Lansstrasse (Cologne)
The Lansstraße is located in the Cologne district Neuehrenfeld in the district Ehrenfeld . The Lansstrasse, laid out in 1912, with its two-story apartment buildings is part of the first development in Neuehrenfeld. The private road is completely enclosed by a housing block built at the same time by the former Ehrenfeld workers' housing association. It is accessible through two gateways built over with apartments.
history
After the Ehrenfeld district, which was founded in 1845 and incorporated into Cologne in 1888 , had developed into a larger factory location, there was an increasing need for apartments for the workers and their families. Rector Franz Peter Schmitz, director of the Ehrenfeld elementary school in Gutenbergstrasse, founded the Ehrenfeld workers' housing association on March 17, 1899 with the factory owner Ernst Leyendecker, the Catholic pastor Gerhard Bruders and a group of workers, craftsmen, trade unionists, entrepreneurs, teachers and doctors ( today: non-profit housing association Ehrenfeld eG ). In contrast to the company apartments widespread in the Ruhr area , they chose the legal form of the cooperative , in order to enable the workers as co-owners to be more independent. The aim was to “build and manage healthy, inexpensive apartments for families with a low income and large families”. Starting in 1900, the cooperative had three-window houses built for one family each at scattered locations, the designs of which were provided by the Cologne architect Rudolf Brovot, for example in Bickendorfer Feltenstrasse and Vitalisstrasse. In the Neuehrenfeld construction area, where there was no road network with the exception of a few main connections, she finally found a suitable approach for connected housing developments on Takustraße. The brickyard owner Jakob Wahlen had this street built between the old street from Ossendorf to Subbelrather Hof (today: Iltisstraße) and the industrial area in Ehrenfeld to connect his brick fields. It also created the connection between the future settlement area for workers and craftsmen and their industrial workplaces in Ehrenfeld. At the confluence of Takustraße / Iltisstraße, Wahlen donated Takuplatz in 1911 , to which the cooperative attached its first closed settlement block.
The design of the new residential areas in Neuehrenfeld was largely determined by the cooperative board members, including city planner Josef Stübben . Influenced by the idea of the garden city , the aim was to create a relaxed, varied street scene with loggias , balconies , gently curved streets and spacious green inner courtyards with little or no internal development. Basically, the living environment of the upper classes was transferred to the houses of the lower class.
The settlement block between Iltis-, Taku- and Heidemannstraße also corresponded to this idea. The architect Rudolf Brovot implemented stylistic and qualitative elements of high living standards in the settlement in a simplified form, which manifested itself in the elaborate facade design or the sophisticated choice of materials, for example in the stairwells. This is particularly noticeable in the representative houses at Iltisstrasse 53-65, which form a kind of portal for Lansstrasse in the inner courtyard.
Lansstraße was built during the first construction phase of the settlement block from 1912 to 1914. From the second construction phase until 1925, no structural changes were made to the street. The reconstruction in 1948–1950 did not lead to any major renovations or new buildings.
Chinatown
The name of Lansstrasse, like that of Takuplatz and -strasse and Iltisstrasse, refers to the Chinese Boxer Rebellion in 1900. The German gunboat "Iltis" came under its captain Lans , who was responsible for the attack of the German navy on the Chinese Taku Forts commanded, deployed. The vernacular calls the area around Takuplatz due to the origin of the name “Chinese-Veedel”, in High German “Chinese quarter”.
At the end of 2009 the naming of some Neuehrenfeld streets and squares according to places and people in German colonial history was discussed in the vicinity of the Ehrenfeld district representation and in the local media . This also included the names of the Chinatown, including Lansstrasse. At the initiative of the Greens , various measures were debated, from which the local politicians hope to distance themselves from atrocities committed by German colonial rule. There were suggestions for a differentiated labeling of the explanatory panels, but renaming was also discussed. Similar initiatives have existed in Berlin-Dahlem since the 1970s , where the renaming of the Lans-, Iltis- and Takustraße, which has existed there since 1905, is being discussed, but so far these places have been signposted to provide information. In August 2011, a new sign with explanations of the history of the name and German colonial policy was presented at Cologne's Takuplatz, which initially ended the debate.
investment
The 140-meter-long Lansstraße runs in a west-east direction through the 1.27 hectare inner courtyard of a pentagonal three- to four-story apartment block between Iltisstraße, Heidemannstraße, Takustraße and Takuplatz . It runs parallel to the south flank of the Takuplatz, which was laid out in 1911. With this, the kite-shaped apartment block forms an urban unit.
At the east end of Lansstrasse, the houses at Iltisstrasse 57 and 59 form a gate in the perimeter block development through which Lansstrasse runs. The tunneled four-storey houses on Iltisstraße have been dismantled at this point, giving the impression of a massive gatehouse from the outside . The gate passage itself is in three parts: A wider and higher segment arch for the single-lane carriageway is flanked by two lower, narrower archways for the footpaths . The arches are framed in humpback blocks, which continue the base line of the city block. The keystone of the central arch protrudes noticeably vertically. There are small retail stores to the left and right of the entrance gate.
