Town hall (Lemgo)
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The town hall of Lemgo in the Lippe district is a historical monument of particular importance. It is on the UNESCO list 1 as a work of art of European standing. The beginnings of the building lie in the construction of a Gothic market hall, which was soon expanded as a town hall in the medieval trading town , in which various communal functions were established. The construction phases are in the heyday of the Hanseatic city of Lemgo in Gothic and Renaissance . The magnificent facades of the Ratslaube and the Apotheken auslucht have a special place in the regional Weser Renaissance .
location
The town hall of Lemgo is now a solitary building and is located on the eastern side of the market square. It thus forms a crossbar between the market square and the church square of St. Nikolai , the central main church of the old town. Since the Middle Ages it has been in the center of the city on an important main road, so to the north is the main traffic axis of Mittelstrasse.
function
The town hall of Lemgo is not planned as a uniform structure, but developed over three centuries from the 14th to the 17th century to the present complex. The town hall has its origins in an elongated hall building. It was not designed as a council building, but served the older city of Lemgo, which was characterized by trade, as a kophus , i.e. a department store or trading house, located directly on the market square.
There, in the 16th century, permanent town houses and trading houses were laid out in an orderly sequence and the square with a representative town hall facade was carefully designed.
On the occasion of the union of the old town of Lemgo with the traditionally shaped Neustadt in 1365, the market building was converted into the citywide assembly building. With the naming of a consistorium consulum in 1372 and the establishment of the council chamber and court arbor at the same time, the building has completed the change from a market place to a place of assembly, whereby a dominance of the old town, i.e. the commercial city regiment, can be recognized. The craft guilds of the new town were involved in the government, but the town hall of the new town, mentioned in 1314, was given up.
Town hall type
In its layout, this market and assembly building of the merchants' guild is like the early Low German town halls. Two floors each occupy a large hall, both of which can be reached independently of one another. In addition to the spatial separation, there is also, at least temporarily, a functional separation. On the one hand, the upper floor, as a representative room, is often the place of the lord of the house or sovereign, the ground floor of the followers. On the other hand, the municipal cloth dealers on the ground floor and the external dealers on the upper floor can be separated in market operations. In Lemgo, no functional separation of the halls can be proven, but it is basically conceivable due to the different disposition of the entrance portals.
Building description
The town hall stretches in a north-south direction, on its western side there are four building elements that were added later on the place of private houses: in the middle the old council chamber , to the north of it the pharmacy building with Auslucht and to the south the new council chamber and the Winteppenhaus . On the north side there is another extension, the council arbor with the later added Kornherrenstube . The hall building and the old council chamber are Gothic buildings, while the other parts are from the Renaissance.
In the floor plan, the town hall takes up a room around 48 meters long and 18 meters wide. The highest point of the two-story building is reached by the gable of the old council chamber with a height of 17 meters. The building consists largely of plastered quarry stone, and brick has also been used since the 16th century. Ashlar integrations and unplastered façades from the Renaissance are made entirely of ashlar. The current color appearance is based on a complete repaint from 1977/78, in which the wall surfaces were executed in off-white, the stone parts in sandstone tones and the coats of arms and inscriptions were given new colors.
The hall construction
Predecessor buildings and early stage
The origin of the town hall building can be traced under the northern part of the hall building. The preserved foundation walls from the first quarter of the 13th century show a previous building with light walls, on which half-timbered walls may have rested. It was probably destroyed by a city fire around 1240/50.
The construction of the second building is immediately afterwards around 1250. Remnants of the foundations have been preserved from this. The width corresponds to the third building that is preserved today, the length can only be determined with certainty from the north to the center of the town hall. This building also fell victim to a fire around the middle of the 14th century.
Shortly after the second fire, the third and last building, today's hall, was built, probably around 1350/60. The previous building was almost completely removed for the new building. Around 1545 a fire must have ravaged the northern part of the town hall on all floors, which necessitated a renovation and new construction of the northern half. A kocke (kitchen) was set up in the basement , which was necessary for catering to guests of the council. In the course of the renovations after the fire of 1545, the floors in the northern part were rebuilt and a new central portal was added to the north wall.
