Concert hall in the Steinfurter Bagno

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Bagno Konzertgalerie Steinfurt, exterior view
Bagno Concert Gallery Steinfurt, interior view

The concert hall in the Steinfurter Bagno , also known under the name Bagno Konzertgalerie Steinfurt , is a listed building in the Bagno , an important park near Burgsteinfurt , a district of Steinfurt in the Steinfurt district ( North Rhine-Westphalia ) since 1986 . The building, which was probably completed in 1774, is one of the oldest preserved free-standing concert halls in Europe. At its heyday in the 18th century, Count Karl had a court orchestra with 35 singers and instrumentalists .

History and architecture

history

From 1765, the Imperial Count Karl Paul Ernst von Bentheim-Steinfurt arranged for a French garden to be laid out in the high forest to the southeast of the residential palace. In 1780 Count Ludwig von Bentheim-Steinfurt took over the government and introduced the modern ideas of the English gardens . The exact time when construction began on the concert hall has not been recorded. In a report by Karl Georg Döhmann from around 1907, it is mentioned: “In 1774 the building was given a roof balustrade with 12 figures and 12 vases.” From this, completion in 1774 was concluded.

The building received a new, higher roof balustrade with twelve figures and vases as early as 1786; the old balustrade was destroyed by a storm. Also in 1786, 36 Ionic pilasters made of wood and plaster were attached to the facades. Three steps were moved around the building in 1799. The view from around 1787 is documented in three copperplate engravings made by the royal French court lithographer Le Rouge . The preliminary drawings were made available by the Count's building director Friedrich Schatzmann. The sources of the architects and artists who worked on the design are more than scanty. In 1774, a count's chief forester and building director Johann Joest von Loen called himself “responsible for the entire Bagnon” in a bid to leave. Loen, a distant relative of Goethe , is considered to be the architect in charge of the construction, but did not necessarily create the building plan. Count Karl may have brought the plans for the concert hall with him from Paris.

In the course of the mediatization of the county, the short heyday of the Bagnos came to an end from 1806. The counties of Steinfurt and Bentheim were transferred to the Grand Duke von Berg, a brother-in-law of Napoleon. The former sovereign, Count Ludwig von Bentheim-Steinfurt, was awarded the title of prince by the King of Prussia in 1817 as compensation for the loss . The maintenance was neglected and the lightly built and thus repair-prone buildings were no longer used and slowly fell into disrepair.

A few repairs to the concert hall are documented for the 19th century. The roof balustrade was replaced by a surrounding wall in the form of an attic , which was covered with sandstone slabs. This cover was still in place in 1989. In a document from the year 1867, the princely master builder A. Niehus mentioned: “The concert hall needs to cover the roof again with black tiles.” He also thought that a new plastering of the cornice was necessary. The doors of the concert gallery were repainted in 1877. The rooms were only used very rarely for events and the building structure deteriorated more and more. Albert Ludorff photographed the hall in 1896, the pictures clearly show signs of moisture penetration and cracks.

Individual parts of the ceiling plaster came off in 1911, the water pipe was shut down in 1919. The fountain in front of the house and the water art no longer had a water supply. Some of the buildings around the hall were gradually demolished. The concert hall was spared demolition because in 1924 the Allgemeine Bürger-Schützen-Gesellschaft was granted the right to use it for their shooting festivals. Condition was the repair of the interior, the Princely House repaired the roof and the outer walls. The restoration commission was advised by Princess Viktoria von Bentheim-Steinfurt, she was responsible for construction. The shooting range required for shooting festivals was set up opposite the building. As early as 1929 new repair work was necessary in the interior, the plastering of the ceiling and the stucco work had partially fallen off. By 1936 the doors, the ceilings and the stucco on the walls were renovated. By the beginning of the Second World War , the building fabric deteriorated and the contract with the riflemen expired in 1944.

After the Second World War, the premises were used as a warehouse (among other things as a tobacco store for the Rotmann company) or were also empty. At times the boats from Lake Bagnose were stored here, and most of the interior decorations fell into disrepair. The roof was repaired from 1951 to 1952, the external plaster was renewed until 1955. A fundamental renovation was carried out from 1964, in 1967 the masonry was renovated and the cornices sealed. Work stopped in 1969 and was not completed until 1985.

