State prison (Schwäbisch Hall)
The former state prison is located at Salinenstrasse 4 in Schwäbisch Hall on the eastern bank of the Kocher . It has received the nickname “Kocherhotel” among the population and has had various names during its existence. It was a state prison from 1871 onwards. Since 2011 it has been used as the “House of Education”.
history
According to an anecdote , the city faced the choice of either building barracks or a prison and then opted for the prison out of consideration for the customs of the bourgeois daughters. In reality, however, the construction of a prison was ordered by King Wilhelm in 1839 without consulting the population after a decision had been made to introduce a new penal code and thus also to reorganize the penitentiary system in Württemberg. Since Hall was the seat of an upper office, the establishment of a penal institution in such a place was obvious, and because Hall was hoping for an economic upswing, the building of the prison was welcomed. The city made land available for the construction. A prison was planned for the Jagstkreis and a penal institution for juvenile criminals from all over Württemberg.
Before the new prison was built, the former stables in Salinenstrasse were provisionally used for the prison system. Today the university of applied sciences is located in this building.
The new building began in 1843; the first prisoners were housed there in October 1846, although the structure was not completed until 1849. Eugen Gradmann mentions the building in his 1907 publication Die Kunst- und Altertums-Denkmal der Stadt und der Oberamt Schwäbisch-Hall under the heading “ Classicism of the 19th Century”. He mentions 1847 as the year of construction.
At that time the prison had a centrally positioned administration building, flanked to the right and left by the buildings for men and women. Behind the administration building there was also a prison for young people. In order to rehabilitate the prisoners, they were employed or trained in manual work; Among other things, a bookbindery, a locksmith's shop and a bakery were set up in the establishment, which represented unexpected competition for the local tradespeople.
For the 550 prisoners who were housed in the institution around 1850, two clergymen , a surgeon , two teachers, eleven supervisors and four female guards were required in addition to the head .
Eduard Jeitter, who headed the prison from 1860, was one of the developers of the “Haller Model”, an educational concept that worked towards the recovery and reintegration of juvenile prisoners. The model became very well known in specialist circles; however, the juvenile prison system was moved from Schwäbisch Hall to Heilbronn in 1876 . The originally planned use of the facilities had already undergone a change: since 1858 there have been no female prisoners in Schwäbisch Hall.
After the conversion to a state prison in 1871, prisoners from all over Württemberg were housed in Schwäbisch Hall. In the years 1898 and 1899 a three-story cell wing was added below the Badtörle. From 1928 to 1931 the whole facility was modernized and expanded. In the process, existing structures were also partially increased. A six-storey tower was added to the cell wing and kitchens, bathrooms and infirmary were housed in a new building facing Gelbinger Gasse.
Towards the end of the Second World War , the prisoners were employed in the armaments industry. When Schwäbisch Hall was occupied by the US Army on April 17, 1945 , victims of the Nazi regime and criminals who had pretended to be political prisoners were also set free . The US Army initially used the prison buildings to accommodate civilians with a Nazi past, prisoners of war and suspected war criminals ; later, criminal “ displaced persons ” were imprisoned there. From 1948 the institution was again under German administration and was used as a penitentiary before it was again a state prison and in 1952 a juvenile prison of the state of Baden-Württemberg .
In 1961 the first demands were made to give up prison operations in the old institution. The reasons given were lack of profitability and safety deficiencies.
In its function as a juvenile prison, the prison was also overcrowded with 500 to 600 inmates, which is why the Adelsheim juvenile prison began operations in 1974 and relieved the Schwäbisch Hall site. As a result, the youth penal system in Schwäbisch Hall developed again into a model that received a lot of recognition. Nevertheless, the prison in Schwäbisch Hall was again occupied with adults in 1996 after the number of young people in prison had fallen sharply.
The plans to abandon the operation of the prison in the state prison were being pursued. Among other things, an architecture competition was advertised in 1982, and an exchange contract was concluded in 1986, according to which the city should provide a site in the Stadtheide for the construction of a new prison and also pay 7.35 million DM for the takeover of the old prison complex. However, in 1992, for financial reasons, planning was halted for the construction of the new prison, so that the new prison could only be built between 1995 and 1998. In the end, the penal institution moved into the new building in Stadtheide, but had to rent part of the old prison back and occupy it with prisoners due to insufficient capacity. As the new owner of the former prison area, the city had planned to redesign this area, but had to give up its plans for the new Kocher district for financial reasons in 2002. The demolition of the former prison buildings on the site has now begun. The original building of the former state prison is, however, a listed building and has largely been preserved: the north, south and central sections of the building from 1846 remained, whereas the east building was demolished in 2007. The structure that has been preserved is almost 120 meters long.
Reuse and remodeling
During the renovation and conversion from autumn 2009, attempts were made to preserve the original structure of the former prison. So stayed z. For example, some of the narrow rooms that served as single cells have been preserved, as have the historic floors and cell doors. In the north wing of the north building, a model cell was set up on the first floor to commemorate the history of the building. Steel-glass bridges were built to replace the massive intermediate structures built around 1930, so that the facade towards the Kocher approximates the appearance of the prison at the time of construction. The former prison has been re-used since 2011, including a community college and music school, while the ground floor is used commercially. The redesign measures were planned by the local architect Lorenz Kraft and carried out by the municipal housing company GWG.
Branch facilities of the correctional facility
In 1877 the Kleincomburg branch was set up for 60 to 90 prisoners, in which the relaxed execution is practiced today, later the so-called block house, the old local court prison on Unterlimpurger Straße, was added. This building was used as an outdoor home. Since its demolition in 1986, a new building nearby has served as an outdoor home.
Known prisoners
Franz Tausend , convicted several times as a fraudster, was last in Schwäbisch Hall. He died there in 1942.
24 French resistance fighters who had been abducted to Germany as part of the Night and Fog campaign were held prisoner in Schwäbisch Hall in the summer of 1944 before they were brought to Heilbronn and shot there.
The SS men Sepp Dietrich and Joachim Peiper were interrogated in Schwäbisch Hall because of the Malmedy massacre .
Web links
- Pictures of the city's history. In: schwaebischhall.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c History of the JVA. In: kocherquartier-sha.de, accessed on February 17, 2018.
- ↑ a b List of buildings for the city of Schwäbisch Hall. In: schwaebischhall.de, accessed on February 17, 2018.
- ↑ Eugen degree man : Long prison 1847 . In: The art and antiquity monuments of the city and the Oberamt Schwäbisch-Hall . Paul Neff Verlag, Esslingen a. N. 1907, OCLC 31518382 , pp. 83 ( archive.org ).
- ^ Peter Maguire: Law and War. International Law & American History. Columbia University Press, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-231-14647-0 , pp. 110 (American English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
Coordinates: 49 ° 6 ′ 53.1 ″ N , 9 ° 44 ′ 5 ″ E