Concert and Congress Center Harmonie (Heilbronn)

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The harmony in Heilbronn
The Harmonie in 2008, still without the Kunsthalle Vogelmann

The Harmonie in Heilbronn is both a festival hall and a concert and congress center and is located on the corner of Allee and Moltkestrasse. The Harmonie concert and congress center is visited by 170,000 guests annually, making it one of the most important event locations in the Heilbronn-Franconia region . The latest addition to Harmonie is the Vogelmann art gallery , which opened in 2010 .

history

The garden hall in the Braunhardtschen garden

In the early 19th century, Heilbronner Allee was still outside the city walls. On the east side of the street, where Harmonie and the adjoining city ​​garden are located today , were initially just gardens. The garden of the merchant Christian Merz came into the possession of the innkeeper Christoph Braunhardt in 1817, who opened a beer garden with a farm building and a hall there. The property was therefore initially known as the Braunhardtscher Garten . Braunhardt's economic success was opposed by the early closing hours of the city gates and a ban on Sunday dancing, so that he immediately sold the property again. The new owner was the Aktiengartenverein , which was founded as a stock corporation and was able to raise the necessary purchase sum of 20,000 guilders and continue to manage the property. The Harmoniegesellschaft founded in Heilbronn in 1814 , to which many members of the Aktiengartenverein belonged, used the ground floor of the building as an entertainment and reading room. The Garden Hall in 1844 by a initiated by the share garden club stage cultivation as a share Theater a permanent theater venue that was later supported by the city. In 1870 the Aktiengartenverein became part of the Harmoniegesellschaft.

Old Harmony (1876–1944)

The Harmony building from 1876 on a postcard from 1905
The harmony 1960
The Harmony 1970
Some parts of the facade still show the original facade design by Alfred Bühler

In 1876 a new main building, the Harmony Building, was built according to plans by Prof. Robert von Reinhardt an der Allee, and in 1892 a music pavilion was built. In 1905 the Aktientheater in the hall building was elevated to a municipal theater after a renovation largely subsidized by the city ; it served this purpose until the city ​​theater , built further north, was inaugurated in 1913 . Before the First World War, the hall of the Aktientheater was rebuilt again.

In 1934 the harmony building came into the possession of the city of Heilbronn, which redesigned the harmony garden into a city ​​garden on the occasion of the exhibition Swabian Creativity in 1935 and carried out various modernization measures on the building.

During the Second World War, the buildings in the Stadtgarten were destroyed during the air raids on Heilbronn . A commercial and Christmas show took place between the ruins of the building in 1949. In 1951 the ruins were cleared away.

Harmony (1958-2001)

The peace stele in the adjacent city garden

In 1958, a new harmony was finally built with a large and a small hall, smaller meeting rooms and a utility wing. The new building was much larger than the old one, as the property at Allee 32 was also built over, where Oskar Herrmann's gold goods factory had previously been located, which had moved to another location in the city center. The event building was inaugurated on November 29, 1958 with a ceremony. The city garden was inaugurated on September 12, 1959.

The music director Dr. Ernst Müller , Gauchormeister Robert Edler , the humorists Willy Reichert and Oscar Heiler ( Häberle and Pfleiderer ) , the singer Margot Hielscher and the writer Otto Rombach organized the festivities.

The architect Kurt Marohn and the artists Alfred Bühler , Peter Jakob Schober and Hannelore Bendixen-Busse contributed to the design of the Heilbronn festival hall.

Alfred Bühler designed the harmony facade with a facade relief in concrete for an artist's fee of 4,000 DM.

"[...] Old photos document that the relief was not applied, but was created during the construction of the building, ie when the cladding was made"

The large ballroom with a folded ceiling with lighting was dedicated to Theodor Heuss and formed the predominant component. Peter Jakob Schober made a gilded stucco relief for the large hall showing the Heilbronn city eagle. A one-story building in front of the ballroom contained a small hall, an art exhibition hall, a restaurant and a foyer, the latter being accessible via the ticket hall. The main wall of the foyer was given a color design by Hannelore Bendixen-Busse and the foyer was provided with a colored glass grid wall. There were set seating groups there.