Exterior
The current hall is 48 long, 10.70 wide and 7 meters high up to the top of the wall . The walls consist mostly of white plastered quarry stone and stone as dividing elements on corners and walls. The later structural members are attached to the west side of the long building. The entire building is originally built with three rooms, the north, south and wine cellar in the middle. A long, continuous dormer from the 20th century lies on the roof.
The east wall as an architecturally subordinate part of the facade has always been devoid of any special structural structure and emphasis. Their appearance has changed significantly over time. After an attempt at reconstruction, there was originally a two-storey flight of arched windows. Two of these original windows have been preserved as panels to the left of the east portal, otherwise the wall is divided by seven large, three-lane windows. These extend over the height of the two former floors.
The front side of the town hall was originally the south facade, which was represented by the Gothic gable decoration and symmetrical facade design. On the slopes are six pinnacles , whose eyelashes are missing today and helmets have been renewed. On the top of the gable is a finial on a slim shaft. Below that, in the gable field, there is a quadruple oculus, under which originally six segment-arched Gothic windows opened in a symmetrical arrangement.
In the middle there was a pointed arched double portal with an outside staircase , which is visible today through a portal panel. In the wall surface there are head reliefs that could be representations of stupidity and sleepiness . In 1548 the portal was closed and the outside staircase demolished, because with the construction of the armory on the square between the town hall and Papenstrasse, the view and space in the new narrow street were cramped. The front side was moved to the north side.
A new portal was built there in 1545, which now served as the main entrance to the hall. No statements can be made about the original shape of the north facade, as the north side was rebuilt in 1545. The late Gothic central portal with a segmented arch was used, which is now hidden behind the council arbor inside. The rich Renaissance windows were designed by Georg Crosman in 1589 . The shield gable is kept simple in contrast to the elaborately designed window walls. The late Gothic gable is crowned by a pinnacle with the Lemgo rose as a weather vane .
Interior
The ground floor was accessed via the main portal on the south side and probably via a further entrance on the north side. The upper floor was accessed from the east via a staircase. They were probably similar in their layout as continuous halls and their early use as a marketplace for pelters , shoemakers ( schohus ) and wall tailors . The storeys are 45.50 meters long and 8.80 meters wide and in their original state were probably large, continuous halls. In them there were niches with wall cabinets for sales stands, as they also occurred in department stores in Dortmund and Brilon .
The upper floor has a small niche in the middle of the west wall, which can be interpreted as a light niche or a lavabo niche for ceremonial ablutions in council masses. This simple form of council chapels is also known in Westphalian town halls in Attendorn and Dortmund.
There were extensive changes in the interior in the 16th and 18th centuries. The renovation of the southern hall area took place in 1578/79 on the occasion of a visit by the sovereign Simons VI . A hall was set up here that spanned both floors and took up around two thirds of the length of the long building. From Hermann Wulff large, new windows were decorated with scrollwork frame, in the first half of the 18th century, the rest of the hall building was designed accordingly. The east portal was extended downwards and now served as an entrance to the ground floor hall.
In the course of the conversion for use as a district court, after 1879 conversions were carried out, which had to give way to a vault in the basement of the late Gothic fireplace in the kitchen from 1545.
Extensive alterations and restorations were carried out in the 20th century. In 1911/12 a council cellar was set up in the wine cellar and south cellar. In 1921/22 the hall in the southern part was converted. During the renovation and core removal of the southern half of the town hall from 1959 to 1962, the conference room was renewed. The roof structure above the hall was renewed as a steel structure and expanded with office space.
In 1964/65, the northern half of the building was gutted, which was recognized as necessary when only the roof structure was to be replaced. Significant structural damage required the demolition of the roof, ceilings and partition walls down to the basement floor as well as part of the east wall. Inside, the old two-storey division was created behind the north facade. The rest of the area was designed as a hall, where a gallery with stairs leads to new offices in the pharmacy building. Meeting rooms with dormer windows were set up in the attic.
