Logenhaus Meiningen
The Meiningen lodge house was the house of the Masonic lodge " Charlotte zu den Drei Nelken " in the former royal seat of Meiningen . It was built in 1905 in what was then Bismarckstrasse and today's Neu-Ulmer-Strasse and is a listed building.
history
The Freemasons' movement originated in the Duchy of Saxony-Meiningen in 1741 with the establishment of the first Masonic lodge in what is now Thuringia, the lodge “To the Three Compasses”. The "Charlotte zu den Drei Nelken" lodge was founded in 1773 with a patent from Duchess Charlotte Amalie von Sachsen-Meiningen. It belonged to the Great National Mother Lodge "To the Three World Globes" in Berlin. As an event location, the lodge used rented rooms and halls in various buildings in the city for a hundred years. In 1873 the lodge finally bought a house on the corner of Bismarckstrasse and Steinweg and expanded it into its first lodge house with a temple extension.
The old box house soon no longer met the requirements of the Freemasons and a new building was planned from 1900. In 1903 the lodge acquired a plot of land in Bismarckstrasse and the architects and Freemasons Karl Behlert and Carl Göbel had a new lodge house built according to their plans. On May 21, 1905, the new temple was consecrated for the 205 Freemasons at the time. The ruling Duke Georg II of Saxony-Meiningen sent the message of greeting: "May the lodge in the new home be able to enjoy itself".
After Freemasonry was banned by the National Socialists , the Meiningen lodge was confiscated on September 1, 1935, along with its property. The building was then used by the district leadership of the NSDAP , after the Second World War the district leadership of the SED moved into it . From 1990 the house was the domicile of the daily newspaper Meininger Tageblatt , which was revived after the fall of the Wall and which was able to use the communication facilities of the former district administration, which were seldom available at that time. After the newspaper moved into its own publishing house, the box house served as a residential and commercial building.
Building
The lodge house is located at today's Neu-Ulmer-Straße 6 directly on the outer Bleichgraben, one of the two moats still preserved in the former city fortifications. Architect Karl Behlert provided the plans for the structural shell and architect Carl Göbel was responsible for the interior design. The construction costs amounted to around 71,000 marks, plus foundations for parts of the interior furnishings.
The three-storey house in the style of historicism has a basement that is exposed in the direction of Bleichgraben, a ground floor with arched windows and an upper floor with windows that once had window reveals in the eclectic style. The gable on the east side, in whose tympanum field the Masonic symbol “ pentagram ” was once located, is supported by four Ionic columns located on the upper floor . The south facade is also crowned by a gable, in the tympanum of which the symbol “ Eye of Providence ” was placed. The two symbols were removed by the National Socialists in 1935, and they also changed the style of the window reveals on the upper floor and two arched windows on the first floor. On the south side, the lodge members added a bowling alley on the basement, on which a loggia accessible from the ground floor was built.
Inside there was a large event hall on the north side of the ground floor, the colored arched windows of which contained motifs of the degrees “apprentice”, “journeyman” “” and “master” of Freemasonry. A club room and a billiard room were also set up on the ground floor, and on the west side with access to the loggia, the nurses 'room of the nurses' lodge, which had existed since 1837, was set up. The temple, spanned by a dome, was housed on the upper floor above the hall, as well as the library and the master's hall. In the basement and basement there was next to the bowling alley and the castellan's apartment, the kitchen and a wine cellar. In the stairwell, a bust of Duke Georg II had been placed in a niche under the coat of arms of Saxony-Meiningen on the wall .
The valuable inventory was looted after it was confiscated by the National Socialists. These included paintings by Duchess Charlotte Amalie von Hessen-Philippsthal , Duke Carl and Duke Georg II von Sachsen-Meiningen. After 1950, the building received modern additions on the north and south sides up to the level of the ground floor, which, however, only negligibly impair the appearance of the house. Like the lodge house itself, they are used today as residential and office buildings.
Web links
literature
- Karl Heinz Francke, Ernst-Günther Geppert: The Freemason lodges in Germany and their grand lodges 1737–1985; Register and register . Edition Quatuor Coronati, Bayreuth 1988, ISBN 3-925749-05-5 .
- Meiningen Board of Trustees: Meiningen City Dictionary. Bielsteinverlag, Meiningen 2008, ISBN 978-3-9809504-4-2 .
- Helmut Müller: Considerations on Freemasonry in Meiningen. 2005.
- Andrea Jakob: The new box house of the Masonic Lodge “Charlotte zu den Drei Nelken”, Meiningen City Archives, 2017.
Coordinates: 50 ° 34 ′ 10.6 ″ N , 10 ° 25 ′ 6.6 ″ E