Leichhof

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The Leichhof with the south entrance of the cathedral

The Leichhof in Mainz is one of the squares in front of the Mainz Cathedral , it is located south of the cathedral. The name Leichhof is derived from the former cathedral cemetery. In the 12th century, when the individual parish churches set up their own cemeteries, the cathedral cemetery was abandoned and opened for building. This is documented in some documents from the 13th and 14th centuries.

The place was part of the cathedral immunity . Even today, the cathedral abbey houses delimit the Leichhof from the cathedral with its cloister. The buildings Leichhof 26–36 (even numbers) and Schöfferstraße 2/4 are cathedral monastery houses in the early classicist three-storey angular construction. They shield the trikonchos of the western group from the square. Franz Ignaz Michael Neumann designed these buildings with shop arcatures and stone-vaulted roofs in order to improve the fire protection of the west choir, which was redesigned as early as 1769–1774 (crossing tower and flank towers) along with the roofs on the west choir. This group was established in the years 1778–1779. In the course of these renovations, foundations were dug on the site in 1777. They belonged to a roofed connecting building that had connected the St. Johannis Church with the old Willigis Cathedral (975–1009) and which later burned down, the ›Paradise‹. The houses are therefore occasionally called "houses of paradise".

On the south arm of the west transept of the cathedral, interrupted only by a small courtyard gate, is Leichhof 20/22/24, an elongated three-storey hipped roof building with a rusticated round-arched shop arcade and triangular gable. After their destruction by the British Royal Air Force in 1945, the houses were built in 1953 according to the plans of the episcopal builder Horst Schneider and the architect Ph. Böswetter. They shape the plaza. All cathedral abbey houses are among the cultural monuments in the old town of Mainz .

At the southern end of the square Leichhofstraße 11 at the corner of Leichhof 13 is the Zum Frauenstein house , also called Zur Bechtelmünz . It is a three-story baroque corner residential and commercial building, a hipped roof building with corner bay windows and parapet reliefs, built around 1730.

For the millennium of the history of Mainz cathedral in 1975, the Leichhof was rededicated as a pedestrian zone and given today's cobblestones as part of the redesign of the cathedral squares according to plans by the Mainz architects E. Baier, Wolfram Becker and W. Marx. The redesign fits in with the activities for the European Monument Protection Year 1975 and the renovation of the old town of Mainz, which began almost at the same time . Almost in the middle of the square there has been a fountain with a high basin since 1980 , which depicts five characters from the history of Mainz. Its creator is Heinz Müller-Olm.

One of the four cathedral portals, the “Leichhof portal”, is located on the north-eastern corner of the square between the cathedral monastery houses on the southern yoke of the west transept.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ludwig Falck: The archbishop metropolis. 1011-1244. In: Franz Dumont, Ferdinand Scherf, Friedrich Schütz (Hrsg.): Mainz - The history of the city. Mainz 1999, p. 116.
  2. ^ Ludwig Falck: The archbishop metropolis. 1011-1244. In: Franz Dumont, Ferdinand Scherf, Friedrich Schütz (Hrsg.): Mainz - The history of the city. Mainz 1999, p. 113.
  3. ↑ The missing cathedral: Perception and change of the Mainz cathedral over the centuries. Exhibition catalog, edited by Hans-Jürgen Kotzur, among others, on behalf of the Cathedral and Diocesan Museum (Mainz) . 1st edition. Universitätsdruckerei H. Schmidt, Mainz 2011, ISBN 978-3-935647-54-0 , pp. 51 and 569.
  4. ↑ Ilona Hartmann: Leichhof - Those who walk over corpses. ( Memento from March 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Stadtillustrierte Der Mainzer Heft 250, July 2011.
  5. ^ Horst Reber: From the art of the Renaissance and Baroque in Mainz. In: Franz Dumont (ed.), Ferdinand Scherf , Friedrich Schütz : Mainz - The history of the city. P. 1115.
  6. ↑ Constant knocking forms the stone
  7. ↑ MAINZ - aurea moguntia ( Memento from June 28, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  8. ^ Wilhelm Jung (ed.): 1000 years of Mainz Cathedral (975–1975), becoming and change. Exhibition catalog and manual. Mainz 1975.
  9. ^ Franz Dumont : State capital and university town (1945 / 45–1997). In: Franz Dumont (ed.), Ferdinand Scherf, Friedrich Schütz: Mainz - The history of the city. 1st edition. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1998, p. 550.
  10. ^ Joachim Glatz: Romanesque and Gothic in Mainz. In: Mainz - The history of the city. P. 1070.

Web links

Commons : Leichhof  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 49 ° 59 ′ 53.9 ″  N , 8 ° 16 ′ 23.6 ″  E