The basement rooms were formerly accessible through the entrance north of the court arbor, the current one is in the Winteppenhaus. Through it, the rooms of the Ratskellerwirtschaft are accessible, which are housed in the south cellar, wine cellar and southern part of the north cellar. A redesign of the south and the wine cellar and the reconstruction of the condition from 1589 happened in 1977/78. The square wine cellar is covered with a vault that rests on pillars and consoles . The room, originally separated from the south cellar by a wall, has been opened in two arches since the renovation in 1911/12. The two-aisled room also has vaults on pillars, a Renaissance chimney from the planetary house in Mittelstrasse 36 from 1612 is on the south wall.
Extension buildings
The extensions are in front of the long building of the town hall on the western side and form a continuous facade to the market square. In the course of time, numerous extensions to the town hall have been made since the end of the Middle Ages, due to the increasing functional differentiation.
The oldest extension is the council chamber building with the old council chamber in the upper and the court arbor on the ground floor. The second Gothic extension is the pharmacy building from 1522. The Ratslaube from 1565 in the north, with the Kornherrenstube added in 1589, the Winteppenhaus and the Ratsstubenbau with the New Ratsstube, both from 1589, are Renaissance buildings. The individual components are different in themselves and the architectural style and together form a loosely symmetrical architectural unit. The combination of the different designs and styles creates slight contrasts between simple surfaces and rich ornamentation.
Council Chamber Building
The council chamber building is a late Gothic building from 1480, which probably goes back to a previous building from the 14th century. At the latest with the assumption of all sovereign court functions by the city council in the 1480s, the representative arbor building was necessary for the display of communal self-confidence. The council chamber is on the upper floor, and an arbor opens on the ground floor. With the high stepped gable, which is similar to that of the town hall of the important Hanseatic city of Münster , and the large glass windows, the town hall now has a front facade that structurally placed Lemgo in the row of the rich Hanseatic cities and thus makes wealth and self-confidence visible.
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The building is made of red sandstone with three open arches on the ground floor. The southern aisles, separated by the stairs at the back, formed the medieval court hall. The arcades of the council chamber building were walled up between 1839 and 1938.
The gable consists of three different seasons on which tracery forms , crabs and pinnacles rest. In the squadrons there are six breakthroughs with quatrefoils into which leaning heraldic shields are inserted. The coats of arms contain from left to right the coats of arms of Schaumburg , Mark , Hoya , Lemgo, the upside down coat of arms of Paderborn and finally that of Lippe . The windows are arranged in carefully proportioned proportions. In 1881 the bas-relief depicting the oldest Lemgo city seal was used during the restoration.
The old council chamber is located on the upper floor of the building and has an internal dimension of 6.70 meters in length and 9.40 meters in width with a wooden barrel ceiling that was previously 5.60 meters high. It was the representative room of the council, which met here on leather-covered seats in the stalls, received and entertained guests. The walls were decorated with pikes, swords and hook boxes, as well as with paintings. In 1965, a renaissance fireplace from the Kornherrenstube was put in place of the missing Gothic chimney with the coats of arms of the lords of the Bernhard VII family . Between 1839 and 1961 the room was divided by a false ceiling and into small office rooms. During the renovation, paintings with inscriptions were destroyed, some of which have been preserved in copies. They contained instructions and warnings to the councilors for a just government. After the establishment of the new council chamber, the council chamber lost its function and was used by the Lemgo fur guild and as a detention center.
Ratslaube and Kornherrenstube
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The council arbor is in front of the hall to the north. It was placed in front of the north portal in 1565 and has been the main entrance since 1545. The arbor serves to ennoble the entrance and marks the town hall within the main street, into whose street space it protrudes.
With the council arbor, master Hermann Wulff made the first Renaissance component of the town hall, using the strong and peculiar forms and rich ornamentation of the Weser Renaissance. Pilaster strips , decorative cuboids and pillars structure the arched windows. Scrollwork patterns and decorated full coats of arms decorate the building, on which the year 1565 is embedded. There are also round medallions that are partly filled with grimaces and partly with flowers. A scrollwork cartouche contains the Lemgo coat of arms, next to it are busts of a man in antique and a woman in contemporary clothing. A special feature of the council arbor is the early scrollwork ornamentation, which was first applied here in Lippe. The asymmetries with irregular shapes as well as the playful and rich surface and plastic decorations are hallmarks of the Weser Renaissance.
