Kaiserworth
The historic Gildehaus Kaiserworth has stood on the market square in Goslar since 1484 and is now used as a hotel .
The building
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Abundantia
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Hercules
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Original usage
This former building of the clothing tailors or “Worth Guild” was built in 1494 on the foundations of the first guild house from 1274. The medieval association of long-distance and wholesale merchants called itself in Goslar "Worthgilde" and was the most important advisable guild .
The impressive building with its arcades and console figures testifies to the wealth of the owners and the city at that time. The figures of " Abundantia ", the goddess of abundance, and the "little ducat man" crouching under her refer to this fact .
Building description
The building is a eaves continuous , two-storey, late-Gothic building with a gabled roof . A polygonal bay window is set in the central axis of the upper floor , which continues in the roof area as a turret with a curved hood . The roof turret, like the dormers, are not original. They were put on later.
A hall on the ground floor opens onto the market with six arcades . It offered space for stalls. On the east side are the stone sculptures of Hercules and Abundantia with the male ducat below. In the niches between the windows on the upper floor there are baroque wooden figures of eight emperors. They rest on consoles with figurative decorations and are crowned by canopies . During the reign of the depicted emperors (919 to 1138), Goslar was founded in 922 and, with its city wall, reached the size of today's old town in the 12th century, a size that has remained unchanged for almost 700 years.
The two stone sculptures are original, while the imperial figures can only be identified from 1684. Before that, figures from ancient mythology are said to have stood there.
Console figures
Ducat male
Today's usage and importance
The house has been operated as an inn and hotel since 1831. Because of the neighboring hotel "Römischer Kaiser", it was renamed from "Die Worth" to "Kaiserworth" in 1836, with the intention of upgrading it.
Like the Rammelsberg , Goslar's market square and with it the hotel were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992.
Meaning of worth
There are three meanings for the word “Worth”
- House space, property (Werner Hillebrand, Goslar)
- Werder, a raised land surrounded by water (Hotel Kaiserworth)
- Warft, Wurt , a settlement hill on islands
literature
- Werner Hillebrand: Goslar , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich, pp. 17, 34, ISBN 3-422-00086-0
- Georg Dehio, edited by Gerd Weiß: Handbook of German Art Monuments, Bremen, Lower Saxony, revised 1992, ISBN 3-422-03022-0
Web links
- Hotel website with pictures and interiors
Coordinates: 51 ° 54 ′ 22 " N , 10 ° 25 ′ 43.8" E