Ludwigstrasse (Mainz)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
View from Gutenbergplatz through Ludwigsstraße to Schillerplatz (around 1900)
City map detail from the end of the 19th century. Above is roughly southwest.

The Ludwig Street (or shortly Lu called) in Mainz is next to the Kaiser Street and the Great bleach one of the three leading to the Rhine main axes of the city. Laid out under Napoleon Bonaparte as a city thoroughfare and after the Second World War rebuilt in a loosely laid out ridge structure, it now serves as a largely traffic-calmed shopping street. She is known beyond the city limits through the television broadcast of the Mainz Rose Monday procession .

Course of the road

The 50th parallel cuts through Ludwigsstrasse

Ludwigsstraße begins at Schillerplatz (then Thiermarkt or place verte ) near the Carnival fountain and becomes part of today's Gutenbergplatz after about 250 meters . There is the Gutenberg monument from 1837 and on the opposite side the Mainz State Theater . In between is the "50. Degrees north latitude ”embedded in the road surface - which is, however, a slight shift compared to the geographical latitude; this runs north of the State Theater and does not intersect Ludwigsstrasse.

history

19th century

Ludwigsstraße was planned as Grande Rue Napoléon by a decree of Emperor Napoleon I of October 1, 1804 . After the destruction caused by the siege of Mainz (1793), it was supposed to fundamentally renew the urban planning for the first time. In 1806, Napoleon's departmental building director Eustache de Saint-Far presented the plan, which envisaged a generous main axis as the “backbone” of the historic center with Gutenbergplatz as the focal point. Construction work began in 1810, but soon came to a standstill, as the French had to leave the city after their military defeats in the Wars of Liberation in 1814 and Mainz became a provincial town in Hesse . Road construction was continued on a smaller scale. It was opened as Neue Straße in 1817 and only fully expanded in 1864. The Hessian Grand Duke Ludwig I gave it its current name.

During the time when Mainz was a federal fortress , Ludwigstrasse also served as a border between the two occupations in order to avoid arguments. The Austrian soldiers were only allowed to visit bars in the northern half of the city, the Prussians only in the southern city .

After the Second World War

Large parts of the historic old town , especially north of Ludwigsstraße, were damaged in the Second World War and therefore later demolished and built over in the typically functional style of the 1950s.

As senior building officer, Richard Jörg from the Mainz structural engineering department worked with Adolf Bayer to develop concepts for maintaining several unobstructed views of the Mainz Cathedral , which, among other things, were based on a low, highly loosened ridge development on the south side of Ludwigsstrasse. This concept was only implemented from 1961 and Ludwigstrasse was considerably widened to the depth of the southern wall of Gutenbergplatz. Uniform two-story pavilions were built in front of tall rear buildings. The establishment of the monument value for scientific, architectural-historical and urban planning reasons has so far been denied to this ensemble. This concerns the basic cubic form as an integral part of the superordinate urban development figure of the ridge development, as well as the original substance and proportion of the basic cubic form of the building.

View into the pedestrian zone Ludwigsstraße towards Gutenbergplatz during Midsummer Night (2013)

In the 1970s and again in the 1990s, Ludwigsstraße was gradually converted into a pedestrian zone , in which since then - with the exception of one crossing street - only regular buses, taxis, bicycles and delivery traffic are allowed to drive. Difficulties arose: First of all, a surface was chosen that was not able to cope with the stresses of regular traffic (almost all Mainz bus routes operate here). Later it was decided to renovate the building again, the load-bearing capacity of which was better due to traffic, but not completely sufficient. In addition, this coating was extremely susceptible to spit chewing gum, which in fact cannot be removed. The travel area of ​​the buses, in which critical encounters between careless pedestrians and buses had occurred after the original redesign, has now been optically separated.