The Kornherrenstube was built in 1589 by Georg Crosman as the upper floor on the council arbor. It is named after its purpose as the office of the municipal grain lords, who oversaw the central transhipment point for grain in Lippe, which has been located in Lemgo since 1550.
The component sits cantilevered on diamond-coated consoles. Fittings, lion heads and reliefs with allegorical representations and epigraphic names of the seven liberal arts decorate the component, namely "GRAMMATICA, DIALECTICA, RHETORICA, MVSICA, ARITHMETICA, GEOMETRIA and ASTRONO [MIA]".
The windows are structured by Ionic columns and pilasters . The gable field is curved several times and decorated with hinges with volutes and across the surface. An oculus on the gable has an inscription field with the year 1589 and an allegorical figure of Caritas .
The Kornherrenstube consists of a small room, the original interior of which was removed in 1965. She had a closet, sills, paneling, and seat chests. The ratio of the small interior to the richly decorated exterior shows that the furnishings are more representative than actually functional. Ornamentation and glass luxury show the material wealth of the city, while allegories show the spiritual wealth.
Pharmacy building and Auslucht
The pharmacy building is located on the northwest corner of the town hall and borders the council chamber building in the south. The Gothic building was built in 1522 as the Niggehuis ('New House').
The pharmacy building faces the market eaves with two storeys, the walls of which are plastered white and the stone parts are red. The north gable is a simple triangular gable with a narrow ridge and five windows. The middle first season carries a weather vane with the Lemgo rose.
The market facade on the ground floor is split into an archway, which was shortened and walled up when the pharmacy loft was built. In 1964, in the course of the coring out of the northern hall building and the pharmacy building, the arches were exposed again and closed with a wall behind the arches, into which windows and doors are let.
The pharmacy was founded in Lemgo before 1553 as the first in Lipper Land and was housed in the outbuilding of the town hall in 1559. She was under the supervision of two pharmacist gentlemen who belonged to the city council. The pharmacy business brought the city considerable income, as, in addition to the supply of medicines, there was also trade in writing supplies and fine food. Because of the narrowness of the business premises, it was decided in 1600 to wall up the archway and to build the loft. In 1612 the pharmacy was completed by the town builder Hermann Roleff and his son Johann, successor to his father and Georg Crosmann as town builder since 1612. The richly decorated component with the lively medical reliefs represents a major work of the Weser Renaissance and is the last and at the same time most magnificent architectural extension of the Lemgo town hall. The interplay of large windows and rich ornamental surfaces reaches almost baroque forms in its splendor .
The Apothekenauslucht is a two-storey building crowned by a curved triangular gable on the northwest corner of the pharmacy building. It faces the market and is ennobled and emphasizes the otherwise simple facade corner of the pharmacy building. The walls are almost completely open in window areas and balanced by horizontal and vertical structures. Fittings, decorative cuboids, columns and scrollwork adorn the wall surfaces. There are also head, lion and rose reliefs, fruit pendants and ten high reliefs with busts of famous naturalists and doctors from mythology , antiquity and the Renaissance itself. The following scholars have reliefs with name inscriptions: " PEDANTIVS DIOSCORIDES ", " ARISTOTELES " (north side), " RHASES ", " CLAVDIVS GALENUS ", " HIPPOCRATES ", " HERMES TRISMEGISTOS ", "AEGYPT [ICUS]", "R [AIMUNDUS] LULLIUS HISPANUS ”,“ GEBER ARABS ”(main page), as well as“ ANDREAS VESALIVS ”, and“ TH [EOPHRASTUS] PARACELSVS GERMANVS ”(south side).
