Kreuzschule (Georgplatz)

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Kreuzschule at Georgplatz

The Kreuzschule at Georgplatz in Dresden was built by Christian Friedrich Arnold from 1864 and was the first significant neo-Gothic secular building in Dresden. The building, inaugurated in 1866, housed the school of the same name , whose history dates back to the 13th century. It was destroyed in 1945.

history

The inauguration of the new Kreuzschule building in Dresden on May 1, 1866.
Georgplatz with the Theodor-Körner monument in front of the Kreuzschule around 1889

The Kreuzschule comprised the grammar school and the boarding school of the Dresden Kreuzchor . Its spiritual and artistic home, the Kreuzkirche , was in the immediate vicinity. On the occasion of the inauguration of the building on May 1, 1886, the merchant and benefactor Johann Meyer was made an honorary citizen of Dresden .

The two-storey building was built on the plan of a Greek cross as a four-wing structure with two inner courtyards. The jewel was the façade of a wing on Georgplatz, to which a porch with a front length of seven window axes was presented. The porch rested on an arcade. The seven wide windows of the facade showed high Gothic tracery. There were buttresses with pinnacles between the windows that divided the facade vertically. Each of these windows had a gothic facing gable with lancet triple windows with a raised pointed arch, modeled on Salisbury Cathedral . Only the three windows in the middle were combined by a common high gable in which again lancet triple windows could be seen. The buttresses between the window axes were decorated with statues. a. with figures by Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon (both by the sculptor Hermann Hultzsch ) as well as the allegories of grammar, mathematics, history and poetry.

“ While the floor plan and mass grouping did not differ from other school buildings, the facade was stylized in a high Gothic style, an artistically well-made achievement. Nevertheless, this building remained the only public secular building in Dresden with a strictly high-Gothic facade. "

- Volker Helas

In front of the building was the monument to the poet and former Kreuz scholar Theodor Körner by Ernst Julius Hähnel from 1871.

The Kreuzschule burned down during the air raids on Dresden in February 1945, with little damage. In the summer of 1947, the Office for Building and Monument Preservation removed the remaining capitals , sandstone slabs with inscriptions and the name tablet from Ernst Julius Otto , a former Kreuzkantor , and handed them over to the Kreuzchor. In 1950 the building was demolished. Today only the Hähnel Körner monument is a reminder of its location.

After the war, the Kreuzschule and Kreuzchor moved into the building of the former Freemason Institute on Eisenacher Strasse in the Striesen district . Today the Kreuzschule is a Protestant grammar school .

reception

The decision of the Kreuzschule in 1863 to build it in the neo-Gothic style was highly controversial. This was due to the fact that all public Dresden secular buildings were designed in the neo-Renaissance style:

“ The decision to build the Kreuzschule in a Gothic style arose from the complaint about the alleged uniformity of the Dresden buildings. Because Dresden is built almost entirely in the Renaissance style, should there be a Gothic building on this… occasion? In church building it may be necessary to go back to older architectural styles. But the determining basic character of our modern buildings, especially the public one, is and will remain the Renaissance. So what is the reason for abandoning the natural Renaissance style when building the Cross School? Is the Gothic recommended as particularly characteristic of the purpose of the building? Dresden has a single Gothic building, the Sophienkirche. All ... (others) are consistently in the Renaissance style ... and all newer public buildings have kept the same style "

- V. Hettner, 1863

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Löffler, p. 351/352, p. 369 image no. 464 (The Cross School)
  2. ↑ Löffler, p. 352
  3. ↑ Helas, p. 173 (Kreuzschule. Georgplatz. 1864/1865. Designed by Arnold)
  4. ↑ Lerm, p. 47, p. 58.
  5. ↑ Helas, p. 173

literature

  • Volker Helas : Architecture in Dresden. 1800-1900 . 3rd revised edition. Verlag der Kunst Dresden GmbH, Dresden 1991, ISBN 3-364-00261-4 .
  • Matthias Lerm: Farewell to old Dresden. Loss of historical building stock after 1945 . 2nd supplemented edition. Forum Verlag, Leipzig 1993, ISBN 3-86151-047-2 .
  • Fritz Löffler : The old Dresden. History of his buildings . 6th revised and expanded edition. EASeemann, Leipzig 1981, ISBN 3-363-00007-3 .
  • Otto Meltzer : The Kreuzschule two hundred years ago . Pierson, Dresden 1880 ( digitized version )
  • Theodor Urbach: Small chronicle of the cross school . Lehmann, Dresden 1891. ( digitized version )

Coordinates: 51 ° 2 ′ 46 ″  N , 13 ° 44 ′ 32 ″  E