Planned shopping center

In July 2011, the Karstadt building on Ludwigsstrasse was sold to the Hamburg project developer ECE , who planned a shopping center with 30,000 square meters of retail space over a larger area, on which 90 other shops in addition to Karstadt should be located. While the local politicians overwhelmingly welcomed the project, parts of the Mainz population reacted with skepticism, which was expressed in a broad-based public participation, the seven Ludwig forums (LuFo). In April 2012 the city council decided on guidelines and recommendations for the further course of action, which deviated from the ideas of ECE in some points. The guidelines adopted by the city council stipulate that access to the shops on the ground floor is not only via a private, internal passage, but via public areas, and that public areas that are no longer needed (such as the space between the pavilions) are elsewhere to be replaced in the quarter with equivalent public use. After extensive deliberation, the city council decided in October 2012 on a revised version of the guidelines and instructed the administration to come to an agreement with ECE. The city council accepted the result of these negotiations in December 2013 with 60 to seven votes, which, however, caused annoyance in the Ludwigsstraße citizens' initiative, as it did not see the city council guidelines being adhered to. Apparently because ECE did not succeed in purchasing the space required for the large concept, it was given up in May 2015; instead, only the previous department store is to be modernized and the sales area is now only 16,000 instead of 26,000 square meters. Many retailers in downtown Mainz welcomed the decision.

Mardi Gras

View through Ludwigsstrasse to Mainz Cathedral on Rose Monday evening (2004)

The traditional New Year's parade through Ludwigsstraße already takes place on January 1st and starts the hot phase of the Mainz Carnival . On Mardi Gras Saturday, the youth mask parade and the “swearing in” of the carnival “recruits” on Weck, Worscht and Woi take place. The traditional dance on the Lu is on Shrovetide Sunday - on this day the motif carriages of the Mainz Rose Monday procession are also presented. On Rose Monday it runs twice through Ludwigsstraße, first in one half towards the cathedral and later in the opposite direction to Schillerplatz. Ludwigsstraße is also the location for the broadcast cameras of SWR television and ZDF during the Carnival Monday parade.

Web links

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

supporting documents

  1. ^ Rainer Metzendorf: The Ludwigsstrasse through the ages. From “Grande Rue Napoléon” to “Lu”. In: Mainz. Quarterly issues for culture, politics, economics, history. Vol. 31, 2011, No. 3, pp. 36-45.
  2. ^ The bulwark of Germany (1814–1866). In: Fortress-Mainz.de ; Dirk Fey: The Mainz citizen militia - citizen soldiers in the Mainz fortress 1648–1848. In: Fortress-Mainz.de , May 2, 2005.
  3. ^ Richard Jörg , Adolf Bayer : Urban planning and construction of Mainz. In: Otto Ernst Schweizer and his school. The students on the sixtieth birthday of their master. Ravensburg 1950. p. 22; Andrew MacNeille: Between Tradition and Innovation - Historic Places in the Federal Republic of Germany after 1945. Dissertation, University of Cologne, 2004, p. 232 f. (PDF) .
  4. ↑ Ewald Wegner (edit.): Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany . Cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate. Volume 2.2: City of Mainz. Old town. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1988, ISBN 3-491-31036-9 , p. 202.
  5. ↑ ECE buys Karstadt house in Mainz. In: b4bRhein-Main.de , July 11, 2011.
  6. ↑ Strategy development of the Karstadt location. Project flow diagram. PDF. In: Mainz.de , as of October 2011.
  7. ^ LuFo: Synopsis - guidelines and recommendations. In: Mainz.de , as of April 2012.
  8. ↑ Michael Erfurth: ECE shopping district in Mainz: Citizens' initiative Ludwigsstraße is thinking of a referendum. In: Allgemeine Zeitung , December 16, 2013.
  9. ↑ Markus Schug: "Even more bulky block". Monopoly to shopping center in the next round. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , May 21, 2015.
  10. ↑ ECE in Mainz is getting smaller. Joy to the retailers. In: SWR.de , May 11, 2015.

Coordinates: 49 ° 59 '54.46 "  N , 8 ° 16' 11.46"  O