Behind the ten-meter-long passage, Lansstrasse leads in a slight right-hand bend over a square-like extension in the middle of the apartment block to another built-over gate passage. The houses at Takustraße 68 and 70 are crossed over a length of eleven meters; this is where Lansstraße ends. This gate passage is designed to be easier. The two narrow indicated arches to the left and right of the segment arch for the street are entrances for two small shops that flank the driveway. Here, too, the arches are framed in humpback blocks.
Development
The original buildings on Lansstrasse include house numbers 1–31 and 2–12. They are two-storey and have a loft with dormers . The plastered facades are structured by window axes. The entrances have wooden doors with skylights . The stairwell windows are predominantly oval, the rectangular wooden casement windows of the houses have bars and skylights and are mostly provided with shutters.
Houses 2–12 form a row of houses with a shared hipped roof . The odd house numbers 1–31 form a gable-independent , three-wing complex in the center around a square-like extension of the street area. On each side there is a flanking, eaves wing with a crooked hip roof, which traces the course of the street at its angle to the central houses. On the garden sides, the houses have loggias with slightly protruding parapets .
The layout of the development is reminiscent of the bridge of a gunboat in relation to the surrounding block perimeter development . Whether this was intended by the architect Rudolf Brovot in allusion to Captain Lans and the Iltis cannot be proven.
The green areas behind the houses were originally parceled out and allowed the residents to grow fruit and vegetables. Today they are mostly planted with lawn and serve as common areas for recreation. Garages were built at Lansstrasse 12 in 1952. A single-storey single-family house (Lansstrasse 1a) was apparently initially built as a wash house after the Second World War . In 1983 a parking lot was created on the green space behind the houses at Ilitsstrasse 59 to 65; Lansstraße itself does not have any parking space in the street and is closed to traffic with bollards behind the entrance to this parking lot .
The original development on Lansstraße, together with the buildings in Iltisstraße, Takustraße, Heidemannstraße and Takuplatz, was added to the list of monuments of the City of Cologne on September 1, 1997 under the number 8149 . In addition to the buildings, the course of Lansstrasse and the inner area of the settlement are also part of the monument.
Living
Due to the seclusion of the largely car-free street, the comparatively small houses and the central square, the residential area on Lansstraße is often described as “village-like” or “familiar”. The private road is approached by the garbage disposal , but the street cleaning must be done by the residents themselves. Every year the residents celebrate a colorful "Lansstrasse Festival".
Major fire on September 21, 2012
In the early morning hours of September 21, 2012, there was a major fire in the three-winged complex around the central square of Lansstrasse, in which the roof structures of houses 9 to 13 were completely destroyed. Although all residents were able to save themselves from the fire, their 14 apartments were destroyed. The apartments below, the wooden stairwells and in part also the masonry were severely damaged by the fire itself or by extinguishing water. The extinguishing work was made more difficult by the fact that the fire brigade, who had come in large numbers, could only bring their turntable ladders through the narrow gate entrances after the baskets had been dismantled. Beyond that, they had to be grown again, a flower bed removed and a tree felled so that the ladders could be used. The fire spread rapidly across several houses due to the continuous insulation of the roof with styrofoam . A defective electrical installation in the attic of the house at Lansstrasse 9 was identified as the cause of the fire. The affected buildings were no longer habitable. Their repair was initially questionable, but the houses have since been restored.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c 100 years of the non-profit housing association Ehrenfeld eG Festschrift. Self-published, Cologne 1999, pp. 20-23.
- ↑ a b c Johannes Maubach: Across Ehrenfeld, Ehrenfelder Geschichtspfad (Part 2). Self-published, Cologne 2002.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Description of monument 8149 in the monument catalog of the city of Cologne, viewed at www.bilderbuch-koeln.de, online , accessed on September 24, 2012
- ↑ Heribert Rösgen: Questionable Colonial Lords. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . November 25, 2009, online ( Memento of the original from March 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed February 25, 2010.
- ^ Mathias Raabe: The name of the anti-Semite should disappear. In: Berliner Zeitung . February 18, 2002, online , accessed February 25, 2010.
- ↑ What once happened to Fort Taku. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. August 25, 2011.
- ↑ Technical defect as the cause of the fire. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . October 6, 2012.
- ↑ Fire ate its way through insulation material. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . online , accessed October 4, 2012.
- ↑ Major alarm in the "Chinese Quarter". In: Kölnische Rundschau . online , accessed October 4, 2012.
- ↑ Disaster tourism in Ehrenfeld. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . online , accessed October 4, 2012.
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 57 ′ 36.8 ″ N , 6 ° 54 ′ 57.3 ″ E