Attached to the representations are sayings or principles of the people as well as individual attributes . The gestures of the figures are very varied and individual facial features are particularly striking. They seem to come partly from Lemgo workshops and mostly from the sculptors Hans or Jonas Wolf from Hildesheim. The medical reliefs possibly go back to a selection made by the pharmacist Wolrad Ferber , who had previously contributed to the drafting of a Nuremberg pharmacopoeia. For five busts, originals in scientific works of the 16th and early 17th centuries are proven. The selection and visual representation speak for a high level of erudition.
On the upper floor there are five female figure sculptures that represent the five senses . They can be recognized by the inscriptions, but also by their attributes as "TACTVS" and "AVDITVS", sense of touch and hearing, in the middle "VISVS", face, "GVSTVS" and "ODORATVS", taste and smell. The final frieze bears an inscription from parts of the Bible book Sirach 38:
- “IF YOU ARE SICK, PLEASE GET HERN AND LAS ABOUT SVNDEN, SO HE WILL MAKE YOU SANE. DAR TO LAS DEN ARTZ ZV DIR THAT THE HIGHEST HAS DONE IN. THE ART [N] ZEI KOMPT FROM HER [N] U [N] D THE APOTEKER READY SI "
The motto stands for the connection between medicine and government , since the scholar Jesus ben Eleazar ben Sirach is already concerned in that Bible chapter to bring wisdom and law into harmony.
The gable surface is richly decorated with hinges, volutes, obelisks and masks. A scrollwork shield shows the city coat of arms held by a lion and a griffin , above which the year of completion 1612 is inscribed. A crowning Aesculapian figure has not been preserved. Like the other façades of the Lemgo town hall, the one of the Apothekenauslucht testifies to the local self-confidence.
Council Chamber
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The New Ratsstubenbau is the southwestern part of the town hall on the corner between the old town and the market square. The ground floor is late Gothic and opens into two flat arcades that were closed in the 19th century. Today the back walls in the narrow archway have two pairs of windows behind each arch. The south wall has three modern double windows. The slopes of the simple gable are structured with stone balls and an aedicule attachment , on whose segment arch two more stone balls and a weather vane with the year 1885 are placed. A coat of arms stone with the Lemgo rose from the 15th century may come from the previous building.
The upper floor is occupied by the new council chamber with a double bay window from the Renaissance. The bay was built in 1589 by Georg Crosman as the first protruding part of the town hall. It was to serve as a council archive ( repository ) and as a new meeting room instead of the old council chamber. In the years 1958 to 1961, the part of the Lemgo town hall that had been least modified up to that point had to be removed and restored in a true-to-original copy.
On consoles above the arched pillars lie two flat arches parallel to the arches, decorated with decorative cuboids and reliefs of lions' heads. In a niche there is an angel with a staff holding the city's coat of arms in a scrollwork shield in front of him.
The upper floor is divided into a continuous window area with ionic column structures. The shafts of the columns are adorned with figurative representations of the five cardinal virtues , which appear through inscriptions and attributes as follows: Faith ( FIDES ) with cross and book, prudence ( PRVDENTIA ) with mirror and snake, justice ( IVSTITIA ) with double head and sword, bravery ( FORTITVDO ) with a column and a defeated lion and temperance ( TEMPERANT [IA] ) as a figure from behind who pours water into a wine cup. The parapet bears an original entablature frieze with a Latin inscription:
- "VDICIIS INOPES DEFENDITE, SVSCIPITE ORBOS / ASSERITE OPPRESSOS, IVSTIFICATE PIOS./REDDITE PAVPERIBVS IVS, ERIPITE INSVPER IPSOS / SI QVOS IN VINLIS IMPIVS HOSTIS HABET PSL 82"
The text from Psalm 82 reads in German translation: Defend the poor in trials, devote yourselves to the afflicted, justify the pious. Restore justice to the poor, and save them when the godless enemy holds them in chains. On the frieze is the following inscription copied from the original
- “THE WOL IS UPON AUTHORITY, FOR YOUR COMMON GVTH SORG ZV HAN: THE VNTERTHANEN AVCH OBEDIENCE TO YOUR AUTHORITY BUT WIS; THE BOTH THE AVGE MERK, AND THE EAR HEAR, IS GOD'S WORK ”.
