Composting yard
The Kompostellhof (also: the Kompostell ) was a large yard in the old town of Frankfurt am Main . The courtyard, which was built in the 13th century, belonged to the Frankfurt Teutonic Order House and served as a hostel for pilgrims on their journey to the grave of the Apostle Jacob in Santiago de Compostela . In the early 19th century, the yard was used by the Jewish community , and both the philanthropist and the chemical company Cassella have their roots here. There was also a synagogue here for about 80 years . The building complex was badly damaged in the air raids of 1944 and then demolished.
location
The composting yard was located in the far east of the city expansion in the 12th century, directly on the city wall . The castle-like enclosure stretched from Dominikanergasse (which was built in the 19th century and still exists today) south to Predigergasse (also after the Fronhof ), a street that no longer exists today, on which the main entrance was originally.
In the immediate vicinity there were other larger courtyards owned by the church. The most important neighbor was to the north, on the other side of Dominikanergasse, namely the Dominican monastery . The direct neighbor in the southeast was the Fronhof of the Bartholomäusstift , whose entrance was at the end of Predigergasse right next to that of the composting area. On the opposite, i.e. southern, side of this street was the Arnsburger Hof , the farmyard of the Arnsburg monastery .
Dominican monastery, Kompostellhof and Fronhof bordered the city wall to the east, which had two mighty watchtowers here, the Mönchsturm named after the Dominicans and the Fronhofturm . Beyond the wall was the southern end of Judengasse and in front of the southern gate was the Judenmarkt . The inner Fischerfeld adjoining to the south was only included in the fortification ring in the 17th century and remained undeveloped until the Fischerfeldviertel was established (from 1793).
Usage history
The composting pit was a stop on the Way of St. The neighboring Arnsburger Hof had a chapel in which the St. James pilgrims who lived in the Kompostell could hear mass.
The Teutonic Order sold the farm to the Archdiocese of Mainz in 1570 . It lost this to the city in 1803 through secularization .
In his autobiography Poetry and Truth (1.1), Johann Wolfgang Goethe describes how he discovered Frankfurt in the 1750s as a child and also mentions the composting yard:
“But what attracted the child's attention most were the many small towns in the city, the fortresses in the fortress, the walled monastery districts, and the more or less castle-like rooms from earlier centuries: for example the Nuremberg court , the composting site, the Braunfels, the ancestral home of the von Stallburg family , and several celebrations that were later set up for apartments and commercial use. "
Around 1800 the structural environment changed considerably due to the abandonment of the city walls. The Fronhofturm was demolished in 1793, the Mönchsturm collapsed in 1795, and the moat was filled in. The first urban expansion in over 400 years was prepared on the previously undeveloped Fischerfeld, and the eastern old town opened to the east.
In the course of the reconstruction of the Jewish ghetto, which was destroyed by a French bombardment in 1796, and in view of its inhuman overcrowding, there were concrete plans around 1806-08 to expand the ghetto to include the now vacant areas of the Dominican monastery and the composting yard. The then sovereign Karl Theodor von Dalberg confirmed the ghetto principle in the Jewish population of 1808. However, there was agreement that the living conditions there had to be improved and that the Jewish quarter had to be expanded spatially.
As a result, the Jewish community acquired parts of the composting yard. In 1813, classrooms and teacher's apartments were built for a primary school as well as the important Jewish Philanthropin teaching institute founded in 1804 in Judengasse . A synagogue was set up at the northern entrance on Dominikanergasse, which has now broken through to the Judenmarkt .
Other buildings on the farm were bought by David Löb Cassel, who had been running a spice shop with his brother-in-law Isaac Reiss in Judengasse since 1798, which now had considerably larger operating areas in the composting area. Cassel later took on the name Leopold Cassella , his company later moved to Fechenheim and developed under the name Cassella Farbwerke Mainkur into a global corporation in the chemical and paint industry.
The question of expanding the ghetto was already superfluous in 1811, when the now Grand Duke Dalberg granted the Jews full civil equality and abolished the ghetto. The Fischerfeldviertel on the other side of the Jewish market, which was then busy building , now became the second Jewish quarter of the city, albeit on a voluntary basis, and in the second half of the 19th century the Ostend became the third.
The Jewish institutions established in the Kompostell moved into more representative new buildings in the Fischerfeldviertel in the course of the 19th century. In 1845 the philanthropist and elementary school received a new schoolhouse in Rechneigrabenstrasse , which at the time was considered the most beautiful in town. After the split in the Jewish community in 1851, through which the main synagogue in Judengasse came under the sovereignty of the liberal community, which was heavily influenced by philanthropists , the minority wing of the orthodox Israelite religious community built its own synagogue and a primary school on the corner of Schützenstrasse and Rechneigrabenstrasse , which ran up to Opening of the Friedberger Anlage Synagogue in 1907 remained the center of Orthodox Judaism in Frankfurt. The conservative congregation, establishing itself as the middle ground between the two wings, continued to hold its services in the synagogue in the Kompostellhof until it was able to inaugurate a newly built, representative synagogue on the Judenmarkt in 1882, the Horovitz Synagogue , better known as the Börneplatz synagogue after the renaming of the Judenmarkt .
The buildings of the composting plant were destroyed in the air raids from 22nd to 24th. Badly damaged in March 1944 and burned out. However, the outer walls were largely preserved.
The location of the composting yard today
Of all the Christian courtyards in the eastern old town, only the Dominican monastery was partially rebuilt. There are no more traces of the other systems in the present cityscape. The ruins of the composting site were torn down in the course of modern reconstruction. This happened mainly in connection with the construction of Kurt-Schumacher-Straße , a new north-south main road that was routed through the destroyed old town.
The former site of the composting site, especially the component on the eastern edge of the facility that extends over the entire north-south extension, is now located under the western carriageway of Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse (leading to the Main). The actual courtyard area is now built over, roughly with the house numbers Kurt-Schumacher-Straße 9–21, opposite the confluence with Rechneigrabenstraße. The former synagogue was on Predigergasse, exactly opposite the choir of the Dominican Church, on the property of the current front building of the row of houses at Kurt-Schumacher-Straße 21.
literature
- Hans-Otto Schembs : The Börneplatz in Frankfurt am Main . Ed .: Magistrate of the City of Frankfurt am Main. Waldemar Kramer Verlag, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-7829-0344-7 .
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 41 ″ N , 8 ° 41 ′ 16 ″ E