Nuremberg style

Hansa House (Fürtherstraße 2, architect K. Schultheiss)

Hotel German Emperor

The Nuremberg style is a regional style expression within historicism . It is a local branch of the neo-Gothic and neo-renaissance of the 1880s and 1890s based on the historical Nuremberg building tradition .

history

In the last quarter of the 19th century, especially from 1880 onwards, Nuremberg recorded rapid and sometimes disorderly growth, caused by industrialization and favored by its development as a transport hub. The population of the town had 1,880 more than 100,000 people and then tripled to 1905. The accompanying strong construction activity and particularly the consolidation of the old city through demolition of historic buildings for multi-storey replacement buildings fueled the fear that the city a lasting change and lose its historical face would. Against this background, a romanticizing counter-movement and a theoretical style discussion emerged, which advocated a renewal of the Nuremberg building tradition in the spirit of Gothic and High Renaissance and called for the use of historical formal language. The regained national self-confidence after the victory in the Franco-Prussian War and the establishment of the Second German Empire was also important. Last but not least, the Nuremberg style was also the structural expression of the desire of the city, which fell under Bavarian sovereignty in 1806 - in cultural demarcation to the Bavarian kingdom - to connect to its own old imperial city tradition, to the past "golden era" of the city in the Dürer period, as Nuremberg had reached its cultural and economic climax. The painterly forms produced by this trend met the emotional needs of the bourgeoisie who indulged in these ideas. Buildings were to be realized "whose forms were brought closer to buildings of the past for architectural reasons as well as for urban conservation considerations." As a result, in 1892 an "architecture committee consisting of artists and local art politicians" was formed to "watch over (...) that new buildings did not particularly impair the historical character of the old town ”. The protagonists of the Nuremberg style did not want a historicizing decoration of the new buildings, but rather a take up, connection and further development of the traditional building tradition. Most of the buildings of the Nuremberg style were built by 1900. From 1905 it was replaced by the neo-renaissance , neo- baroque and art nouveau styles . After that, until the First World War, only a few buildings were built, mainly by private clients, with echoes of the Nuremberg style.

Style elements

“Zum Wilden Jäger”, Reichstrasse 17, with numerous pointed dormer windows typical of the region

The buildings belonging to the Nuremberg style were almost exclusively executed in yellowish or reddish sandstone as the predominant facade material. They usually have regularly structured, ornamented facades with standing window formats and vertical emphasis. Ornaments from the late Gothic and early renaissance periods are preferred , mostly in the form of stone masons, often with complex natural stone workpieces. Often both styles are mixed in the sense of a transitional style, for example Gothic tracery in parapet fields below the windows and Renaissance cornices. The façades are often accentuated by bay windows, one to three storeys high, and the roofs - in keeping with the traditional roof landscape - are steep.

Applications in the sense of the Nuremberg style persist, as pure facade decoration, then also in rental apartment building in working-class districts until around 1920.

Architects

• Gustav von Bezold
• August from Essenwein
• Karl Hammer
• Carl Alexander Heideloff
• Theodor von Kramer
• Hans Pylipp
• Georg Richter
• Josef Schmitz
• Konradin Walther

Examples

• Hotel Deutscher Kaiser , Königstrasse 55 (1888/1889 by Konradin Walther)
• City hall extension, Fünferplatz 5 (1897–1899 by Joseph Schmitz and Hans Pylipp)
• Stein Castle (1899 by Theodor von Kramer)
• Southwest building of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (1898–1900 by Gustav von Bezold)
• House group at the Marientor (1890/1891 by Georg Richter)
• Hansa House , Plärrer 2 (1893–1895 by K. Schultheiss)
• Residential and commercial building at Pirckheimerstraße 44
• Row of houses in Mühlstrasse (7 buildings, including the "German House") in Tübingen (1900–1903 by Conradin Walther and others)

literature

• Norbert Götz: About neo-Gothic and Nuremberg style. Studies on the problem of artistic reception of the past in Nuremberg in the 19th century. Association for the History of the City of Nuremberg , Nuremberg 1981, ISBN 3-87191-068-6 .

Web links

Commons : Nuremberg style  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Norbert Götz: Historicism, Art Nouveau and the Nuremberg cityscape. To the continuity of a conflict. In: Peter Behrens and Nuremberg. (Exhibition catalog of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum) Nuremberg 1980.
2. ↑ Ibid.
3. ^ Conradin Walther in Tübingen, www.tuepedia.de