Main quay
| Main quay | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Main quay from the old bridge | |
| Basic data | |
| place | Frankfurt am Main |
| District | Old town |
| Created | middle Ages |
| Newly designed | from 1826, 1952 |
| Connecting roads | Untermainkai (west), Schöne Aussicht (east) |
| Cross streets | To the parish tower, Am Geistpförtchen, Fahrtor , Am Leonhardstor, Karmelitergasse, Seckbacher Gasse |
| Buildings | Saalhof , Rententurm , Eiserner Steg , Leonhardskirche |
| use | |
| User groups | Pedestrians, cyclists, museum trains, passenger shipping |
| Technical specifications | |
| Street length | 720 meters |
The Mainkai is a street on the right bank of the Main in Frankfurt's old town between the Alter Brücke and Untermainbrücke . It was created from 1826 by filling and widening the mooring and landing area on the banks of the Main, which has been fortified since the Middle Ages. Today it is a promenade by the river and, since July 30, 2019, has been reserved for pedestrians and cyclists on a trial basis for a year.
Down the Main , the Mainkai merges into the Untermainkai with the Nice , part of the Frankfurt green belt . Together with the Schaumainkai on the opposite side of the Main, it forms the Museumsufer .
The connecting line of the port railway , which is also used for special passenger trains of the historic Frankfurt railway , runs along the Mainkai . The Mainkai is the main landing stage for the Frankfurter Personalenschiffahrt and a departure point for the Cologne-Düsseldorfer Rheinschiffahrt .
location
The Mainkai begins in the east at the northern bridgehead of the Old Bridge . Under the street ramp are the fishermen's vaults, which were laid out in 1826 and were used by the Frankfurt fishermen on the Main as berths for their boats in the 19th century. Most of the classicistic development in this area was destroyed in the air raids in 1944 . Today's buildings mostly date from the reconstruction period between 1952 and 1955. West of the alley to the parish tower , a three-storey perimeter block development was built, behind which there were large green courtyards.
To the south of the roadway to the quay wall , the Mainkai is designed as a Mainuferpark . The quay wall serves as a berth for the passenger ships of the Primus line under the name of Fahrtorwerft . Another berth is the west of the Iron web preferred Leonhard shipyard . It is used by the Cologne-Düsseldorfer and other shipping companies, in some cases as berths for river cruise ships during their stay in Frankfurt.
From the Middle Ages until the construction of the West Harbor, the Frankfurt Main Harbor was located in the area around the Fahrtor . The rebuilt Saalhof with the rent tower is one of the most historically important buildings in Frankfurt. Despite the embankments in the 19th century, this section of the banks of the Main is the lowest part of Frankfurt's old town. Floods occasionally occur when the Main floods, most recently in 2011, 2003 and 1995.
To the west of the alley at Am Leonhardstor , the northern block perimeter development recedes somewhat, so that the street here is designed as a green area on both sides. The Mainkai ends at Seckbächer Gasse , a narrow footpath. The ramp leading up to the northern bridgehead of the Untermainbrücke already belongs to the Untermainkai .
history
Frankfurt's oldest port
In the area of Frankfurt's Old Town, a retired limestone barrier through the Main, as part of the Berger back to the Sachsenhausen hill running geological soil . In the early Middle Ages it formed a good access point to the main stream and a ford passable for people and wagons in the otherwise swampy Main Plain, criss-crossed by numerous watercourses . One of the 11th century occupied According to legend, a doe the Frankish army this Frankenfurt have shown as it is led by Emperor of the Great Charles had to withdraw on the run from the Saxons on the Main and no transition found. The emperor later returned victorious and founded a city on the ford. He settled the defeated Saxons on the opposite bank, which was then named Sachsenhausen .
In fact, the name Franconofurd can be found in the oldest documented mention of the city from 794. The bank was used as a ship landing , and fishermen and craftsmen who belonged to the royal palace of Frankfurt also settled here . As early as the late Middle Ages, the bank was fortified with a quay , as archaeological findings from the construction of the historical museum showed. At that time, however, the shoreline ran considerably further north than it does today, a little south of Saalgasse . In the 10th century, the then populated area was fortified with a city wall for the first time .
