Long Franz

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New town hall buildings with "Langem Franz" from Paulsplatz, 2008

The towers in Frankfurt am Main , known colloquially as "Langer Franz" and "Kleiner Cohn" , were built between 1900 and 1904. They flank the south wing of the town hall extension, which was completed by 1908 and which adjoins the historical Roman buildings on the Römerberg to the west .

history

A similar view, around 1905

When in the years 1900 to 1908, based on designs by the Frankfurt architects Ludwig Neher and Franz von Hoven , the large town hall extension was built with the Bürgersaalbau, the south and north buildings, for which an entire medieval district had to give way, the corners of the A mixture of Gothic and Renaissance , the southern building was decorated with towers, which at that time marked the position of the town hall in the cityscape, visible from afar.

Photochrom of Bethmannstrasse with the New Town Hall - Langer Franz on the left , Kleiner Cohn on the right

At 70 meters, Lange Franz was the highest secular building in the city at the time . It got its nickname after the tall mayor Franz Adickes , who directed the fortunes of the city from 1891 to 1912 and moved his office to the tower in 1904. In its outer shape, the tower, which was built on 12 meters deep foundations, copied the bridge tower built in 1345 and demolished in 1765 on the Sachsenhausen side of the Old Bridge . On the east and west side it has glass mosaic images , of which the eastern, created by Robert Forell , under clear Nouveau influence the Saint Florian is, while the western of Karl Julius Graetz (1843-1912) in historicist - Byzantine tradition the Archangel Michael shows . The original clocks of the tower on the north and south sides, which are no longer preserved, also had hour bells, which were named after Goethe's mother and sister as Frau Rat and Cornelia .

The lower south tower on the corner of Limpurger Gasse and Grosser Kornmarkt was colloquially called " Kleiner Cohn " after an anti-Semitic operetta song . Its roof structure corresponded to the Salmenstein house built around 1350 on the city wall , which was demolished around 1810 as part of the demolition of the city ​​fortifications . It was by far the largest of several dozen similar buildings and side towers scattered around the city wall and was clearly visible on the city's siege plan from 1552 and the famous bird's eye view plan by Matthäus Merian from 1628. The name that was first coined by the vernacular for its replica, in contrast to the Lange Franz, was probably due to the fact that the Salmenstein House was located in the area of ​​today's Börneplatz, i.e. very close to the former Frankfurt Judengasse .

Fire bombs destroyed the steep hipped roof with the ridge turret in the air raid on March 22, 1944 . In 1951, the four-meter-high upper floor with the four oriel turrets up to the round arch frieze was removed. The town hall towers got their flat emergency roofs that still exist today. Lange Franz, today the registry office's file warehouse, was ten meters lower and lost a large part of its importance in the cityscape of the old town.

  • Sachsenhausen bridge tower, 1775
    (drawing by Johann Caspar Zehender )

  • Salmenstein's house , demolished in 1810 (illustration from 1886)

  • Architectural drawing for the extension of the town hall, 1900

  • Top view from the Paulskirche, 1903

  • View of the Lange Franz from the Großer Kornmarkt, around 1908

reconstruction

Town hall tower ensemble as seen from the main tower , 2009
Langer Franz with emergency roof, 2010

In 1984, the banker Johann Philipp von Bethmann suggested the restoration of Tall Franz for the first time. At that time, however, no municipal resolution was passed. Another attempt in 1994, for the city's twelve-hundredth anniversary, was unsuccessful, although the municipal building department had already drawn up complete plans for a reconstruction of the town hall towers. As part of the restoration of parts of the historic old town, it was planned for a while to return the formerly striking towers to the town hall ensemble and to reconstruct the roof of the combing shop in its original form. In the same context, the arcades of the north building on Bethmannstrasse should be made accessible in order to enliven the currently less frequented section of the street. Because of the expected costs, these plans were not pursued.

In the spring of 2008, Edwin Schwarz , the head of the planning department, announced a feasibility study which should also look at the expected costs of these measures. In November 2008, the city council asked the city council to present the results of the study with a unanimous vote. This has not happened to this day, an application by the FDP to include funds for this in the budget was rejected with the votes of the CDU and the Greens in February 2009.

In 2015, the bridge building association Frankfurt eV renewed the call for the reconstruction of the town hall towers on the initiative of the architect Christoph Mäckler .

On April 26, 2017, the city council commissioned the magistrate with a cost analysis for a complete reconstruction of the two towers "Kleiner Cohn" and "Langer Franz" based on a joint budget proposal from the CDU, SPD and Greens. In an interim report dated June 15, 2018, the magistrate put the possible cost of rebuilding the tower roofs at six million euros.

literature

  • Rudolf Jung, Carl Wolff: The architectural monuments in Frankfurt am Main - Volume 2, Secular buildings. Self-published / Völcker, Frankfurt am Main 1898.
  • Hermann Traut: The Römer and the new town hall buildings in Frankfurt a. M. 3rd edition. Römerverlag Frankfurt a. M., Frankfurt am Main 1924.

References and comments

  1. ↑ Tobias Picard, Institute for Urban History: Frankfurt am Main in early color slides 1936 to 1943 , Sutton Verlag, 2011, p. 50
  2. ↑ Old new plans on the website of the bridge building association Frankfurt
  3. ^ Application of the SPD parliamentary group in Römer No. 1065 of September 10, 2008. (PDF; 14 kB) In: PARLIS - Parliament information system of the City Council Frankfurt am Main. Retrieved April 15, 2009 .
  4. ↑ Minutes of the 28th (public) plenary meeting of the city council on Thursday, November 6th, 2008. (PDF; 116 kB) In: PARLIS - Parliament information system of the city council Frankfurt am Main. Retrieved April 15, 2009 .
  5. ↑ Budget request of the FDP parliamentary group for the product budget 2009 E 178 of November 27, 2008. (PDF; 17 kB) In: PARLIS - Parliament information system of the city council Frankfurt am Main. Retrieved April 15, 2009 .
  6. ↑ Minutes of the 28th meeting of the planning, building and housing committee of the city council on Monday, February 16, 2009. (PDF; 77 kB) In: PARLIS - Parliament information system of the city council Frankfurt am Main. Retrieved April 15, 2009 .
  7. ↑ Old Bridge: The Emperor Returns , Frankfurter Neue Presse , February 3, 2015, quote: “The bridge building association will soon devote itself to the reconstruction of the two city hall towers provided with temporary roofs: “ Lange Franz and Kleine Cohn were remembered in memory of the earlier The bridge towers of the Alte Brücke were built, which were very present in the memory of the Frankfurters, "explains Mäckler."
  8. ↑ https://www.stvv.frankfurt.de/download/E_87_2017.pdf PDF file: Joint budget - application by the CDU, SPD and GRÜNEN parliamentary groups on the 2017 product budget
  9. ↑ Municipal report B188 (PDF)

Web links

Commons : Langer Franz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 37.5 ″  N , 8 ° 40 ′ 47.2 ″  E