Town Hall (Worms)
The town hall of Worms is the town hall of the city of Worms and consists of several components from different epochs.
history
First town hall
Between 1223 and 1230 the city council bought the stone residential tower "Zum Zöllner", which the customs collector Werner had built more than 50 years earlier. The building was in today's Hagenstrasse. The city council had it prepared for its own purposes for 2,000 marks . It was politically explosive because the city council (also) evaded the power of the city lord, the bishop of Worms . When the conflict took place in 1232/33, it ended with the building being demolished. The city council met for deliberations - as before - under the supervision of the bishop in his city residence, the bishop's court .
Bürgerhof
In 1265, the city built the Bürgerhof , an arsenal , on part of the same site , in which the weapons for the vigilantes were stored. Initially, the building did not have the function of a town hall. It was not until the beginning of the 15th century that council meetings increasingly moved there, although formal legal acts, elections and oaths still took place in the bishop's court. The contemporary mayor of the city of Worms, Reinhart Noltz , then explicitly referred to the Bürgerhof as the town hall in 1495. In the 16th and 17th centuries there were several extensions and modifications, which are evidenced by corresponding building inscriptions. In 1598 the original building from the 13th century was demolished.
coin
The mint was a complex of three buildings that was completely owned by the city from 1491. It stood along the market square in the area of today's Worms City Library and the western part of the Trinity Church and consisted in the north of the eponymous building "Münze", which originally served a cooperative that operated coin trading, to the south adjoining it the city courthouse and again south of it and finally the municipal bakery. This building complex was now increasingly transformed into the town hall and - as a demonstration of power to the bishop - magnificently painted: A poem about the emperor's adoration and an inscription about city freedom put the bishop in his place, there were also depictions of Kriemhild , Siegfried and two giants.
1689 and the aftermath
The coin was destroyed by troops of King Louis XIV during the Palatinate War of Succession in 1689 , and the Bürgerhof was badly damaged. There was a rebuilding plan, but since the resources in the completely destroyed city had to be used for other urgent purposes, only the community courtyard was repaired to such an extent that it could take over the functions of the town hall. It stayed that way for almost 200 years. The northern part of the property on which the mint had stood was built over with the nave of the Holy Trinity Church.
New buildings from the 19th century
Only the upswing that began in Worms with the connection to the railroad from the middle of the 19th century, the energetic Lord Mayor Wilhelm Küchler and the contacts of the Worms industrialist Cornelius Wilhelm von Heyl zu Herrnsheim in the Munich art scene gave Worms a modern, representative again Town hall. Gabriel von Seidl was commissioned with the work in 1883, and it was inaugurated in April 1885. The building extended from Bürgerhofgasse to the west along what was then "Ludwigs-Straße" (today: Hagenstraße) on the site of the old Bürgerhof. The council chamber was on the first floor, for which the industrialist Nikolaus Andreas Reinhart donated a monumental historical painting, a fresco by Hermann Prell .
The rapid growth of the city made it necessary to expand the town hall just 20 years later. At the same time, the von Heyl family offered to donate a prestigious event building to the city on the southern part of the site of the former "Münze" that was not built over by the Trinity Church, i.e. immediately to the west of the envisaged town hall extension. The joint construction task was entrusted to the architect Theodor Fischer . The event building was named "Cornelianum" after the guiding name of the von Heyl family and, in addition to the large event hall, the "Nibelungensaal", contained further event rooms, a wedding room and a bath and shower room. The artistic design was carried out by Karl Schmoll von Eisenwerth , Georg Wrba and Adolf von Hildebrand . The turning point of the First World War meant the abrupt end of more than half a century of expansion in the city, which also meant that the structural substance of the town hall was not changed any further until the Second World War . The complex was bombed out in the air raids on Worms . Remnants of the arcade hall of the old town hall remained.
present
New building
The reconstruction was only partially carried out, supplemented by a large new building: the ruins of the Cornelianum stood for a long time and was demolished around 1960. The wings of Theodor Fischer and Gabriel von Seidl were preserved - as far as they had survived the air raids - and were rebuilt in simplified forms by 1955. What was new was a considerably larger building complex, which took place in the typical forms of the 1950s. The city's construction manager, Walter Köhler, had already held this position under the National Socialist regime and has remained so now. He went back to his 1941 plan, based on which he wanted to erect buildings for the NSDAP north of the town hall . This new building aligned its main facade with the new market square, which was created by removing all buildings between Petersstrasse and Dreifaltigkeitskirche.
Rudolf Lempp took part in the architects' competition and his design was implemented in a revised form. The foundation stone for the new town hall was laid on June 29, 1957, and it was inaugurated on November 29, 1958.
Building description
The new town hall has three upper floors and extends around an inner courtyard. The ground floor is raised on pillars facing the market square and permeable to the inner courtyard. The building has hip roofs . The main facade facing the market square is divided in the north by a short wing projecting one storey lower and in the south by a town hall tower with an astronomical clock and a carillon . The building is plastered, the window frames are made of sandstone .
The building is now a cultural monument due to the Monument Protection Act .
Worth knowing
The oldest wing today along the Bürgerhofgasse also hosts in a largely undamaged by the Second World War, early modern rooms with a historicist painting of the 19th century, the "rice Municipal Archives", now part of the city archives Worms .
literature
- Gerold Bönnen : The Worms town hall and the town hall district from the Middle Ages until today . Stadtarchiv Worms, Worms 2008. ISBN 978-3-936118-15-5
- Irene Spille: Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany . Cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate 10 = city of Worms. Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft , