Town Hall (Nordhorn)
The town hall of Nordhorn is located at Bahnhofstrasse 24. It was designed in 1949 by town architect Philipp Krieger and inaugurated in 1951. With this new building from the post-war period , he tried to tie in with historical buildings with Gothic elements. It is the third proven town hall building in the city at a different location. The building is a listed building .
On the forecourt of the main entrance is the sculpture "Doppelsäule 1/70" by Erich Hauser from 1970, which is part of the German-Dutch sculpture trail kunstwegen .
prehistory
The Nordhorn town hall has had at least three very different locations over the centuries, each of which is relatively far apart.
Town hall from 1792
The first documented town hall building was erected in 1792 in what was then Vorderstraße (today: Hauptstraße) on the Vechteinsel .
The main road runs through the Vecht island with a slight curve in a north-south direction, connected the two earlier city gates and is in all probability the oldest road in the city.
After Nordhorn had already received city rights in 1379 and, among other things, the old church on the market , consecrated in 1495, and the Frenswegen monastery from 1394 testify to the city's heyday in the 14th century , it is unlikely that it was the city's first town hall. According to Specht, an even older, now dilapidated town hall could have stood in the same place, but there is no clear evidence or images for this.
The building, whose architect and builder have not been handed down, was designed in the Dutch architectural style ( Hollands classicisme ). As can be seen on pictures before its demolition in 1912, it protruded far into the street, so that the street between the town hall and the former pastorate opposite was only five meters wide. The importance of the building for the city was emphasized by its height, the protruding central projection , gable and bell tower, as well as the elaborate reinforcement of the wall corners and window and door frames with sandstone . On the first floor there were three rooms, namely the prison and a large and a small classroom.
The coat of arms of Nordhorn with a shield and a count's crown, which came from Evert Evertson's workshop in Gildehaus and was created in 1752, was walled in above the entrance .
After the great city fire of May 4, 1912, in which the old town hall building was also badly damaged, the Nordhorn town council decided to demolish the building and build a new town hall elsewhere. A new building for the Central Hotel , which was also damaged in the city fire, was built on the old site .
The current address of this location is Hauptstraße 38, located in the middle of the pedestrian zone and has a commercial building that houses a branch of the Kreissparkasse .
Town hall from 1914
The Nordhorn City Council decided to build the new town hall in front of the Lingener Tor, between the Marktkirche and the Lingener Brücke. The decision was made for this new location outside the city center and even outside the municipality's own area on the territory of the Altendorf peasantry, which was not incorporated into the municipality until 1929, because of the lack of space on the Vecht island of the rapidly growing city, which has also been part of the rapidly growing city after the castle was razed in 1911 the construction of the monumental St. Augustine Church had begun.
The new town hall was built according to the plans of the then Nordhorn district building council in Rust, who, among other things, also planned the building of the Heinrich Kip book printing company in Neuenhaus . The sandstone - Eckquaderung the old Town Hall and the North Horner crest with shield and coronet were used in the new building. It no longer contained any classrooms, but had a hall for the magistrate's meetings and three offices on the ground floor . The mayor's apartment was on the upper floor.
The inauguration took place on June 25, 1914, when Mayor Ernst Heinrich Beins and Senator Franz Conrad Schlieper brought the coat of arms to the new town hall in a pageant.
In 1925 the town hall was expanded. In 1930 the administration moved to the former Hotel Deiting and left the town hall to the employment office. Mayor Henn planned to build a new, larger town hall on Friedrich-Ebert-Straße, but encountered opposition from the thrift-minded councilors. It was not until 20 years later that Nordhorn was actually to get a new town hall. In the end, the city administration was divided into six separate locations in Nordhorn. While the mayor and, among other things, the general administration were located at Hauptstraße 25, the housing office was in the Alte Maate, the residents' registration office at the Gildkampschule, the municipal construction office at Stadtring 72, part of the registry office at Neuenhauser Straße 48 and the business office at Bahnhofstrasse. Due to economic difficulties in the Great Depression and later in World War II , the temporary arrangement could not be completed until 1951 when the new building on Bahnhofstrasse was moved into.
After the employment office, the old town hall was used by the police , the city youth welfare office , the adult education center and, since they moved to the NINO business park , the music school.
The current address of the building is Lingener Straße 3.
Town hall from 1949
When after the Second World War, after decades of lack of space, the financial possibilities to build a supposedly sufficiently large town hall were given, the city decided again for another completely different location, this time not north but south of the center and significantly further from the core area of the city away - on Bahnhofstrasse.
