Lili temple

View of the Lili Temple with the garden pond in front of it

Lili temple with a modern extension

The Metzler bathing temple in Offenbach am Main , popularly known as the Lili temple , is a former classicistic bathing temple of the Frankfurt banker Friedrich Metzler in the Offenbach city center.

The bathing temple was built in 1798 by the French architect Nicolas Alexandre Salins de Montfort , after Metzler moved his summer residence to Offenbach in 1792. The building is considered to be Montfort's only work in the Rhine-Main area that has been preserved in its original state.

The building is a cultural monument according to the Hessian Monument Protection Act .

building

Lili Temple, view from Mainstrasse

The building, built in 1798 by the French architect Nicolas Alexandre Salins de Montfort, consists of a bath and a tea house and is around seven meters high with an area of 250 m².

The basement of the building is made of granite blocks and is semi-circular towards the Main. Two windows once gave a view of the Main. In addition to rooms, it originally contained an immersion bath, a heating system and a cold water reservoir. Little is known about the equipment. On the one hand, the bathroom was popularly called the marble bathroom , on the other hand there are contemporary reports with reference to a cladding with mirror panels. Neither of these has survived today.

The ground floor was designed as a garden pavilion. The rotunda rises above a three-step flight of stairs as a former entrance area. A connecting corridor led to a hall. The rotunda also offered the opportunity to enter the grotto , the basement or the roof of the rotunda. The rotunda opens onto the garden with a four-column portico of Corinthian order . The decorated architrave rests on it .

The grotto is formed on the outside by a stack of boulders. Furthermore, a greenhouse was attached on the ground floor , which is no longer preserved today. The rectangular building that contains the hall was once plastered and painted white or light gray. The hall itself is oval. Its equipment has not been preserved. This was very complex and valuable. The windows in the walls and ceiling of the salon could be opened and closed using ingenious mechanisms. A semicircular, formerly covered balcony adjoins this main room facing the Main. It was once closed by a balustrade and pedestal with four fluted Ionic columns.

The design and furnishings of the bathing temple were particularly valuable and representative for a private person. The temple was known as a sight far beyond Offenbach's borders. It was an expression of the wealth and the refined taste and education of its owner.

The former bathing complex is part of the 10,000 m² Lili Park, which was created at the end of the 18th century from the gardens of the banking and corporate family Jean Georg d'Orville (1747–1811) and Jeanne Rahel Bernard (1751–1822). Metzler, in turn, had the site redesigned in the English style in 1793. In 1892, the Herrnstrasse was extended from Linsenberg to the Main, with the new street being laid across the complex.

The building is a listed building .

history

use

Lili Temple on a painting by Louis Kolitz

Originally the temple was located directly on the Main , so that in its grotto-like basement it was possible to bathe in the Main water. During the construction of roads and flood dams in the 19th century, however, the structure lost this reference. As part of these measures, the main side of the park adjacent to the temple was closed by a wall with a fence.

In 1951, the building including the park became the property of the city of Offenbach and was then open to the public for the first time.

The building in need of renovation was given a long lease to the Gelnhausen entrepreneur Volker Hohmann, subject to restoration in 2004 . Among other things, he had the extensive stucco inside restored. The executive architect and thus “successor” of de Montfort was the Frankfurt architect Christopher Pierre Hefele. The official opening took place on September 3, 2007. The building was open to the public for the first time on the 2007 Open Monument Day . The Lili Temple was then to be used as an art gallery and for cultural events. From November 2007, the facility was open to the public one day a week. In addition to the also privately built Rumpenheimer Schloss , the Lili Temple is a prime example of progressive monument protection. In 2008, Hohmann received the Hessian Monument Protection Prize for the exemplary restoration of the Lili Temple .

In 2016 it became known that the temple had been sold to a management consultancy . The city can, however, continue to use the rooms for cultural events. In addition, the new owner is planning events with an artistic character.

Connection to Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Memorial plaque on the occasion of Goethe's meeting with his Lili in Offenbach's Lili-Park

The temple was popularly named Lili-Tempel after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's fiancé , Anna Elisabeth Schönemann , with whom he used to meet in the surrounding park in 1775. The park was only given the name Lili-Park on the 100th anniversary of Goethe's death in 1932.

literature

Martina Bergmann-Gaadt: Metzler bathing temple: “Lili temple”; Salins de Montforts bathhouse in Offenbach am Main . Ed .: Förderkreis Wiederaufbau Metzlerscher Badetempel eV, Offenbach am Main 1996, DNB 949694819
Klaus A. Weidner: The restoration of a classical bathhouse - the Metzler bathing temple in Offenbach / Main , Wiesbaden 2008