The abstract wall design in smooth putty in the small hall was one of the few non-representational works by Peter Jakob Schober. The small hall had a continuous glazing to the city garden.

The two bronze figures of cranes created in 1959 by Hermann Koziol were placed in the surrounding city garden . In 1970 an underground car park was built under the city garden .

In 1964, a new music pavilion was built in the city garden for open concerts, after such a pavilion had already existed during the pre-war construction. The pavilion was built according to the drafts of the building authorities, the cost estimate approved on July 30, 1963 amounted to 118,300 DM. The pavilion was hardly used after 2000 and was demolished in 2009.

From 1968, the rehearsal rooms of the choral society served Liederkranz in harmony as a venue for private initiative theater theater 68 . After its end, the small theater attached to the Heilbronn Theater moved into the studio stage in 1969 . Following the request of the theater board of directors, provocation pieces as well as scenic avant-garde and pieces with sensitive topics should be performed there. The first of the Small Scene in harmony pieces listed was in March 1970 bus south of Raymond Queneau . The small room only held around 50 spectators, around 60 to 70 percent of whom were students. The studio was maintained for a few years and ended in March 1977.

The Harmonie also served as a sports hall for prominent top athletes for ten years and was home to the largest event in Unterländer sports, the Voice Sports Show .

  • Cranes by Hermann Koziol (1959) in the city garden

  • Fountain in the city garden

  • The bandstand demolished in 2009 (2007)

Reconstruction of Harmony (1999-2001)

Harmony 2006

The Zurich architects Mohl and Rodriguez expanded the Harmonie festival hall from 1999 to 2001 into a contemporary concert and congress center in its current form. The costs for this amounted to € 18.4 million.

The colored glass grid wall of the foyer was removed and a glass wall was added. In front of the foyer was a terrace that was built on a platform and can be reached via a staircase. The terrace, the stairs and the foyer are accentuated in the evening, giving them a stage effect and inviting you to visit Harmonie.

Extension of the Vogelmann art gallery (2009-10)

The Vogelmann art gallery is the latest addition to Harmonie

In the years 2009 to 2010, according to plans by the Zurich architects who were already responsible for the previous renovation, the three- story Vogelmann art gallery was added to the building complex in the north of the Harmonie . The construction costs amounted to around € 5.6 million. The art gallery is operated by the Heilbronner Kunstverein and the Heilbronn Municipal Museums and has a total of around 800 square meters of exhibition space. The Kunsthalle was named after the Ernst Franz Vogelmann Foundation , which contributed to the construction costs with a donation of € 1 million.

The Kunsthalle was opened on October 2nd, 2010 with the exhibition “Beuys for everyone! Edition objects and multiples ”, which showed around eighty multiples by Joseph Beuys from the collection of the Ernst Franz Vogelmann Foundation , which it acquired in 2007 on permanent loan to the city of Heilbronn.

Controversy about the new hotel building in the city garden

A nearly 40 m high, 10-story hotel will be built on the city garden. The development plan was drafted by the architects Aescht & Berthold Architekten Berlin. The new building plans were rejected in front of Buabgeinn by Gottfried May-Stürmer, the chairman of the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz (BUND), the Landesnaturschutzverband (LNV) and the Naturschutzbund Deutschland (Nabu). The nature conservation organizations cite various reasons: The city garden is "an area that acts as the green lung of the inner city". The construction of the "massive hotel building" impaired a "cold air path that is important for the ventilation of the inner city". In addition, there is the high loss of the numerous trees in the urban park.

  • City garden 2010, east side

  • City garden 2010, south side

description

The Theodor-Heuss-Saal has 2000 seats. The Wilhelm Maybach Hall can be subdivided and has 700 seats. There are also other conference and event rooms in the Harmonie. The Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn has rehearsal and administration buildings in Harmonie. As part of the renovation, a new customer center for Stadtwerke Heilbronn was realized, and since 2001 the control center of the transport companies for urban bus traffic and the Heilbronn Stadtbahn, which opened in the same period, has been located here .

