Postplatz (Görlitz)
| Postplatz | |
|---|---|
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 Shell minna in the middle of the Postplatz |
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| Basic data | |
| place | Goerlitz |
| District | Downtown |
| Created | around 1845 |
| Newly designed | 1937/38 |
| Confluent streets | At the Frauenkirche, Berliner Strasse, Jakobstrasse, Konsulstrasse, Schützenstrasse, Theaterpassage |
| Buildings | Court , Hotel Victoria , Post Office , Stadtsparkasse |
| use | |
| User groups | Pedestrian traffic , bicycle traffic , car traffic , public transport |
| Space design | Mussel minna |
| Technical specifications | |
| Square area | approx. 9000 m² |
The Postplatz is one of the most beautiful town squares in Goerlitz .
The oval square is bordered to the south by a number of Wilhelminian-style buildings . Jakobstrasse and Berliner Strasse form the extension to the southern train station. Typical Prussian buildings limit the square to the east and west. The post office, especially with its large back yard, takes up almost the entire eastern area. The district court and the district court are located in the simple red brick building to the west . A sprawling assembly in the late classical style of the early Wilhelminian era is located on the north side of the square. In the middle of the square there is a magnificent artificial fountain, the " shell minna ".
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history
Prussian era
The area of today's square was used as a cattle market until 1845 and was outside the city fortifications . At that time it was called "Plan". In 1844, the city hospital was built on the southwest corner, roughly at the location of today's city savings bank. Opposite this was the old military hospital. With the completion of the Görlitz train station in 1847, the expansion of the building in its direction began. Between the years 1851 and 1855 the new post office was built on the east side of the square. The large courtyard was walled in a semicircle and served as an entrance for stagecoaches and a fleet of cars. The new name “Postplatz” was first given to the triangle behind the post office, between Konsulstrasse and Schützenstrasse. The area in front of the post office, on the other hand, was initially only sprinkled with gravel and planted with trees on the edge. It was used as a fairground for some time. In 1865 the Royal District Court moved from the old stock exchange on the Untermarkt to the new building on the Postplatz. The strictly structured, functional clinker brick facade still shows the arrival of Prussian building culture by Karl Friedrich Schinkel . Behind the court, the prison extended , in the courtyard of which executions with the hand ax took place until around 1900. The executions were announced in the daily newspapers in Görlitz with the name and crimes of the convicted person.
The Görlitz merchant Eduard Schultze acquired the entire site of the former women's hospital on the north side of the square opposite the Frauenkirche in 1863 . The property extended from the Frauenkirche to today's Luisenstrasse. The women's hospital was built in 1483 and served mainly as an alien hospice for pilgrims and scholars . The buyer had the development torn down and builder Pfeiffer built a new building there. The building in the style of late classicism was of a breadth previously unknown in the city. It stretched between the Frauenkirche and the courthouse. The building was completed in 1868. The "Victoria Hotel" moved into the middle section. Retailers and the “Wiener Cafè” moved into the ground floor to the left and right of the hotel. It was not until 1888 that the Eduard Schultzes company, which had now been taken over by his sons Gustav and Alfred, was moved from the Obermarkt to the building. The urban planning facts created by the construction were often later complained about, as the construction blocked the axis from the train station via Berliner Straße directly to Marienplatz . The traffic now had to pass a few tighter curves and the eye of the needle in front of the Frauenkirche.
Empire
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In 1882 the first tram, still pulled by horses, crossed the square. The first “Electric” followed in 1897. The tracks ran north and south of the square and were only moved to the north side with the renovation in 1937/38. From May 1898 to September 1905, the final stop of tram line IV to the Jewish cemetery in Südstadt was in front of the courthouse, and from May 1899 to Biesnitz . The two tracks in front of the post office led to the Schützenhaus and Untermarkt, and from December 1907 also to the clinic . To the north of the post office, another two tracks led to the “Stadt Prag” inn (Görlitzer Ostvorstadt) and from May 1900 on to Moys . Both of the latter endpoints have been in the neighboring Polish town of Zgorzelec since 1945 and have not existed as the endpoint of the Görlitz tram network since the border was drawn . The two urban tram lines from Königshufen to Biesnitz and Weinhübel still cross the square today .
