Kurländer Palais
The Kurländer Palais , formerly also known as the Kurländisches Palais , is a historic building in Dresden . It was built in 1728/29 by Johann Christoph Knöffel for Count August Christoph von Wackerbarth in the style of the Dresden Baroque and is considered the first rococo building in Dresden. Destroyed to the outer walls in World War II, it remained the last old town ruin for a long time; from 2006 to 2008 it was rebuilt.
location
The palace is located on the eastern edge of the inner old town , between the southern bridgehead of the Carolabrücke and the Neumarkt , at Tzschirnerplatz 3–5. This square is named after Samuel Erdmann Tzschirner and was called Zeughausplatz until 1946, because the former Dresden armory, which was replaced by the Albertinum , was also adjacent .
The Kurländer Palais is at the end of a line of sight beginning at the Johanneum in the Jüdenhof , which extends over the Neumarkt and through the Rampische Strasse to the main wing of the building.
Surrounding buildings are the police headquarters to the southwest , the Albertinum in the northeast, the parish hall of the Reformed Church in the north and the synagogue in the northeast. The Dresdner Bundesbank branch, which closed in spring 2015, is located directly east of the Kurländer Palais . To the south is a parking lot, on the opposite side of which there is an information pavilion of the Gesellschaft Historischer Neumarkt Dresden .
The Frauenkirche , the maiden bastion of the Brühlsche Terrasse and the country house with the city museum are also in the vicinity .
Construction
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The Kurländer Palais is a building in a relatively sober, rational-elegant style that appears to be influenced by the French classicist baroque . According to Walter Hentschel , it can be considered the first rococo building in Dresden, since the irregularity of the floor plan was also used in the interior, so that a new type of asymmetrical spatial arrangement was created, in which the purely representative character was withdrawn in favor of comfort. With this , Johann Christoph Knöffel had built his most important work in Longuelune's formal language . The two-story main part of the building in the middle is supported by two three-story, but equally high, side wings. Due to the fact that at the time the palace was built, the Dresden fortress wall was directly to the east of the property , and the northern side wing is set back slightly. The other, on the other hand, protrudes further to the front towards Schießgasse and, together with another extension, encloses a garden courtyard. Due to these complicated conditions, the garden is located south of the Kurländer Palais instead of behind it.
A clear, noble facade design with sparing ornamentation is characteristic of the building . The main facade, which is divided into a three-tiered central risalite and two recessed, three-tiered parts - the street front has nine window axes - is overall very uniform and representative. The windows of the first floor with plastered ashlar are closed at the top with segmental arches . The upper floor is structured by pilaster strips and also has nine windows facing the street, which, however , have been drawn down to the floor and are therefore provided with wrought iron latticework . Six of these windows are rectangular, while the three in the middle have round arches. A hipped roof with dormers and mansards sits enthroned on the building .
The central projection is equipped with a balcony in front, resting on supporting stones with a crest, which is provided with a sandstone parapet. The central risalit is crowned by a triangular gable . This and the mirrors directly below it are decorated with trophy jewelry. The two side wings have been designed to be much more economical, so that they almost give the impression that they do not belong. The inner courtyard has open arched arcades on the ground floor . The renaissance shapes of the arch hall probably go back to the previous building. In addition to a basement , the Kurländer Palais is also equipped with historical cellar vaults .
The interior of the building looks very elegant. It is developed across. A staircase to the side starts from the rococo-decorated vestibule and continues upwards with a rounded rear wall in a horseshoe shape. Inside there are spacious chambers and salons, which are particularly impressive on the upper floor of the main part with their room height. The large ballroom located there, which opens onto the garden courtyard with a balcony , takes up the same area as three halls located below it on the ground floor. Many rooms were richly decorated and some were equipped with gilded stucco , tapestries , chandeliers and chimneys. The rooms on the east side are accessed through a series of connecting doors. This is Dresden's oldest example of this spatial structure known from France , which is known as the enfilade .
history
Predecessor and new building
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As early as 1575, a one-storey building was built on the site of the later Kurländer Palais. This was expanded in 1705 and a pleasure garden was laid out next to it . Since 1718 the building has been the official residence and residence of Count August Christoph von Wackerbarth , who was then Dresden fortress governor and chief inspector of the Saxon building industry. On January 17 and 18, 1728, it was destroyed in a fire, the flames of which the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I , who was visiting Dresden with his son Friedrich, who was staying elsewhere, was only just able to escape. Since all of Wackerbarth's possessions, including his art collection and library, were lost, August the Strong gave him the ruined property , where Wackerbarth had the building that still exists today built in 1728/29 as a replacement on the same site. The king also gave him the renaissance hunting lodge Zabeltitz including the manor, which Wackerbarth had at the same time expanded by a baroque garden and a baroque palace.