The city commissioned the Nordhorn architects Sübers and Bender and the architects Köhler from Ochtrup to plan the new town hall. There were already older forerunner plans by city architect and later city building officer Philipp Krieger, which were now used. Construction began in 1949, with Gothic elements and historical designs such as window frames or portico trying to link up with historical buildings and the inclusion of so-called folk art ( carillon ) to create a new home style.
The three- storey brick building , which is set back from the street and forms a square designed as a front garden , was given an axially symmetrical façade around a central projection, which lifts the entrance from the front garden level by a flight of stairs and emphasizes it with a vestibule with a balcony on the portico made of Bentheim sandstone is located. The assembly room of the legislature is on the first floor and can only be seen from the side through the high window front.
The hoped-for circumstance, now sufficient space for the interests of the town hall of the city, which continued to grow rapidly after the Second World War, especially due to resettlers, did not materialize. Shortly after moving in, there was again a shortage of space, which was initially countered by relocating the police station to the basement and then by ongoing renovation and expansion work. From 1962 to 1964 a large extension wing with a bunker, library and new office space was built.
Forecourt
Erich Hauser's sculpture “Doppelsäule 1/70” , which was acquired and installed in 1979, is located on the town hall forecourt . Since 2000 it has also been part of the German-Dutch sculpture trail kunstwegen . The sculpture is made of stainless steel, Hauser's preferred working material. Their dimensions are 280 × 200 × 140 cm. Hauser, who was highly creative and created more than 1,000 works, produced a long series of these monumental sculptures from 1967 onwards, which, like all of his other works, he numbered according to the time at which they were created. Among the best known of the pillar sculptures include also created in 1970, in Munich Maxvorstadt between the Alte Pinakothek and the Neue Pinakothek erected double column 23/70 .
Bell tower with carillon
The bell tower contains a tower clock with carillon, which had to be shut down due to rusting a few years after it was put into operation and was not repaired for financial reasons. Even in the late 1970s, the city budget did not have any funds for the repairs. It was not until the early 1980s that the necessary budgetary funds were made available - together with donations from the citizens. In 1983 the repaired carillon was put back into operation.
It is put into operation every day at 8:00 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.
When the songs are played, the individual chimes of the bell are combined to form a melody with the help of a control unit. This control unit is operated with so-called music tapes - foils on which holes are systematically punched. There are six music tapes, each with several seasonal songs. The bands are changed according to the season.
Music ribbons
The following ribbons are available:
- Listen to what's coming in from outside
- minuet
- Bird catcher
- Larghetto
- Say goodbye brothers
- A hunter from the Electoral Palatinate
- Joy, beautiful spark of the gods
- At the well in front of the gate
- Ännchen von Tharau
- Well goodbye, my dear homeland
- Papageno's carillon
- Always faithful and honest
- Let us be happy and cheerful
- Sweeter the bells never sound
- In Dubei Jubilee
- Merry Christmas
- When the saints
- The songs sound
- the May has come
- It is about to get dark
literature
- Gerhard Plasger: Nordhorn in old views. European Library 1994. ISBN 978-90-288-2457-7
- Karl Griese: Nordhorn as it used to be. Wartberg 1999. ISBN 978-3-86134-624-1
- Heinz Aldekamp: Nordhorn after 1945. Volkshochschule der Stadt Nordhorn, 1994.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Woodpecker: Nordhorn. History of a border town. P. 47
- ^ Gerhard Plasger: Nordhorn in old views. P. 19.
- ^ Eduard Führ: Modernization of the City. Jonas Verlag 1989. pp. 174f.
- ^ Heinrich Specht: Coat of arms and seal of the city of Nordhorn. P. 9 (PDF; 221 kB)
- ^ Gerhard Plasger: Nordhorn in old views. P. 14.
- ^ Ernst Kühle: Nordhorn at the time of Mayor Beins 1897–1915. In: Das Bentheimer Land 1972. pp. 50–58.
- ↑ a b c d e City of Nordhorn: The town hall.
- ↑ a b Heinz Aldekamp: Nordhorn after 1945. P. 27 ff.
- ^ The City Council: The example of the Nordhorn city administration. W. Kohlhammer Verlag 1987. Volume 40, issues 1-6. P. 353.
- ↑ Nordhorn's cultural awakening in the 1970s ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Grafschafter Nachrichten of December 15, 2003
- ↑ kunstwegen.org: Erich Hauser
- ↑ World of Form.net: Nordhorn double column
- ↑ World of Form: Erich Hauser
Coordinates: 52 ° 25 '58.4 " N , 7 ° 4' 3.5" E