The Naturforschende Gesellschaft zu Görlitz received a cast-iron weather pillar in 1883. It was initially set up behind the post office across from the Frauenkirche, but changed its location in front of the court in 1931. It disappeared in 1938 and was not re-erected afterwards.
On November 12, 1887, the inauguration ceremony for the distinctive art fountain in the middle of the square took place under Mayor Clemens Theodor Reichert . The redesign of the gravel area between the post office and the court began with the “Muschelminna”, as the fountain figure is popularly known. The reason for this is said to have been a stroll by Mayor Johannes Gobbin with Silesian President Robert von Puttkamer in 1877 . The upper president is said to have criticized the gravel area in the middle, impressed by the new buildings, and to have assured his financial support for the construction of a well.
The horticultural and urban design of the square was not completed until 1889. Four artistically paved paths led in a star shape from the fountain basin to a circular path around the square. The green areas were planted with bushes and surrounded by hedges. From 1887, the eastern appearance of the square also changed again, because the post office got a more representative new building. It was intended to underline the international status of the Wilhelmine Empire. The splendid clinker brick building, adorned with numerous figurative ornaments, created a fitting opposite to the courthouse. The semicircular walled back courtyard in the direction of Schützenstraße largely followed the previous building.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, the park of the old hospital from 1844 was located on the southwest corner of the square. Only with the new hospital building on Girbigsdorfer Strasse, completed in 1905, the construction in the city center became superfluous. In 1911 the city approved the construction of a new city savings bank, which until then was housed in the town hall. The Art Nouveau building was completed in 1913. The building looks very massive due to the large natural stone blocks on the facade and the stair tower with the wide portal. The corner tower ends in a metal-clad dome and a golden flagpole with the lion from the city's coat of arms. The lion has now been replaced by the savings bank symbol.
Post-war and roaring twenties
The square followed almost all the post-war turmoil after the First World War, for example the stream of revolutionaries passing by on November 9, 1918, a little later the garrison troops returning from the war, the first May parade permitted by the authorities on May 1, 1919 and finally the Freikorps Fraupel, who took part in the Kapp Putsch in 1920.
The situation calmed down in the early 1920s and the motorization of the citizens slowly increased. The consequence of this increasing motorization, even if only a few Görlitzers could afford a motorcycle or even a car, was that one of the first petrol stations opened in the city center north of the post office. Numerous cafes lined the square, one of the most famous was probably the “Cafè Reichspost”, later “Cafè Posteck” with its glass gallery on the corner of the Frauenkirche. This corner house no longer exists today, it was demolished after the fall of the Wall and replaced by a new building. The “Wiener Cafè” in the left wing of the building group built by Eduard Schultze on the north side became the “Postplatz-Casino” (also called Po-Pla-Ka for short). The “Theaterpassage” was opened in 1926 and has been a popular shortcut for pedestrians between Demianiplatz and Postplatz ever since .
1930s and World War II
Many highly respected citizens lived and worked on the square, among them the photographer Alfred Jäschke, famous for his photos of Gerhart Hauptmann , the lawyers Albert Nathan, with his son Dr. Hans Nathan and Dr. Glätzner, as well as the socially committed dentist Dr. Fritz Warschawski. The names of the dentist and Albert Nathans disappeared from the doorbell signs on the houses on Postplatz in 1933. Fritz Warschawski had left Germany overnight with his family, the lawyer Hans Nathan moved with his family to Prague and his father to an old people's home in Berlin. Warschawski and Nathan were Jews. The square was now called "Hindenburgplatz" and swastika flags were waving from the post office and the court. The well-known Jewish lawyer Paul Mühsam, who crossed Postplatz every day on his way to work, noted his experiences about Görlitz under the National Socialists in his memoirs under the title “I was a person”. He was the first Görlitz Jew to emigrate to Palestine in 1933.
The young carpenter Hans-Georg Otto gathered in his apartment at Hindenburgplatz 11 with some apprentices and young workers. They talked about the political situation, received radio stations from abroad and distributed leaflets from here warning of the impending war. The young men were arrested as early as 1934 and convicted of “preparing for high treason”. Hans-Georg Otto was imprisoned in the Wohlau and Luckau prisons until 1942, after which he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , where he died during the evacuation march in 1945.