The general construction director Wackerbarth commissioned the architect Johann Christoph Knöffel , who was discovered by him and promoted at an early stage and who later had a decisive influence on Dresden architecture in the mid-18th century and is considered to be the most important Saxon Rococo architect, with the execution of the new building . On November 30, 1729, Count von Wackerbarth was able to move into the new government building. The Sociéte des antisobres (in German: Society of sobriety opponents ) founded by August the Strong, the Saxon counterpart to the tobacco college at the court of Prussia, held its meetings during this time in a specially furnished basement on the south side. The Kurländer Palais was thus a center of court culture at this time. After August Christoph von Wackerbarth's death, his stepson Count Joseph Anton Gabaleon von Wackerbarth-Salmour inherited the building in 1734. A few years later, Count Friedrich August Rutowski , who founded the first Dresden Freemasons' lodge Aux trois aigles blancs here, became the new owner .
Use by the Albertines
Just two years later, Johann Georg , the Chevalier de Saxe, bought the palace. After the bombing by Prussia in the course of the Seven Years' War in 1760, he had to have it restored in 1763/64 by Friedrich August Krubsacius , a student of Knöffel. Krubsacius only made slight changes inside; His new installation of the north-western side staircase with its five-meter-high, slender columns that lead into a cross vault, however, is unique.
After another change of ownership in 1773, the building was given its current name. The new owner was Prince Karl of Saxony , the former Duke of Courland . The interior of the Kurländer Palais was rebuilt again in 1774 and was henceforth the most beautiful and elegant palace in Dresden. In 1797 the daughter of the Duke of Courland, Maria Christina von Sachsen , sold the palace to the state for 40,000 thalers after his death. A year later, Elector Friedrich August III. , from 1806 King of Saxony, the building.
Since then, the Kurländer Palais has had a special connection with the Albertines of the 18th century. The cellars of the Augustan Sociéte des antisobres were used by the royal family as a wine and spirits store until 1886.
Medical use
After the Kurländer Palais had served as a hospital from 1813 mainly for soldiers wounded in the Battle of Dresden , it was rebuilt. The architect Christian Friedrich Schuricht (1753–1832) ensured that the Dresden Surgical and Medicinal Academy and the affiliated midwifery institute could use the house; they moved into the Kurländer Palais on August 3, 1814 and also used the neighboring Oberzeugmeisterhaus. In these rooms, among other things, Karl May , who was temporarily blind and was then four years old, was healed in 1845 . The Surgical and Medical Academy used the building until 1864. Until 1827, the professor for obstetrics Carl Gustav Carus was its director. Between 1865 and 1912 the palace was the seat of the royal state medical board, which acted as the highest medical authority in Saxony, then the state health office and the Saxon antiquity association . The Saxon Homeland Security Association also used the rooms from 1924 to 1945 . In the basement there was also a wine cellar used by a dealer at that time .
When the city fortifications were dismantled, extensive open spaces were created east of the Kurländer Palais, in which the first Dresden Botanical Garden was laid out in 1820 by Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach , the Pillnitz court gardener Carl Adolph Terscheck and his brother Johann Gottfried Terscheck . After Reichenbach died in 1879, Oscar Drude , a professor at the Botanical Institute of the Polytechnic , took over the management of the Botanical Garden.
Post-war use
In the course of the air raids on Dresden on February 13 and 14, 1945, during which the puppeteer Oswald Hempel was also killed in the building, the Kurländer Palais burned down completely and most of it collapsed. It was only with great effort that the preservationists of the GDR managed to save the ruins from complete demolition. Some of the remains of the building wings and interior walls, which were in danger of collapsing, were finally blown up in 1958. But even the remaining torso of the facade of the ruin was impressive. In addition to the facade parts, only the cellar vaults, which were used as a wine store until 1974, have been preserved in the original. They were expanded between 1980 and 1981 by the Jazz Interest Group and used between May 1981 and April 1997 by the Tonne Jazz Club , which then moved to the Waldschlösschenviertel . After the east wing of the Residenzschloss had been rebuilt, the Kurländer Palais was the only remaining war ruin in the old town.
reconstruction
The reconstruction of the building has been planned since 1992, but due to frequent changes of ownership, high costs and unexplained use, it has been postponed further and further. In 2000 the Kurländer Palais was transferred from the Free State of Saxony to its current owner for 1.65 million DM. After the flood of the century in August 2002 , when the basement was 2.90 meters high under water and parts of the foundations were submerged, 80% of the potential tenants jumped out because of the delay. Two years later there was a permit to rebuild it as a grand hotel and a binding commitment from a hotel chain, but construction did not begin.