At the end of the 12th century, a castle with a three-story residential tower, possibly the seat of an imperial ministerial, was built on the site of today's Saalhof . At the beginning of the 13th century, the castle was expanded and a Romanesque chapel was added, which is now the oldest surviving structure in Frankfurt. This building was also included in the Hohenstaufen fortification that was built around the same time and protected the entire bank of the Main between the Main Bridge, first mentioned in 1222, and the Mainzer Tower . Access from the Main Quay to the old town was secured by six strong gates. From east to west, these were the Fischerpforte immediately west of the bridge, the Metzgertor at the exit of the butcher's quarter next to the slaughterhouse, the Heilig-Geist-Pforte south of the Heilig-Geist-Spital on Saalgasse , the Fahrtor as a connection to the Römerberg , the wooden gate to the west of which and finally the Leonhardstor to the Kornmarkt in the western old town, secured with an additional tower .
The bank between Metzgertor and Leonhardstor was Frankfurt's most important port until the end of the 19th century. On the upstream bank section mainly wood was handled, which was brought in with rafts from the upper reaches of the Main. Below the Saalhof was the storage area for wine, which mainly came from Franconia or the Rheingau . Since the 12th century there has been a regular connection between Frankfurt and Mainz , the Mainz market ship . Since the 14th century, two vehicles have alternated daily, one to the mountain and the other to the valley. The ships were used to transport people and goods, but also to transport mail. The departure in Frankfurt took place daily at 10 a.m. from the driver's gate. The travel time to Mainz was about seven to nine hours. From 1600 to the construction of the Frankfurt-Hanau Railway in 1848, a market ship shuttled between Frankfurt and Hanau several times a week.
Expansion of trade and bank fortifications in the 19th century
In the 18th century, the strong fortifications increasingly proved to be obstacles to traffic, especially since they had lost all military use. The first to be demolished in 1769 was the Sachsenhausen bridge tower, followed by its opposite on the Frankfurt bank in 1801. Even after that, however, there was still no direct connection from the bank of the Main to the bridge. Until 1826 the Tiefkai between age bridge and was Big Fischergasse broadened by landfills and a new Hochkai which Brückenquai built, ran across the street. The substructure was formed by the fishing vault made of red Main sandstone . The vaulted cellars were connected to the Main by narrow canals and served the Fischernachen as a port until the connecting railway was built in 1859.
In 1825 merchants from Frankfurt, Mainz and Strasbourg founded the steamship company for the Rhine and Main and commissioned a paddle steamer from the city of Frankfurt . On March 8, 1828, she was the first steamship on the Main to reach her future home port on the Mainkai. The ship turned out to be a bad design; it was unsuitable for profitable freight traffic and its steam engine turned out to be operational only after several modifications. From 1830 it was mainly used on the Upper Rhine between Mainz and Karlsruhe.
The volume of traffic on the Main increased considerably and required more storage and handling space on the banks and better transport connections to the city. In 1829-30 the bank reinforcement was extended by 130 meters to the west. It was not until 1839-40 that the medieval Fahrtor was torn down and the Mainkai was extended by a further 370 meters to behind the Leonhardstor. In 1841, city architect Johann Friedrich Christian Heß built the customs warehouse as one of his last works on the wide storage area south of the Alte Mainzer Gasse . It consisted of the classical customs building for the customs directorate and the main tax office as well as the Packhof from several inspection halls. With the so-called mean water correction, the Free City of Frankfurt committed itself in 1846 to maintain a minimum fairway depth of 90 centimeters and a fairway width of 26 meters in its territory.
When the connecting line was built between 1850 and 1858, the bank wall in the area of the Zollhof had to be relocated further into the course of the river in order to create space for the necessary shunting and sidings. In addition, the quay wall was lengthened by 900 meters to the west, which strengthened the shore area on which city gardener Sebastian Rinz created the Nice green area in 1860 .
Right on the shore below the customs court created in 1858, two 200 and 100 shoe long, single-storey, single-nave storage shed. Hand-operated slewing cranes were installed at regular intervals to load and unload the ships . One of these cranes, the Hercules crane , has been preserved. It was originally located at Zollhof and was later moved to its current location on Nice.
The connecting line , opened in 1859, ran from the Westbahnhof to Hanau station . Until 1869 it was only used for freight traffic, then also for passenger traffic until April 1, 1913. The Fahrtor stop in front of the Saalhof even had its own reception building at times . Due to the destruction of the Main bridges in March 1945 shortly before the end of the Second World War , the connecting railway was used again for a short time in the summer of 1945 for scheduled passenger traffic. Since then it has served as an operating line for the Frankfurt port railway ; Since 1978 the historical railway Frankfurt has also been using it for its museum operations .
In 1866, the centuries-old sovereignty of the Free City of Frankfurt ended with the annexation by Prussia . Railway facilities, the old bridge and the railway bridge at the level of today's Friedensbrücke were nationalized. An extension or a new construction of the old bridge, which had long since ceased to cope with road traffic, was no longer an option because of the political and economic upheavals associated with the annexation. Frankfurt citizens therefore founded a stock corporation in 1867 to build a bridge at the Fahrtor , which had the Eiserner Steg built in 1868/69 .