Professor K. Olbricht, a National Socialist cultural politician, published his opinion in the magazine “Our beautiful Görlitz” in 1936 that he did not like the Hindenburgplatz in its former form. He complained about the line of sight to the Frauenkirche destroyed by Eduard Schultze's house. The building is too high and, according to his sketches in the booklet, it should simply be shortened by one to three floors on the eastern wing. The base of the fountain was also to be simplified and the brick facades of the post office and court should be plastered. The war prevented the implementation of these plans. In the years 1937/38, however, a fundamental redesign of the square took place, the star-shaped paved paths to the fountain were removed and planted. The fountain was now surrounded by an oval lawn and a path, benches were placed at each end.
A wooden frame was built around the base of the shell minna in July 1942, the bronze figure was dismantled and brought to the freight yard as armaments scrap. As the front approached in the last days of the war in 1945, numerous corpses of deserters and looters were deposited on the southwest side of the square as a deterrent. The square was largely spared from artillery hits , bombs and low-level aircraft fire .
Soviet occupation, GDR and today
At the beginning of 1945 the Soviet occupying forces moved into the "Fortress Görlitz". They set up their military headquarters with the city commandant Colonel Guard Ilyich Nesterov at the head of the court and the neighboring city savings bank. The facades of the buildings were covered with numerous political slogans and oversized portraits of Stalin. The base of the artificial fountain was covered with a structure made of wood and cardboard and decorated with red stars. It served as a kind of victory stamp. Illuminated portraits of Lenin, Molotov, Zhukov and Stalin were also placed on the lawn at night, while the Moscow broadcaster roared news and music across the square for 24 hours. The Postplatz got its old name again for a short time.
With the new demarcation on the Oder-Neisse line , the city was separated into the Polish eastern part of Zgorzelec and the part that remained with Germany. In 1944, around 99,000 people lived in both parts of the city. In 1945 there were over 100,000 people, including many refugees from the eastern regions. They were now crowding the western part of the city. This led to an extreme housing shortage. The houses on Postplatz were also densely populated right up to the roofs. Never before have so many people lived under the address Postplatz, this can be proven by address books from the transition period to the 1950s. A wide variety of tenants even rented a room in court, e.g. B. the Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime (VVN) and the Democratic Women's Association of Germany .
In 1951 the square was renamed “Liberation Square”. From now on, the address of the prison behind the court - Platz der Befreiung 18. The new name of the square did not catch on with the population, as it did with other renamed squares and streets.
The renovation of the buildings on the square was hesitant in the 1970s due to a shortage of materials, a lack of manpower and money. More attention has been paid to the green spaces. The empty base of the artificial fountain received a small fountain, and in 1967 even a new marble fountain bowl.
During the demonstrations on June 17, 1953 , the prison behind the court was also occupied. During this action all prisoners were released, although only the liberation of political prisoners was planned. The lawyer Dr. Carl-Albert Brüll and the teacher Günter Assman were later sentenced to long prison terms for this release. On June 17th, the Postplatz was also one of the centers of the popular uprising with several thousand demonstrators . Today a plaque commemorates the victims of the popular uprising on the south wing of the court.
From the 1960s until the turn of 1989, there was always the grandstand for the city's political officials to move on May 1st on the Postplatz . They were applauded by the passing schoolchildren, combat groups and workforce. From the 1980s onwards, there was also a stronger presence of Stasi people, who made sure that no exit applicants used this event as a platform.
In the autumn of 1989, the peaceful demonstrations moved from Berliner Strasse via Postplatz to the town hall. Monday prayers and discussions took place in the Frauenkirche. Finally, in the last half of the GDR, on May 1, 1990, the square officially got its old name back. The first years of the market economy changed the appearance of the square significantly, numerous shops and restaurants closed or found new tenants. The solemn return of the mussel minna on May 1, 1994 was probably the highlight of the square after the fall of the Wall. On the occasion of the return, the “Mussel Minnafest” takes place every year around May 1st.
literature
- Peter Fibich: Green city squares in the 1930s. Two examples from Görlitz . In: Die Gartenkunst 24 (1/2012), pp. 103–114.
Web links
Individual evidence
- Ernst Kretzschmar: The Postplatz in the heart of Görlitz. 1st edition. Stadtbild-Verlag, Görlitz 2005, DNB 1015182879 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 9 ′ 6.7 ″ N , 14 ° 59 ′ 11.5 ″ E