Pockenhof (Lübeck)

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The Pockenhof was a house for the poor and lepers in Lübeck , which was run as a charitable foundation until 1845.

St. Gertruden's smallpox and poor house

Burgtor-Ravelin (1624)

For the burial of the numerous victims of the Black Death , a cemetery was laid out in front of the castle gate in the summer of 1350, with an additional chapel soon afterwards . Both were consecrated to the patron saint of travelers, St. Gertrud ; accordingly, the little church was known as St. Gertrud's Chapel . The chapel was demolished in 1622 during the Thirty Years War to make room for the expansion of the fortifications, and the cemetery was moved a little further north.

The St. Gertruden-Pocken- und Almhaus, a Lübeck foundation under old law, built at the beginning of the 15th century , was located between the outer and inner castle gates until it was demolished in 1622 as part of the expansion of the Lübeck bastionary fortifications . Erected as a double gate in the 15th century, a third gate was added in 1622, for which the Gertrudenkapelle and the smallpox house were demolished. The significant expansion of this facility can be explained by the importance of the only land access from the north to the Große Burgstraße in Lübeck city ​​center . Only in the course of the construction work on the Elbe-Lübeck Canal was this single land access pierced, removed and replaced by the Burgtorbrücke and the neo-Gothic lift bridges below .

Smallpox House on Kleine Burgstrasse

Order cross of the Teutonic Order on the site of its Lübeck branch

When the old St. Gertruden-Pocken- und Almhaus was demolished in 1622, this foundation was given ownership of the old courtyard of the Teutonic Order with the Teutonic Order House in Kleine Burgstrasse 20 , which from now on was called the Pockenhaus, during the The farm on which it was located was named Pockenhof.

The foundation was administered by four heads. The preachers at the castle church performed services for the residents and the cemetery of the castle monastery was used as a poor cemetery. At the beginning of the 19th century, the blockade of the Elbe suddenly gave Lübeck a significant boom. Storage rooms for goods were in great demand and well paid for. The head of the smallpox house took advantage of this fact to generate income for the foundation by renting the floors of the smallpox house for grain storage. The statics of the house were not taken into account. The floors were overloaded, on April 6, 1806 the beams collapsed and the house collapsed. Two people lost their lives in the process. The subsequent official investigation showed that the master carpenter Leidenfrost was accused of negligence . He was sentenced to a fine of 50 thalers , combined with the threat that he would be suspended or even expelled from the master craftsman's office if he should be guilty of something similar. The foundation's funds were insufficient for the necessary reconstruction of the smallpox house. Before the negotiations initiated by the rulers had led to a resolution, the catastrophe of the French era broke in on Lübeck and led to the economic drainage and financial decline of the city. The rulers continued their administration, renting out the undamaged outbuildings as well as the undeveloped part of the property and managing the assets that grew through rental income and non-use of the interest, so that later a considerable contribution is made to the construction of a cholera hospital could. The decision on the future fate of the foundation was delayed until 1845, when the entire poor system in Lübeck was reorganized. The St. Gertruden Pox and Poor House Foundation was canceled in this context and its capital assets were used to set up a general hospital. The property in the city first became the property of the new poor institution, which gradually sold it to private individuals. The Gertrudenkirchhof remained under the administration of the rulers until 1850 and was then assigned to the municipal cemetery and burial deputation.

The Pockenhofsgang was a no longer preserved passage from Engelswisch in the Krughaus Der Pott (today's house number 13; until 1864 also known as Pottgang ), which led as Twiete to Kleine Burgstrasse . A row of houses with the former outbuildings of the Pockenhof gives an idea of ​​the course.

The Pockenhof was redeveloped by the Trave property company , the redevelopment agency of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, as part of the urban redevelopment of the entire block 96 of the Lübeck cityscape between Engelsgrube , Engelswisch and Kleiner Burgstraße with funds from urban development funding and is now part of Lübeck's old town as a world cultural heritage .

Pockenhof on the Burgfeld

Burgfeld 1824
Pockenhof around 1900

The Pockenhof at Jerusalemsberg 1–3 on the castle field in front of the castle gate in the later district of St. Gertrud was acquired by the head of the foundation in 1567 as a pleasure house, so it was initially used by the head as a summer residence . After the land was enlarged, it was leased together with the farm; the rulers kept for themselves only the so-called head garden with a small house. From the middle of the 17th century onwards, the homestead was connected to the bar . It even formed the main source of income for the tenant. There was also a bowling alley , and the tenants were repeatedly contractually imposed to restore what was damaged on railings, tables and benches when bowling.

After lengthy negotiations because of the necessary construction work, the rulers sold the farm to the previous tenant Joachim Heinrich Niese in 1819. The Pockenhof became a popular excursion business and for a time also the pub for the two student associations at the Katharineum in Lübeck . At that time it was said that the inn should not have got its name from the infirmary , but from an old farm with the Low German name Poggenhof , where Poggen means something like toads . The innkeepers included Johannes Fritz Heinrich Lüdemann and, after his early death in 1882, his widow Catharina Lüdemann ( mother Lüdemann ), the parents of Hermann Lüdemann . Even Thomas Mann returned as Sekundaner here.

Since 1852 the open space of the Burgfeld in front of the Pockenhof has been the venue for the Lübeck People's and Remembrance Festival .

The Vorstehergarten was sold to Niese in 1819, but remained separate; its later owners in the 19th century were Friedrich Bluhme (1842) and Johann Friedrich Jacob (1843-1853), who had the house on top rebuilt.

The Pockenhof buildings built in the 1820s were used for the city administration in the 20th century and demolished in 1965 to make way for the construction of the vocational Dorothea Schlözer School, which was completed in 1970.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Real estate company "Trave" (ed.): Work report II / 88 - renovation and urban development funding in block 96.
  2. ^ Eschenburg: The development of the suburb of St. Gertrud from the sixteenth century to modern times. In: Mitteilungen des Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 12 (1905), pp. 5–58, here p. 24
  3. ↑ Richard Schmidt (Ed.): Festschrift for the four hundredth anniversary of the Katharineum in Lübeck 1531-1931. Rathgens, Lübeck 1931, p. 168
  4. ^ Rolf Fischer: Hermann Lüdemann and the German democracy. Wachholtz, Neumünster 2006, ISBN 3-529-06140-9 , p. 16
  5. ↑ Peter de Mendelssohn : The magician. The life of the German writer Thomas Mann. S. Fischer, Frankfurt. First part: 1875–1918. 1975, ISBN 3-10-049402-4 , p. 214