The city garden connects to the harmony to the south and east. There is the peace stele made of welded Corten steel strips , manufactured by Erwin Wortelkamp (1984). An inscription at the bottom of the pedestal of the stele quotes a poem by Volker von Törne : I can do the incomprehensible with my hands / grasp, doggedly in the blue of the sky / I put down roots / in the wind . The stele is 8.9 m high and formerly stood on the forecourt of Harmonie on the avenue until it was moved to the glazed eastern part of the festival hall.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christhard Schrenk (ed.): Heilbronn in early color photographs. Heilbronn 2008, pp. 90/91.
  2. ^ History 1817–1949 according to Ilse Fischer: Places of conviviality in and around Heilbronn . In: Heilbronn Historical Association. 20. Publication. Heilbronn 1951.
  3. ↑ Inauguration of Harmony . In: Uwe Jacobi: That was the 20th century in Heilbronn . Wartberg, Heilbronn 2001, ISBN 3-86134-703-2 , p. 62.
  4. ^ Helmut Schmolz, Hubert Weckbach: Heilbronn. History and life of a city. 2nd Edition. Konrad, Weißenhorn 1973, ISBN 3-87437-062-3 , p. 108, no. 324 “Cranes” in the city garden 1959.
  5. ↑ Andreas Pfeiffer (editor): Heilbronn and the art of the 50s. The art scene in Heilbronn in the 1950s. Situations from everyday life, traffic and architecture in Heilbronn in the 50s . Harwalik, Reutlingen 1993, ISBN 3-921638-43-7 (Heilbronner museum catalog , 43rd series Städtische Galerie). P. 95, fig. 127, fig. 128; P. 96.
  6. ↑ a b Andreas Pfeiffer (editor): Heilbronn and the art of the 50s. The art scene in Heilbronn in the 1950s. Situations from everyday life, traffic and architecture in Heilbronn in the 50s . Harwalik, Reutlingen 1993, ISBN 3-921638-43-7 (Heilbronner museum catalog , 43rd series Städtische Galerie). P. 36, fig. 33–35.
  7. ↑ Andreas Pfeiffer (editor): Heilbronn and the art of the 50s. The art scene in Heilbronn in the 1950s. Situations from everyday life, traffic and architecture in Heilbronn in the 50s . Harwalik, Reutlingen 1993, ISBN 3-921638-43-7 (Heilbronner museum catalog , 43rd series Städtische Galerie). P. 102 and p. 103, fig. 138.
  8. ↑ kaf: It has become quiet around the music shell in the park . In: Heilbronn voice . July 29, 2006 ( from Stimme.de [accessed on May 23, 2010]).
  9. ↑ Municipal building projects, City of Heilbronn 1963, p. 24.
  10. ↑ Kilian Krauth: What happens in harmony . In: Heilbronn voice . May 5, 2009 ( from Stimme.de [accessed on May 23, 2010]).
  11. ↑ Werner Föll: Chronicle of the city of Heilbronn . Volume X: 1970-1974. Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 1999, ISBN 3-928990-68-3 , p. XLVIII ff . ( Publications of the archive of the city of Heilbronn . Volume 38).
  12. ↑ a b Image brochure of the building department of the city of Heilbronn from approx. 2004
  13. ↑ Kunsthalle Vogelmann ( Memento from January 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Neue Kunsthalle Vogelmann in Heilbronn opens on October 2, 2010 , accessed on May 24, 2010.
  15. ^ A b c Kilian Krauth: Planned Hotel . In: Heilbronn voice . May 5, 2017 ( from Stimme.de [accessed May 5, 2017]).
  16. ↑ Iris Baars-Werner: One of the points of contention was that trees had to fall out of the city garden for the construction project. In: Heilbronn voice . February 14, 2017 ( from Stimme.de [accessed February 14, 2017]).
  17. ↑ Taken from the title Time of Fairy Tales. In: Volker von Törne: Head Over Neck. Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-8031-0098-4 , p. 68.
  18. ^ Gabriele Holthuis: City of Sculptures Heilbronn . Heilbronn 1996.

Web links

Commons : Harmonie (Heilbronn)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 49 ° 8 ′ 33 ″  N , 9 ° 13 ′ 24 ″  E