Eduard Kreyssig (1830-1897) from 1873, and one of the city's three main axes leading to the Rhine, along with Ludwigsstraße and the Große Bleiche . It is not to be confused with the also the city of Mainz in contact, according to Saarbruecken leading imperial road , one after Napoleon I named highway.

history

Kaiserstraße in 1892 a decade before the Christ Church was built
The Hans-Klenk-Brunnen was donated by the entrepreneur of the same name on Whitsun 1962 for the 2000 year celebration of the city of Mainz and handed over to Mayor Franz Stein. The fountain stands on the green belt of Kaiserstraße in front of the Christ Church.

The western part of the Schönborn fortress ring was on the site . After its demolition in the course of the city expansion, it was Kreyßig's task to redesign the northwest. His conception of the New Town as a grid-like network with symmetrical axes, diagonals and public spaces aligned with representative buildings is based on the model of Georges-Eugène Haussmann , the Parisian city planner.

The Kaiserstrasse was intended to link the old Mainz with the new Mainz. The first naming took place in 1880 under the name Boulevard , which should indicate the roots of the area. Eight years later it was renamed "Kaiserstraße" in honor of Kaiser Wilhelm I. In the middle of the street there is a park-like green area with playgrounds and sports fields and a large ensemble of fountains, the Hans Klenk fountain. On the sides facing the street, the park is bordered by rich paving ornaments, which were partially destroyed when the complex was redesigned in the last century. A bust of the city architect Kreyssig stands in the southern part of the park named after him.

course

City map section from the end of the 19th century

The street width is almost 60 meters. At its western end it widens to almost 90 meters wide, at its eastern end to almost 100 meters. Here, in the space-like urban situation created in this way, in the middle of the green belt stands the monumental Christ Church , the largest Protestant church in the city, built from 1896 to 1903. With its high Neurenaissancekuppel it represents not only the symbol of the imperial road, but the entire new town. The rest of the building of the road there, especially because of war damage, mostly from buildings of the first post-war decades, as well as occasional four-storey Wilhelminian in the style of historicism .

The Kaiserstraße begins near the main train station and the Bonifazius Towers , passes the buildings of the former Reichsbahndirektion as well as the former French embassy to find the Rheinallee beyond the Christ Church. To the east is the residential area in the Bleichenviertel, which merges into the Schlossviertel. In its complete course it is part of the federal highway 40 . Today it has three lanes in each direction.

The annual Rosenmontagszug (Rosenmontagszug) sets up in Boppstraße and first walks down Kaiserstraße towards the main train station, and then on the other side of the street towards the Rhine and there goes around the Christ Church.

Monument protection

Cultural monument, built in 1902: the only surviving example of a high-quality advertising inscription integrated into the facade at Kaiserstraße 70

Kaiserstraße, including the adjacent buildings, is protected as a monument zone . The General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate also lists the following buildings in the Kaiserstraße in the “Informational Directory of Cultural Monuments” for the city of Mainz (see also: List of cultural monuments in Mainz-Neustadt [even house numbers] and List of cultural monuments in Mainz-Neustadt [ odd house numbers and no. 2 and 56]):

  • Kaiserstrasse, Kaisertor
  • Kaiserstrasse no., Kreyssig monument bust of Eduard Kreyßig , 1904 by Nikolaus Lipp
  • Kaiserstraße 2, four-story row house, neo-renaissance, 1890, architect Schumacher & Greiner
  • Kaiserstraße 5, building of the Reichsbahndirektion , three-part flat roof building, shell-lime-clad reinforced concrete skeleton building with block-like side wings, 1936/37, on the 1st floor covered bridge to the former administration building
  • Kaiserstrasse 9
  • Kaiserstraße 18, sophisticated four-storey residential building, neo-renaissance, 1881, architect Rudolf Opfermann
  • Kaiserstraße 22, stately corner residential and commercial building, neo-renaissance and mannerist forms, 1877, architect Paul Gustav Rühl , extended in 1884
  • Kaiserstraße 24, driveway, sandstone pillars and high-quality grating, 1877
  • Kaiserstraße 24A, Bezirkssparkasse Mainz, Gründerzeit building, sloping corner with a lantern-crowned dome, rich neo-baroque and art nouveau decor, 1904, architect Fr. Phil. Gill
  • Kaiserstraße 31, four-storey late historical corner house with mansard roof, 1889, architect Ernst Zehrlaut ; From 1933 to 1945 the Gestapo headquarters in Mainz was located here (as a branch of the Gestapo Darmstadt) with a torture prison in the inner courtyard
  • Kaiserstraße 35, sophisticated four-story house, rich neo-renaissance decor, probably 1883, architect Philipp Baum
  • Kaiserstraße 37, four-story corner house with symmetrical facades and accentuated corner, re. 1890
  • Kaiserstraße 38, four-story residential building, roof end with cornice and egg stick, 1881, architect Haenlein
  • Kaiserstraße 49, late historical single-family house with extended mansard roof, 1895, architect August Hock
  • Kaiserstraße 52, former branch of the Reichsbank, corner building broken on three sides, neo-renaissance, 1892, architect Havestadt Contag, Berlin
  • Kaiserstraße 56 2 flanking buildings of the Christ Church
  • Kaiserstraße 60, five-storey residential and commercial building, plastered and sandstone facade with Gothic shapes, 1902, architect Reinhold Weisse
  • Kaiserstraße 63, single-family house with basalt-clad basement, floor plan and furnishings 1900, architect Philipp Krebs , facade design by Emanuel von Seidl , Munich
  • Kaiserstraße 64, five-storey house, brick facade with Art Nouveau shapes, 1902/03, architect Wilhelm Hahn
  • Kaiserstraße 66, five-storey row house with an emphatically vertically structured facade, 1902, architect Peter Scheuren
  • Kaiserstraße 70, Ernst-Ludwig-Straße 11, originally a three-part assembly, 1902, architect Oscar Hauswald ; No. 70 stately corner building, facades with detailed forms from Gothic, Weser Renaissance and Art Nouveau, large relief field with Art Nouveau stucco framing, from No. 11 there is an elaborate neo-Gothic door frame and loggia balcony

Web links

Commons : Kaiserstraße Mainz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate: Informational directory of cultural monuments: District-free city of Mainz (PDF; 1.6 MB)
  2. Gestapo headquarters in Mainz at future-history, accessed in May 2020.

Coordinates: 50 ° 0 '18.97 "  N , 8 ° 15' 52.09"  E