Between 1863 and 1879, shipping traffic on the Main experienced a decline. The annual cargo handling fell from 211,700 tons to 93,400 tons. This was not only due to the growing competition from the Mainbahn , which opened in 1863 , but above all to the silting up of the mouth of the Main near Kostheim . On average, the depth of the fairway in the Lower Main sank below 90 centimeters on more than 220 days a year. Only small ships with a loading capacity of around 50 tons could navigate the Main, so the freight had to be handled in Mainz. In connection with the time required and the costs of towing the ships, freight traffic became increasingly unprofitable. In order to be able to continue to use the Main as a transport route for the needs of the growing cities and industrial companies for raw materials and building materials, Prussia decided, on the initiative of the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce, to canalize the Lower Main over a distance of 36 kilometers and with five barrages to a minimum navigation depth of 2 Meters. The locks were large 82 meters long and 10.50 meters wide, enough to the then largest Rhine ships take. At the same time, a new security and trading port was built above the Frankfurt weir . The water level was sufficient to maintain a water depth of at least 1.20 meters on the quay walls throughout the city all year round until the Obermainbrücke, which opened in 1878 . The traffic from Frankfurt up the Main was modernized with the chain shipping on the Main, which also went into operation in 1886 . The Main now formed a modern port over a length of four kilometers in the urban area, and traffic volume increased a hundredfold from 1882 to 1889.
With the commissioning of the first barrage in Offenbach from 1898 to 1900, the canalised river section was extended to the Frankfurt East Harbor , which was built between 1908 and 1912 . After the opening of the western harbor, the landing stages at the driving gate were mainly used for passenger shipping; initially for scheduled ferry traffic, for example to Schwanheim, from the 1920s mainly for excursions. With the closure of passenger traffic on the connecting line in 1913, the Mainkai was given a new function as an inner-city axis for road traffic. In 1932, the old customs buildings at Leonhardstor were demolished and their track systems were dismantled except for a continuous track. The vacated space was transformed into a promenade with a green area. The Main thus largely achieved its current state of development in the area of the Mainkai.
The Mainkai as a traffic axis
In the 20th and early 21st centuries, the Mainkai was used as the main artery for road traffic with up to 20,000 vehicles per day as an east-west connection through one of the most beautiful areas of the city. Especially after the opening of the New Old Bridge in 1926, the volume of traffic increased significantly. However, even after the extensions in the 19th century, the Main Quay was not flood-proof. On average, floods occurred about every two to three years. The highest water levels in 1845 and 1882 were a good meter higher than the highest water levels reached since the middle of the 20th century. A particularly severe flood in January 1920 with a maximum water level of 618 cm (70 cm more than 1995) caused the city administration to revisit an old flood protection plan from the 1880s. The bank area at the Mainkai should be raised and diked. A 12-meter-wide riverside road was to be built on the new Hochkai, with the area in front being designed as a green area. Construction work began in October 1927, but was stopped again in March 1928 due to lack of money and loud public protests.
The planned dike would have impaired the panorama of the Main, which was one of Frankfurt's tourist attractions before it was destroyed in the air raids in 1944, with its picturesque succession of medieval, baroque and classical buildings. Behind the representative bank façades, the narrow, historically grown tangle of alleys, courtyards and backyards in the quarter between Saalgasse, cathedral and Fahrgasse was still completely preserved. From 1926 onwards, numerous houses were renovated on the initiative of the Association of Friends of the Old Town . 1936–38 numerous houses were demolished or renovated in the area between the Alter Brücke and the cathedral in the Große and Kleine Fischergasse and between Mainkai 3 and 11, creating an inner courtyard called a cherry orchard .
The first plans to make the Mainkai car-free date from the early 1960s. In return, the Schaumainkai on the southern bank of the Main was to be expanded into a six-lane, intersection-free expressway on two levels (high and low quay). A cable-stayed bridge in the style of the Severinsbrücke in Cologne, opened in 1959, was planned to replace the old bridge, which was blown up at the end of March 1945 and only poorly repaired . An additional pedestrian bridge was to cross the Main in an axis between the cathedral and the Dreikönigskirche , connected to a café on the west pier of the Main Island. Another road bridge was to be built below the Untermainbrücke at the level of the Gallusanlage . The plan would have involved significant interventions in the historical building fabric of Sachsenhausen and the station district, but at the same time provided for the northern banks of the Main at Mainkai and Untermainkai to be completely closed to individual traffic and converted into a green area. The plan was included in the first overall traffic plan from 1966, but not implemented. After the municipal elections in 1977, the then city government abandoned the plans and instead developed the concept of the Museum Bank to upgrade the Main and its banks in the inner city area. The Mainkai remained a thoroughfare, but it was closed several times a year for events, for example as part of the Mainfest or the Museumsuferfest . At the turn of the year 1999/2000, the radio station Hit Radio FFH had three giant wheels set up on the Mainkai, which together with an oversized 2 formed a number 2000 that could be read from the Sachsenhausen bank. During the 2006 World Cup , the Mainkai was part of the MainArena fan mile .
