Exhibition center

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Messehof in Petersstrasse, 1951
Messehof, 2018

The Messehof is today's commercial building with a shopping mall , the Messehofpassage , in downtown Leipzig . It was built between 1949 and 1950 and is the first urban exhibition center to be built after the Second World War .

history

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, the Leipzig trade fair office planned to resume the local trade fair by 1946 at the latest. Taking over suggestions from the Reichsmesseamte from 1944, the standard was to revive the inner-city sample fair . After several years of planning, the previously private property between Petersstrasse 15 and Neumarkt 16-18 was expropriated in 1948 in order to build a new exhibition block there. The most important previous building on the site was the baroque city ​​palace Hohmanns Hof , which was destroyed in the Second World War and which the Leipzig banker Peter Hohmann had built between 1729 and 1731 (Petersstrasse 15, rear part of the building Neumarkt 16). At Neumarkt 18 the Zeißighaus was to be found, a smaller, less damaged trade fair building, which was built by the architect Julius Zeißig from 1906 to 1907 and added to the building as part of the new building and architecturally adapted to the overall concept.

The Leipzig architect Eberhard Werner, who was already heavily involved in the planning of the new trade fair buildings, provided the designs. Like the neighboring building, the Messehaus am Markt , which was finally completed in 1965 after almost three years of construction , the Messehof on the Petersstrasse side has been set back a few meters across from the historic street alignment in order to widen the heavily frequented streets of the old town. Construction work began in October 1949, and the three lower floors could already be used for the 1950 spring fair . In August 1950 the building was finally completed and opened to the public. As part of the construction of the exhibition center on the market , the part of the building in Petersstrasse was extended to the north by three identical window axes . From 1964 to 1997 the fair building on the market and the fair courtyard were the location of the Leipzig Book Fair , since then both buildings have been used as commercial buildings.

Between 2004 and 2006, the building was extensively rebuilt on behalf of German and Dutch investors by the architects Weis & Volkmann together with the Messehaus am Markt building. The two head buildings of the Messehof on Petersstrasse and Neumarkt largely retained their original architecture.

In the history of Leipzig's city and local architecture, the exhibition center on the market square and the exhibition center are often viewed together, as for a long time they formed a coherent building complex with shared use.

architecture

The seven-story exhibition center on Petersstrasse is 32 meters wide and has 15 window axes. The top two floors have a mezzanine character, the recessed seventh floor forms a terrace below the one-sided hipped roof and visually reduces the height of the house in front of it. At Neumarkt, the asymmetrically cut building is 27 meters wide on the facade and has eight window axes. Five storeys can be seen from the street side; the incline of the irregularly shaped roof begins here on the two top, recessed storeys.

Entrance hall Petersstrasse, 2011
The new, high passage

The cladding of the facades , designed in the style of the 1920 / 1930s, is made of Langensalza limestone . A risalit can be found on both facades , a three-axis and six storey higher one in Petersstrasse and a two-axis one at Neumarkt, which is ground floor height. As part of the renovation from 2004 to 2006, the risalits were given about 60 cm protruding glass facades, which are used for advertising purposes and make the actual facade structure visually forgotten.

In the risalits are the ground floor-high entrances to the approximately 105-meter-long and slightly curved Messehofpassage . In 1950, Eberhard Werner designed the entrance on Petersstrasse as a spacious travertine- clad entrance hall measuring 14 × 16 meters, from which one had access to the main staircase and five elevators . In the middle of the entrance there is still the so-called mushroom column , on which four workers are depicted in a bas-relief in the style of the early Socialist Realism of the GDR : a miner , a spinner , a cooperative farmer and an intellectual worker . The relief work and trade on the pillar made of light Jura marble was created by master stonemason Fritz Przibila based on designs by the Leipzig sculptor Alfred Thiele .

The entrance area was made smaller during the renovation in 2004/2006, and shop windows were placed in front of both sides . During this time, the actual passage - previously single-storey and artificially illuminated - was completely redesigned. A completely new part of the building with a high, four-story arcade room and access to new staircases and lifts, naturally lit by a continuous glass roof, was built between the remaining head buildings . The passage contains a connection to the exhibition center and thus to the Mädlerpassage . In addition, an arm of the passage leads through the outbuilding to the south to Preussergäßchen. The Messehofpassage thus forms the center of the cross-shaped passages in all directions in the building block between Markt / Grimmaischer Strasse, Neumarkt, Preußergäßchen and Petersstrasse.

literature

  • Werner Starke: The Leipzig exhibition center. Shape and history. A contribution to the 800th anniversary of the Leipziger Messe. Leipzig 1961, pp. 87-94.
  • Wolfgang Hocquél : Architecture of the Leipziger Messe. Kaufmannshof, Messepalast, Passage, exhibition grounds. Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-345-00575-1 , pp. 130-131.
  • Ralf Koch: Leipzig architecture of the first post-war years: “Messehof”. In: Leipziger Calendar 1997. Ed. By the city of Leipzig, the mayor, city archive. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 1997, ISBN 3-931922-84-7 , pp. 259-269.
  • Birk Engmann: Building for Eternity. Monumental architecture of the twentieth century and urban planning in Leipzig in the fifties. Sax-Verlag, Beucha 2006, ISBN 3-934544-81-9 , pp. 100-101.
  • Tim Tepper: Inside just arbitrariness. After the renovation, the exhibition center is no longer an unmistakable building. In: cruiser. The Leipzig City Magazine (2006), No. 5, p. 10.
  • Siegfried Schlegel: Trade in the exhibition center again. In: Leipzig's New. Left biweekly newspaper for politics, culture and history. 14 (2006), No. 8, p. 5. ( digitized version on the publisher's website)
  • Wolfgang Hocquél: The Leipziger Passagen & Höfe. Architecture of European standing. Sax-Verlag, Beucha / Markkleeberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86729-087-6 , pp. 52-53.

Web links

Commons : Messehof  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Wolfgang Hocquél 2011, p. 52.
  2. ↑ Ralf Koch 1997, pp. 259-260.
  3. ↑ Werner Starke 1961, p. 87.
  4. ↑ Ralf Koch 1997, p. 262.
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Hocquél 1994, p. 130.
  6. ↑ Birk Engmann 2006, p. 101.
  7. ↑ a b c d Siegfried Schlegel 2006, p. 5.
  8. ↑ Werner Starke 1961, p. 88.
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Hocquél 1994, p. 131.
  10. ↑ For the diversity and breadth of intellectual and cultural life. A look back at the days of the Leipzig Spring Fair . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung of March 22, 1964, p. 3
  11. ^ Klaus G. Saur: Leipzig's Book Fair from 1946 to 1989. A personal retrospective . In: Hartmut Zwahr, Thomas Topfstedt, Günter Bentele (eds.): Leipzigs Messen 1497–1997. Shape change - upheavals - new beginning. Volume 2: 1914–1997 (History and Politics in Saxony 9/2). Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-412-00198-8 , p. 719.
  12. ↑ Leipzig Book Fair March 23-26, 2000. [Catalog] , publisher: Leipziger Messe GmbH. Leipziger Messe Verlag und Vertriebsgesellschaft mbH, Leipzig 1996, p. 5.
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Hocquél 2011, pp. 52–53.
  14. ↑ Ralf Koch 1997, p. 265.
  15. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Hocquél 2011, p. 53.
  16. ↑ Tim Tepper 2006, p. 10.

Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 19.8 "  N , 12 ° 22 ′ 29.7"  E