Johannes Rau , the then Prime Minister of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and later Federal President, visited the concert hall in 1984 and declared on October 26, 1984: “The state is fundamentally ready for funding.” Since 1986, the newly founded Förderverein Konzertgalerie Steinfurt e. V. in the hall. The aim is to promote the restoration of the historic building. The general renovation was completed with the support of the German Foundation for Monument Protection , with an inauguration ceremony in 1997, except for the caves. The stucco decorations were painstakingly restored in the Louis-seize style . A flexible connecting corridor was also built between the hall and the foyer building. A copy of the Apollo statue that used to stand in the oven grotto is to be placed as the next target. The owner of the Bagnos, Prince of Bentheim and Steinfurt, granted the city a heritable building right in 1977 for the area around the concert hall. After the renovation of the concert hall, the Bagnopark was included in the state program Regionale 2004 , the renovation of the hall was a prerequisite for acceptance.

Building description

The concert hall was built on the model of the palace gallery Grand Trianon in the park of Versailles ; it was called the Grande Galerie pour les concerts . It is considered to be the oldest free-standing concert hall on the European continent. The interior has a unique effect due to the elaborate stucco work in the style of Louis XVI , ornate mirror walls and mirrors on the ceilings.

The building is a single-storey, rectangular plastered structure that is covered with a hipped roof. It is 28.60 meters long and 9.70 meters wide. It was built between 1773 and 1774 as one of the most important buildings in the Bagnos. The corners of the building are upgraded with ashlar plaster , the longitudinal walls are divided by six doors each, the walls of which are made of stone . The doors are accessed via three steps running around the entire building. The architrave of the cornice, the frieze and the cornice are also made of stone. The facades are currently largely unadorned. The appearance of the building no longer corresponds to the original design.

The hall offers space for around 250 listeners, but the gallery can be expanded to include the surrounding park by opening the twelve French doors. This advantage is also used at promenade concerts. This symbiosis between music and nature was intended in 1774 when planning. This also explains the lack of other adjoining rooms. The hall is one of the earliest representatives of classicism in Germany. Garden professor Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld described Bagno and Halle in 1792:

“From there a wave-shaped path leads into the access to the main square, where a large gallery of the Ionic order, destined for concerts and balls, is brilliantly represented, in which, in addition to other architectural decorations on plaster of paris marble, two grottos of the most lively corals and shells are located award beneficial. "

Bagno concert gallery Steinfurt, mussel fountain

Parquet flooring was laid in the interior . The pillars are covered with panels made of dark stucco marble, an artificial marble made of colored stucco. High mirrors are embedded in it. The panels are surrounded by decorative elements made of stucco, flower garlands and tendrils with leaves predominate. Semicircular, grotto-like shells emphasize the narrow sides. They are richly decorated with natural elements such as snail shells and mussel shells, and also with pebbles and minerals. The trophies next to the grottoes show musical instruments, painter's accessories and sculpting utensils, among other things, they are intended to document the client's interest in the various art forms. The designs of the French architect Jean Charles Delafosse, which were published frequently, served as a template.

Grottos

A special feature was the extremely filigree design of the two grottoes on the narrow walls. The following description has come down to us from a visitor from Holland:

“At the upper end of the room, Apollo stands with the harp on a plinth that doubles as a stove, while at the lower end there is a niche, the walls of which are decorated with corals and shells and peeking heads of water birds. A man's head with an open mouth overlooks the whole thing; you can also see two dolphins and some lead frogs on the ground. When you have taken a good look at this strange and strange niche, the cicerone (tourist guide) disappears and opens the hidden tap on a water pipe: then everything in the niche that has only one mouth spits out, and even the leaden frogs do their best and spew jets of water . "

In the middle of the 19th century, both the fountain and the oven grotto were still preserved in their original Rococo architecture , of which only fragments can be seen. Adolf Ludorff left two photographs taken in 1896, from which the artistic architecture can be seen in detail. The Westphalian Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Münster had the grottoes examined in 1985 and gained important insights into the materials used. According to a diploma thesis submitted to the Cologne University of Applied Sciences in 2000, a restoration of the fountain grotto is only possible with the complete loss of the remaining fragments.