The city center concept adopted by the city council in 2014 planned to reduce the number of lanes on the Mainkai to two, but to keep it open for private traffic in both directions. After the local elections in 2016, the coalition parties agreed in the coalition agreement that the inner-city bank of the Main should be opened for pedestrians and cyclists for at least one year. At the beginning of 2018, the head of the transport department Oesterling presented his plans to the public. A traffic census in March 2018 showed that almost 20,000 car journeys and around 1,000 heavy vehicle journeys are affected every day. On June 25, 2019, the city council approved the proposal. On July 29, 2019, the northern Mainuferstraße in the section of Mainkai and eastern Untermainkai was closed to car traffic for one year. Restaurants and cafés can expand their outdoor catering, the bus parking spaces will be relocated.
During this time the Mainfest, the Museumsuferfest, the Frankfurt Christmas Market and other small events take place. Drivers can switch to Berliner Straße or switch to public transport ; Access for residents and exits from the parking garage at the Dom / Römer underground station remain possible. A cycle route from the north from Kornmarkt to Mainkai was also set up in 2018 and a one-way street was opened . After first experiences from neighbors, the road has since been used by cyclists and e-scooters . There are also fears of increasing nightly party noise. During the Museum Embankment Festival 2019 , the simultaneous closure of the southern bank of the Main resulted in significant traffic obstructions in Sachsenhausen and the city center for days. The responsible local council 5 had received more complaints than when the north-west runway opened at Frankfurt am Main airport in 2011. Most of the complainants and the local council demanded that Sachsenhausen Ufer be closed to car traffic instead of the Main Quay. The head of the traffic department rejected the demands and announced that he would stick to the concept for the Mainkai.
Buildings
During the air raids on Frankfurt am Main , especially on March 18 and 22, 1944, the older half-timbered houses on Mainkai burned down to their foundations. The classical stone buildings, especially around the old bridge and to the west of the Fahrtor, burned out, but their structural fabric was largely preserved. After the war, the rubble was cleared from 1950. Reconstruction began in 1952, when the old properties and streets were completely changed. The alleys An der Schmidtstube and Kleine Fischergasse disappeared completely, Am Schlachthaus was renamed to Zum Pfarrturm and the Große Fischergasse became the Große Fischerstraße to a parallel street between Weckmarkt and Mainkai. A three-storey perimeter block development was created along the Weckmarkt, behind which there were large green courtyards. Only a few classicist buildings were restored, some of them are still listed as cultural monuments today.
Mainkai 4, which was built in 1838 and is one of the narrowest houses in Frankfurt with a facade width of just four meters, was sold in a poor condition by the city in 1994 to an investor who replaced it with a new building with a glass facade in 1996, despite strong public and local government opposition. The listed neighboring house Mainkai 6/7 , built around 1840, as well as the house Große Fischerstraße 40 are examples of the classicist original development of the Mainkai. The rebuilt Saalhof is one of the most historically important buildings in Frankfurt. It was externally rebuilt after its destruction in World War II and has been part of the Historical Museum ever since . The facade for Mainkai is through the 1715 to 1717 built baroque Bernus and from 1840 to 1842 by Rudolf Burnitz built neo-Romanesque Burnitz coined. The rent tower built between 1454 and 1456 by Eberhard Friedberger also belongs to the Saalhof complex .
The two corner houses at the Fahrtor are cultural monuments that survived the war. Haus Wertheim is a half-timbered house from the Renaissance, the guard and customs building opposite is a classicist building from around 1830. Further to the west are Haus Mainkai 39 , built in 1879 in the neo-renaissance style , the baroque Haus Mainkai 40 and the classicist sexton (Alte Mainzer Gasse 23).
The Leonhardskirche is the oldest surviving church building in Frankfurt's old town. It was the second collegiate church in the city after the Frankfurt Cathedral . In the document of August 15, 1219, with which the Staufer King Friedrich II donated the property to the town, the township is mentioned for the first time in its entirety and placed under royal protection. In addition, the citizens were given the very rare right at the time to appoint the priest . Its preserved late Romanesque parts are, after the Carolingian Justinuskirche in the Höchst district and the High Romanesque Saalhof chapel, the oldest in a church building in Frankfurt.