Like the old council chamber before, the new council chamber should now confidently represent the council externally. The inscriptions expressing the self-image of a just government were no longer attached on the inside but on the outside so that they were visible to all citizens. The seven virtues symbolically stand for the moral demands of the councilors, in the middle of which stands the justice , both inside and outside, as the most important symbol of jurisdiction and government .
The double gable of the building is framed by ribbons on the curved edges and features two full coats of arms of Count Simon VI, renewed in 1890. (left) and his wife Elisabeth von Holstein-Schaumburg (right) room. The volutes of the gable in turn have stone balls and obelisks, above are masks and crowning weather vanes bearing lilies and shields from Lippe and Schwalenberg .
There are two vaulted rooms on the ground floor of the council chamber, the upper floor is occupied by a vaulted room. It is about eight meters long and about 7 meters deep and has a decoratively accentuated column in the middle that is richly decorated with diamond cuboids, scrollwork volutes, cloth and fruit hangings as well as head sculptures. In a round-arched niche there is a colored Justitia by the master Georg Crosman from 1593, which in a way represents the inner counterpart to the outer Justitia figure.
The Renaissance interior with wall paneling and archive cabinets with engraved fittings is original.
Winteppenhaus
The simplest component of the Lemgo town hall is the Winteppenhaus, which was built in 1589 by Georg Crosman. The name of the building is derived from Winteppen , the wine tap . He was the tenant of the city's wine trade, whose warehouse was housed in the Saalbaukeller. The winemakers are the earliest known officials of the council with a special function, mentioned in the 15th century. The wine cellar order of 1462 was later to become a model for the rules of pharmacy and corn lords.
The Winteppenhaus is a simple, eaves-standing building with a gable roof. In the north it borders on the council chamber, in the south on the council chamber, in the east on the southern hall building. The pillars and arches of the archway with two flat arcades were adapted to those of the council chamber building. The Winteppenhaus originally had two upper floors as the only component. A relief of the city's coat of arms is embedded in the façade, with a fitting gable decorated with an angel's head, ball knobs and obelisks. An inscription states the year of construction "AO DNI × 1589 ×".
The archway was closed from 1839 to 1938, and in 1903 the second, lower floor was abandoned.
literature
- Stephan Albrecht: Medieval town halls in Germany. Architecture and function . Knowledge Buchges., Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-534-13837-6 .
- Otto Gaul, Ulf-Dietrich Korn (ed.): The city of Lemgo . (Architectural and art monuments of Westphalia, vol. 49/1). Aschendorf, Münster 1983, ISBN 3-402-05049-8 .
- Karl Gruber: The German Town Hall . Bruckmann, Munich 1943, DNB 361439334 .
- Fred Kaspar: Building and living in an old Hanseatic city. For the use of residential buildings between the 16th and 19th centuries, shown using the example of the city of Lemgo . (Writings of the Folklore Commission for Westphalia, Vol. 28). Aschendorff, Münster 1985, ISBN 3-402-05666-6 .
- Jürgen Soenke, Herbert Kreft: The Weser Renaissance . Niemeyer, Hameln 1964. (1975: ISBN 3-87585-030-0 )
- Max von Sonnen: The Weser Renaissance. The building development at the turn of the XVI. and XVII. Century on the upper and middle Weser and in the adjacent parts of the country . (Lower Saxony Renaissance, Vol. 1). Aschendorff, Münster 1918, DNB 362764085 .
- Ernst Ullmann: Renaissance. German architecture 1520–1620 . Seemann, Leipzig 1995, ISBN 3-363-00647-0 .
- Kristine Weber, Sabine Wehking : The inscriptions of the city of Lemgo . (The German inscriptions, vol. 59). Reichert, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-89500-345-X .
Web links
- Lemgo town hall on lemgo.net
- Pharmacy bay of the town hall on lemgo.net accessed on October 6, 2012
- The town hall on baukunst-nrw
Coordinates: 52 ° 1 ′ 42 ″ N , 8 ° 54 ′ 3.5 ″ E