Todays use

Since the extensive renovation, which was completed in 1997, the historic concert hall has been used again under the name Bagno Konzertgalerie Steinfurt for an abundance of concerts with some of world-famous artists.

Ilse Brusis officially inaugurated the concert gallery on October 10, 1997. The Tokyo String Quartet gave the first concert . Since then, the concert hall, which has a large Steinway concert grand, has been used extensively.

Famous musicians who gave concerts here include a. Cellist Mstislaw Rostropowitsch , violinists Viktoria Mullova and Daniel Hope , the Tokyo String Quartet, the Beaux Arts Trio with pianist Menahem Pressler , clarinetist Sabine Meyer , singers Edita Gruberova , Vesselina Kasarova and Barbara Hendricks , pianists Homero Francesch , Elisabeth Leonskaja and Gerhard Oppitz and the harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt .

As an orchestra, u. a. Festival Strings Lucerne under the direction of Rudolf Baumgartner , l'arte del mondo under Werner Ehrhardt , the Boston Symphony Chamber Orchestra and the Octet of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in the Bagno concert hall.

The organizer of the master concerts in the Bagno concert gallery is the Bagno-Kulturkreis Steinfurt e. V., whose artistic director was Josef Schwermann for twenty years. Matthias Schröder has been the artistic director of the Bagno since 2015.

See also

Prince of Bentheim's music collection, Burgsteinfurt

literature

  • Karl Georg Döhmann: The Bagno, history of the Fürstlich Bentheimschen Park Bagno near Burgsteinfurt . 2 parts. Burgsteinfurt 1907, 1909.
  • Dirk Strohmann: The concert gallery in the Burgsteinfurt Bagno, art-historical findings in the preparation of the restoration of the building . In: Westfalen booklets for history, art and folklore, 67th volume 1989, Aschendorfer publishing house in Münster (Westphalia). ISSN  0043-4337 .
  • Karlheinz Hauke: Impulses: Westphalia in transition, English influences on the Westphalian architecture of the 19th century . In: Westfälische Forschungen, Volume 44, 1994.
  • Dirk Strothmann: The concert gallery in the Steinfurter Bagno . In: Westfälische Kunststätten , issue 82, Münster 1997, ISSN  0930-3952 .
  • Ernst-Werner Wortmann: 27 years as main administrative officer in the district town of Burgsteinfurt and Steinfurt, memories of my service . In: Steinfurter Schriften , No. 26, Steinfurt 1999, ISBN 3-930779-25-0 .
  • Hans Hoffmeister: The fireplace in the concert gallery of the Steinfurter Bagnos, Metelen 2002.
  • Georg Dehio , under the scientific direction of Ursula Quednau: Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmäler. North Rhine-Westphalia II Westphalia. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-422-03114-2 .

Web links

Commons : Concert hall in the Steinfurter Bagno  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Bagno concert gallery - checkered history of a building on stenvorde.de ( Memento from March 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b bagno-konzertgalerie.de
  3. ↑ The Holywell Music Room in Oxford, England, was built in 1748 and is therefore older.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h The concert gallery in the Steinfurter Bagno . konzertgalerie.de
  5. ↑ a b c further information on the building history ( memento from May 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) on steinfurt-touristik.de
  6. ↑ transition to the Great Duke of Berg ( Memento of 9 April 2008 at the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Support from Prime Minister Johannes Rau, Historical Buildings in Steinfurt - Burgsteinfurt - The Concert Hall ( Memento from March 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on stenvorde.de
  8. ↑ Restoration of the stucco decorations ( Memento from January 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ^ Förderverein Bagno Konzertgalerie Steinfurt e. V. konzertgalerie.de
  10. ↑ Dirk Strohmann: The concert gallery in Burgsteinfurter Bagno, art-historical findings in the preparation of the restoration of the building, in: Westfalen Hefte für Geschichte, Kunst und Volkskunde 67th Volume 1989, Aschendorfer Verlagsbuchhandlung Münster (Westphalia). ISSN  0043-4337 , page 79.

Coordinates: 52 ° 8 ′ 22.2 "  N , 7 ° 21 ′ 29.7"  E