Overstolzenhaus
The Cologne Overstolzenhaus is one of the oldest buildings in the city of Cologne , is the oldest preserved patrician house in Germany and was mainly used as a residential building. It is somewhat hidden in Rheingasse 8, Altstadt-Süd .
history
The Romanesque patrician house with the distinctive stepped gables was built around 1230 by Blithildis Overstolz , according to architectural studies . Blithildis (* 1175, † 1255) was the daughter of the progenitor of the dynasty, Gottschalk Overstolz. She had married the knight Werner von der Schuren, who had taken the name "Overstolz" when he married Blithildis. After he was promoted to the college of aldermen , he and his wife built this house to commemorate and for economic use by his merchant family . Werner Overstolz was thus a member of the Overstolzes , a wealthy merchant family in the war played an important mediating role between the citizens of Cologne and the Church.
At that time the house was called "Haus zur Scheuren" (ad horreum) in the shrine books until 1257 and thus had the original name of the knight Werner von der Schuren, for whose social advancement the progenitor Gottschalk had set the course. Werner and Blithildis bequeathed the house to their son Johannes Overstolz (* 1195, after † 1255) in 1255. In the following, the owners apparently only changed in inheritance and apparently partially dispensed with an “anchoring” - that is, an entry in the shrine registers .
Frequent changes of ownership
The Overstolzenhaus belonged to prominent owners from the Cologne upper class . Johannes von der Schuren (now Overstolz) bequeathed it to his son of the same name in 1269, whose children sold the building - now called "Haus von Schuren" again - to Everhard Hardevust in 1337 . Hardevust connected it with the neighboring houses Rheingasse No. 4–6. At first it stayed in the ranks of Cologne patrician families such as Friedrich Wallrave (1424), Johann von der Reven (from 1437), for 10,558 Upperland guilders it was acquired by Johann Blitterswich (from 1457), Johann von Merle (from 1458), then it went through one Granddaughter to the Hardenrath family . Philipp Brassard bought the house in 1628 and sold it again in 1668. It was followed by Franz Sebastian Georg Freiherr von Leykam (* August 5, 1754, † August 23, 1821), the electoral Cologne ambassador and councilor. He married Maria Sibilla Theresia zum Pütz in Cologne in 1783 (* June 7, 1754 Cologne, † June 3, 1784 Mainz), the heiress of the patrician Everhard zum Pütz, who had inherited the Jabach property in Cologne. This was followed by the owners Jacob Wilhelm Mumm (* 1779, † 1836), Friedrich Wilhelm Bemberg (* 1711, † 1806) and the building contractor Burrenkopf.
At Herr von Leykam's, the Overstolzenhaus was threatened with demolition. However, when the French approached Cologne in October 1794 , the owner of Leykam moved to Prague , and so the old magnificent building remained standing. The last owner, Burrenkopf, also planned to demolish it in favor of a new building in 1838, but the Cologne City Council decided on the acquisition on March 13, 1838, which was approved in May 1838. She commissioned the city architect Johann-Peter Weyer with the renovation and restoration , while the painter Michael Welter took on the decoration of the rooms. The city made it available to the Cologne Chamber of Commerce and Industry , which partly left it to the Cologne Stock Exchange between 1843 and 1932 . On May 5, 1893, the Cologne Museum of Applied Arts moved into some rooms in the Overstolzenhaus, before the museum was able to inaugurate its new museum building on Hansaplatz on May 2, 1900 . Internal renovations took place between 1899 and 1900, and an extension was carried out in 1907 under the city architect Hans Verbeek . During the Second World War , bombing raids on May 30, 1942 led to a fire that largely destroyed the house. After considerable damage during the war, only the ground floor and the first floor of the street-side facade were preserved. On April 21, 1955, the City Council of Cologne decided to rebuild it into a representative building. In the process, significant Romanesque wall paintings were discovered (see below) which, by a lucky coincidence, had survived all destruction, as they were hidden behind a later wall.
layout
The Overstolzenhaus is 19.50 meters long, 14.50 meters wide, the span of the wider aisle is 7.50 meters. The structure, which has been preserved in its overall form and is original in the lower half of the facade, is an excellent example of Romanesque in Germany. The house consists of a two-aisled basement, two residential floors and four storage floors. Reception and administration rooms of the Overstolzenhaus were on the lower floors. Above it, behind glassless and richly decorated windows, was the magnificent ballroom. In one room there is still a Romanesque wall painting , one of the rare examples of jewelry from this era with profane content: knightly tournament scenes . The building's facade is crowned by its imposing stepped gable . The Overstolzenhaus is the only surviving Romanesque patrician house in Cologne and is also considered the largest and architecturally most beautiful in Germany.
In contrast to the courtyard side, the street-side facade was lavishly designed with differently shaped and decorated windows and a stepped gable . On the ground floor there was an asymmetrical division: on the left side there were two large arched windows , in the middle there was the basement entrance with a small window above it, then a split floor window that exposed the basement and the entrance area and finally a door with a horizontal lintel .
Today the structurally altered ground floor has a row of five rectangular windows under arched panels with inserted columns . On the upper floor there are five double arcade windows with slender columns and leaf capitals that were originally closable with wooden shutters . There are small round windows above them. A so-called clover leaf screen forms a continuous frame.
Todays use
Since October 1990 the Overstolzenhaus has been used by the newly created Art Academy for Media Cologne , while an adjoining building houses the German Society for Photography .
See also
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 3.2 ″ N , 6 ° 57 ′ 37.8 ″ E
Individual evidence
- ^ Johann Peter Weyer / Ulrich Bock / Werner Schäfke: Kölner Alterthümer , Volume 1, 1993, p. 246.
- ↑ Anita Wiedenau: Romanesque housing in the Rhineland , 1979, p. 38.
- ^ Hans Reykers: Im Schatten von St. Gereon , 1960, p. 131.
- ^ Johann Peter Weyer / Ulrich Bock / Werner Schäfke: Kölner Alterthümer , Volume 1, 1993, p. 246.
- ↑ 1781–1785 (Mainz), 1785–1794 (The Hague) and 1794–1803 at the Reichstag in Regensburg.
- ↑ German Gender Book, Volume 152, 1970, p. 443.
- ↑ Helmut Signon: How was it in Cologne before ...: History and stories from two millennia on the Rhine , 1972, p. 104.
- ↑ Ernst Weyden, The Overstolz house on Rheingasse called Tempelhaus , 1842, p. 39.