At the passage of the Seckbächer Gasse , a late Gothic exit gate of the Frankfurt city fortifications has been preserved, the women's or main gate .
See also
literature
- Fried Lübbecke : The face of the city. Based on Frankfurt plans by Faber, Merian and Delkeskamp 1552–1864. Waldemar Kramer publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1952.
- Tobias Picard: Frankfurt am Main in early color slides 1936 to 1943. Sutton-Verlag, Erfurt 2011. ISBN 978-3-86680-760-0
- Dieter Rebentisch : City on the river - Frankfurt and the Main. Archive for Frankfurt's history and art. Vol. 70. Verlag Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 2004. ISBN 3-7829-0559-8
Web links
- State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.): Mainkai, Uferpromenade and Geländer In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hessen
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Trial opening of the northern bank of the Main for pedestrians and cyclists at par.frankfurt.de , the former website of the City of Frankfurt am Main, accessed on July 31, 2019
- ↑ boat tours at par.frankfurt.de , the former site of the city of Frankfurt am Main, accessed on July 30 of 2019.
- ↑ Reconstruction of the old town in 1952 at aufbau-ffm.de ( memento from June 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on July 31, 2019
- ↑ The Mainfischer foyer. Bridge Construction Association Frankfurt am Main, accessed on July 31, 2019 .
- ^ A b Volker Rödel: Civil engineering in Frankfurt am Main 1806–1914. Contributions to urban development . Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-7973-0410-2 , The port facilities and bank fortifications until 1886, p. 26-30 .
- ^ Volker Rödel: Civil engineering in Frankfurt am Main 1806–1914 . Societätsverlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-7973-0410-2 , Eiserner Steg, p. 165-190 .
- ^ Volker Rödel: Civil engineering in Frankfurt am Main 1806–1914 . Societätsverlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-7973-0410-2 , Die Mainkanalisierung 1883–1886, pp. 16-26 .
- ↑ Wolfgang Bangert: Building Policy and Urban Design in Frankfurt aM A contribution to the development of German urban development in the last 100 years . Würzburg 1937, p. 184
- ^ Report of the magistrate on the administration and the status of the community affairs of the city of Frankfurt am Main, year 1927/28, p. 19 and year 1928/29, p. 5, 55
- ^ Olaf Cunitz : Urban redevelopment in Frankfurt am Main 1933-1945 . Thesis, historical seminar at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main , 1996; P. 65f. ( Digitized version )
- ^ Matthias Alexander: Attempted murder on the banks of the Main. In: faz.net. February 4, 2019, accessed August 4, 2019 .
- ↑ Riesenrad-2000 am Main is already turning , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of December 31, 1999, No. 305, p. 73
- ↑ Inner city concept. Annex 3 - Design plan for public space. (PDF) In: Magistratsvorlage M 153. September 12, 2014, p. 5 , accessed on August 22, 2019 .
- ↑ Diversion measures after the closure of the northern Mainuferstraße. (PDF) In: Statement of the Magistrate, ST 1906. September 21, 2018, accessed on August 22, 2019 .
- ↑ Trial opening of the inner-city northern bank of the Main (between the Alte Brücke and Untermainbrücke) for pedestrians and cyclists. (PDF) In: Magistratsvorlage M 72. May 17, 2019, accessed on August 22, 2019 .
- ↑ North bank of the Main closed to cars and trucks for 13 months from Tuesday , Frankfurter Neue Presse, July 27, 2019.
- ↑ Frankfurt's northern bank of the Main a year off for cars , Hessenschau , July 30, 2019.
- ↑ From Kornmarkt directly to the Main , Frankfurt Cycle Office, December 21, 2018, accessed on August 2, 2019.
- ↑ Mechtild Harting: From the racetrack to the amusement mile. In: faz.net. August 19, 2019, accessed August 22, 2019 .
- ↑ Bernd Günther: More protest than the commissioning of the runway. In: faz.net. August 26, 2019, accessed September 3, 2019 .
- ↑ Bernd Günther: No car-free museum bank. In: faz.net. August 30, 2019, accessed September 3, 2019 .
- ↑ City has missed opportunities , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of September 5, 1995, p. 42
- ^ Johann Friedrich Böhmer , Friedrich Lau: Document book of the imperial city Frankfurt. First volume 794-1314. J. Baer & Co, Frankfurt am Main 1901. p. 23 and 24, Document No. 47, August 15, 1219.