New Lusthaus Stuttgart

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Model of the New Lusthaus in the Stuttgart City Museum
Fire in the court theater
Ruin of the pleasure house (2015) in the middle palace garden
Fragment of the New Lusthaus

The New Lusthaus zu Stuttgart is one of the most important buildings of the German late Renaissance (actually Mannerism ) and served as a place for courtly festivals and celebrations. The Stuttgart chronicler and monument conservator Gustav Wais described the original building in 1954 as “one of the most noble creations of the German Renaissance, which, if we still had it today, would be the main attraction of Stuttgart”. Both the building history and the appearance are well known due to the numerous traditions.

Previous construction

Duke Christoph von Württemberg began to lay out the garden of the Stuttgart Castle in 1553 and to enclose it with a wall. On this site, the most important building by Peter Cuci was the old pleasure house, which had a ballroom on the upper floor. This building was the first such pleasure house in Germany.

The building of the New Lusthaus

From 1584 to 1593, the New Lusthaus was built on behalf of Duke Ludwig by his court architect Georg Beer in the middle of the Lustgarten, on the site of today's art building.

The building extended over a footprint of 270 shoes × 120 shoes (77.35 m × 34.38 m). Both narrow sides were adorned by high tail gables, which were richly ornamented and even towered over the neighboring Stuttgart collegiate church . The building was thus the largest and most impressive building in the city at the time. A tower was built on all four corners. The entire building was surrounded by arcades in which a total of 65 half-length portraits of all of Duke Ludwig's ancestors from the House of Württemberg over five generations were attached to the walls. The arcades formed an ancestral gallery. The busts can be seen today at Lichtenstein Castle .

The arcades led to a columned hall, the ribbed vault of which supported a total of 27 columns. The coats of arms of important cities in the principality were affixed to the tops of the vaults. There were three square water basins in the hall. There were open stairs on both long sides, through which the upper floor was accessible and through which one got into the freely spanned large ballroom. At 201 feet long (57.58 m), 71 feet wide (20.34 m) and 51 feet high (14.61 m), it was one of the largest halls of its time. This enormous span was achieved through a new type of roof structure, an innovative hanging truss roof structure by Elias Gunzenhäuser with a cantilevered, painted barrel ceiling .

The wax figures of Duke Ludwig and his two wives were exhibited in the ballroom. On the wall surfaces, 16 large-format panels showed detailed depictions of the Württemberg forests, while all of Duke Ludwig's councilors were depicted in a frieze. These numerous representations served to legitimize the Württemberg dynasty.

There were hidden music rooms on either side above the doors to the ballroom, the openings of which were framed by numerous statues. Music that sounds hidden was part of the courtly festival culture.

Conversions to the opera house and the royal court theater

In 1750, under Duke Carl Eugen von Württemberg, it was converted into an opera house by Leopoldo Retti , with the interior of the ballroom being completely destroyed. Even afterwards, renovations took place, in the course of which more and more parts of the original building fabric were lost and the building was disfigured with extensions. So led Philippe de La Guêpière by 1752 to expand and in 1757 a renovation.

In 1811, Nikolaus Friedrich von Thouret converted it into a court theater. The gable on the north side was torn away and - with the exception of the east facade - added on all sides, so that only the upper part of the gable on the south side was reminiscent of the formerly magnificent pleasure house. After the renovation, the house was opened in 1812 with the world premiere of Conradin Kreutzer's opera Conradin von Schwaben . The composer was then appointed court conductor, in which position he worked until 1816.

In 1845 another renovation took place in which the upper floors were demolished and the remains of the pleasure house (the surrounding walls, the vaulted hall on the ground floor and the staircases) completely disappeared under the new building. At that time, the architect Carl Friedrich Beisbarth succeeded in creating comprehensive documentation of the remaining parts of the pleasure house and securing demolished components.

On 19/20 In January 1902 the court theater burned down and the few remaining remnants of the original pleasure house were finally removed.

Remaining fragments

The western arcade with two flights of stairs reached the middle palace garden in 1904, where it still stands today as a ruined pleasure house ( location ). The ruin, which is now supported by steel and wooden scaffolding, is to be repaired according to a decision by the state finance ministry so that the scaffolding and the fence surrounding the ruin can be removed.

Further fragments can be found in the park of the Villa Berg in Stuttgart, at Lichtenstein Castle and in the Stuttgart City Lapidarium ( Sem Schlör and Georg Beer ).

gallery

  • Pleasure garden 1616

  • overall view

  • view

  • cut

  • Side view

  • Side view

  • Arcades

  • Floor plans

  • Hall on the 1st floor

  • Pool hall

  • Fighter figure

  • Fighter figure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lusthaus ruin will be saved ( memento from June 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), stuttgarter-zeitung.de, June 17, 2009

literature

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Further literature

  • Hermann Lenz ; Günter Beysiegel (editor): Stuttgart. from 12 years of life in Stuttgart. Stuttgart: Belser, 1983, pages 413-416.
  • Karl Walcher: The most beautiful portrait busts of the Stuttgart Lusthaus in collotype pictures , Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1887–1891
  • Ulrike Weber-Karge: "... to be compared to an earthly paradise ...". The new Lusthaus in Stuttgart: Investigations into a building project of the German Renaissance , Sigmaringen: Thorbecke 1989
  • Monika Will: The Stuttgart Lusthaus in the drawings and comments by the architect Carl Friedrich Beisbart (1808–1878). A contribution to the preservation of monuments in the 19th century , University of Stuttgart, Institute for Art History
  • Nikolai Ziegler, Ulrike Plate, Thomas Kreißl, Albert Kieferle: Lusthaus ruin in the Stuttgart palace garden. The fate of a special monument . In: Monument Preservation in Baden-Württemberg , Volume 45, 2016, Issue 2, pp. 90–96. ( PDF; 6.5 MB )
  • Nikolai Ziegler (arr.): "One of the noblest creations of the German Renaissance". The New Lusthaus in Stuttgart . Book accompanying the exhibition in the main state archive in Stuttgart [with contributions from other authors]. Stuttgart 2016.
  • Nikolai Ziegler: Forgotten Fragments. The ruins of the New Lusthaus in the Stuttgart Palace Gardens ; in: Schwäbische Heimat, 6th year, volume 4, Stuttgart 2015, pp. 437–444
  • Nicolai Ziegler: Between Form and Construction - The New Lusthaus in Stuttgart . Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2016, ISBN 978-3-7995-1128-5 , plus dissertation, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart 2015.

Web links

Commons : Neues Lusthaus Stuttgart  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 48 ° 46 ′ 46 ″  N , 9 ° 10 ′ 52 ″  E