In 2005 there was progress in planning, which turned out to be quite difficult overall. Since most of the structures built by Knöffel had been demolished by 1900, there was a lack of comparable structures. Only a palace in Zabeltitz could provide important information about the construction. Since April 2006 the Kurländer Palais, including its interior and exterior facilities, has been rebuilt.
Monument conservation requirements were particularly taken into account . First the structure of the actual baroque ruin was secured. During archaeological investigations, numerous remains of the old irrigation technology, for example wells, pools and underground watercourses, were excavated in the garden courtyard . In addition, three buckets with remains of the former chandeliers were found, which should contribute to their reconstruction . Remains of the facade painting have also been preserved. The Kurländer Palais was rebuilt using the existing ruins largely in a modern construction with concrete ceilings and bricks. The main challenge was to connect the preserved historical parts with the new ones. Some parts of the building were also rebuilt in the traditional way, for example the cross-domed vaults and the window arches. The interiors have only been historically restored to a limited extent, although the Office for Monument Protection has largely removed and secured the stucco decorations in plaster casts.
At present, an event agency in the Kurländer Palais is marketing the ballroom, the restaurant in the garden halls, the Palaishof and the vaulted cellar for events. The other rooms of the palace are used by a fish restaurant and various companies as offices.
The Tonne jazz club has been back at its original location in the vaulted cellar since 2015 .
literature
- Fritz Löffler: The old Dresden. Dresden 1955, Seemann, Leipzig 1994, ISBN 3-8035-1123-2 .
- Armin Gebhardt: Immortal Accents in Dresden Art - Studies and Essays. ibidem, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-89821-244-0 .
- Stefan Hertzig (Ed.): The historic Neumarkt in Dresden. Sandstein, Dresden 2005, ISBN 3-937602-46-1 .
- Matthias Lerm: Farewell to old Dresden - Loss of historical building stock after 1945. Hinstorff, Rostock 1993, 2001, ISBN 3-356-00876-5 .
- Daniel Jacob: Baroque aristocratic palaces in Dresden - the buildings, their architects and residents, Verlag Daniel Jacob, 2011, 219 pp.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hagen Bächler and Monika Schlechte: Guide to the Baroque in Dresden , Dortmund 1991, p. 110ff, with reference to Walter Hentschel / Walter May, Johann Christoph Knöffel, the architect of the Saxon Rococo , Berlin 1973
- ^ Kurländer Palais at www.wissen.de ( Memento from December 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b Kurländer Palais in issue 5/2006 of the Dresdner Blätt'l .
- ^ Fritz Löffler: The old Dresden: history of his buildings. 12th edition, EA Seemann, 1994, ISBN 3-363-00007-3 .
- ↑ a b building history at www.redaktion-dresden.de .
- ↑ a b c Kurländer Palais in issue 7/2006 of the Dresdner Blätt'l .
- ↑ Bettina Klemm: Kurländer Palais should be ready by the end of the year , Sächsische Zeitung from June 26, 2008.
- ↑ a b c Kurländer Palais at www.neumarkt-dresden.de ( Memento from January 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Grieben-Verlag: Reliable guide for Dresden: its surroundings and the Saxon-Bohemian Switzerland . T. Grieben, 1857, p. 126 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ a b building history at www.dresden-und-sachsen.de ( Memento from May 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Kurländer Palais in www.adekor.de .
- ^ Reconstruction of the Kurländer Palais in Dresden ( Memento from December 4, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on ipro-dresden.de.
- ^ History of the Tonne Jazz Club .
- ↑ The Bauhüll , Sächsische Zeitung of September 3, 2005, is about the consecration of the Frauenkirche .
- ↑ List of tenants on kurlaender-palais.com.
Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 5.1 ″ N , 13 ° 44 ′ 42.3 ″ E