Kuhwaldsiedlung
The Kuhwaldsiedlung is a housing estate in the Frankfurt district of Bockenheim , which was named after a forest that used to be there.
Location and development
The Kuhwaldsiedlung covers an area of almost 25 hectares and is located in southern Bockenheim, west of the exhibition grounds , north of the Europaviertel , east of the Rebstockviertel and south of the Bockenheim-Süd quarter. It is bordered by Theodor-Heuss-Allee in the north, which joins the federal motorway 648 , the Philipp-Reis-Straße in the east and by the streets Am Dammgraben in the south and Am Römerhof in the west. These four roads connect the Kuhwaldsiedlung to the regional road network.
The inner development takes place via the streets Funckstraße and Philipp-Fleck-Straße, which run in an east-west direction. The residential streets Friedrich-Naumann-Straße, Tornowstraße, Müllerstraße, Odrellstraße, Wicker-Frosch-Straße, Parrotweg, Scherbiusstraße, Mannskopfstraße and An den Katharinenhöfen run across it. Most of the streets in the Kuhwaldsiedlung were named after important Frankfurters.
The Kuhwaldsiedlung is connected to local public transport via tram line 17 and the Leonardo-da-Vinci-Allee stop .
Emergence
In the Middle Ages, the Kuhwald corridor formed a border area of the Bockenheim district , which protruded slightly to the south into the Frankfurt district between Galgenfeld and Hellerhöfer Feld. The border was formed by the ditch along which the Frankfurter Landwehr had run since the end of the 14th century . Bockenheim, which was first mentioned in 768/78, belonged to the county of Bornheimer Berg and fell to the Lords of Hanau in 1481/84 and to their heirs, the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel , in 1735 . The cow forest was cleared in 1817. Since the opening of the Taunusbahn between Frankfurt and Wiesbaden in 1839, the area around the Kuhwald has been increasingly criss-crossed by railway tracks. After Bockenheim was incorporated into Frankfurt in 1895, industry also advanced. In the wider area, with the Festhalle opened in 1908, the future exhibition grounds were built and with the advent of airship travel since the first landing of a zeppelin on the occasion of the Frankfurt International Airship Exhibition in 1909, the Rebstock airport, which moved to the Frankfurt city forest in 1936 for reasons of capacity .
Due to the great demand for housing after the First World War , the city of Frankfurt designated several settlement areas. One of them was planned in the south of Bockenheim north of the main freight station in the area of the former Kuhwald. The land belonged to the Sankt Katharinen- und Weißfrauenstiftung , which they gave on a long lease . The Frankfurter Eisenbahnsiedlungsverein eG, the Frankfurter Postsiedlungsverein eG and the Gemeinnützige Wohnungsbau Aktiengesellschaft Rhein-Main built the Kuhwaldsiedlung between 1919 and 1922 as a Reichsheimstätte . This legal institute , created for social and land-political reasons, protected the owner of a residential property from his creditors . The Eisenbahnsiedlungsverein is one of the major builders who still own numerous buildings today. It was founded in May 1919 as a housing association for the "procurement of homes in the Frankfurt area".
In 1926 and 1927, Bismarckallee was expanded in the direction of Rödelheim, which has been called Rheingauallee since 1947 and Theodor-Heuss-Allee since 1964. In 1933 Wiesbadener Straße was built as a feeder to the motorway.
Hardly any other settlement in Frankfurt suffered as much from the air raids of the Second World War as the Kuhwaldsiedlung. Due to its proximity to the old airfield and the train tracks, it was severely damaged by bombing.
From 1949 to 1951, the Südwestdeutsche Housing Association built around 420 apartments instead of houses destroyed in the war. The Church of St. Pius was consecrated in 1957 and the Trinity Church in 1966. Due to traffic problems during the fair, the roads were traffic-calmed in 1978. In 1984 a noise protection wall was built along Braunfelsstrasse to protect the residents from the traffic noise on Theodor-Heuss-Allee. Also in 1984, 128 apartments belonging to the Post Settlers Association in Friedrich-Naumann-Straße and Scherbiusstaraße were extensively renovated. In 2004, twelve single-family houses were built on Manskopfstrasse.
Residents
Of the roughly 2,500 residents before the Second World War, only just under 500 were able to return to the settlement in 1945. Population development:
| year | Residents |
| 1950 | 1,800 |
| 1953 | 3,600 |
| 1956 | 4,600 |
| 1988 | 2,437 |
| 2002 | 2,354 |
| 2008 | 2,432 |
Development
The Kuhwaldsiedlung was originally characterized by a development with stylistic elements of historicism . Two to three-story houses with a pitched roof line the streets as row, double and multi-family houses. Front gardens and ridge-shaped expansions structure the streets. The streets, which are arranged at right angles, allow an economical development of the properties and the gradation into collecting and residential streets. These properties are also shown by the New Frankfurt housing estates designed by Ernst May . However, the architecture of the original buildings of the Kuhwaldsiedlung is not committed to modernity . The gable roofs give the houses a traditional appearance. Design elements such as windows with folding shutters characterized the buildings. The size of many properties allowed gardens that were also suitable for self-sufficiency. Since large parts of the Kuhwaldsiedlung were destroyed in World War II, numerous houses have been rebuilt or rebuilt, so that the former appearance has changed. The Kuhwaldsiedlung comprises a total of around 1,400 apartments in 345 buildings (as of 2008).
In the middle of the settlement are the Evangelical Trinity Church in Funckstrasse and the Catholic St-Pius Church in Philipp-Fleck-Strasse, each of which has a kindergarten attached. Two public green spaces provide relaxation and playground areas. There is a grocery store and a pharmacy for local supplies. The next comprehensive school with a primary school branch is the Georg Büchner School on Pfingstbrunnenstraße.
Trivia
The Kuhwaldsiedlung is also known as a “mousetrap”, “Gallic village”, “idyll in the middle of the city”, “enclave” or “island” due to its remote location.
literature
- Hans-Reiner Müller-Raemisch: Frankfurt am Main. Urban development and planning history since 1945 . Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt 1996
- Heinrich Ludwig: History of the village and the city of Bockenheim , Frankfurt 1940
- Institute for City History: Collection of local history - Kuhwaldsiedlung, newspaper articles and press releases since 1945 , Frankfurt
- Association for Frankfurter Arbeitergeschichte eV / Helmut Becker: It was only just enough ... , Frankfurt 1986
- A journey back and forth through Bockenheim , Frankfurt 1979
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 45.9 ″ N , 8 ° 37 ′ 53 ″ E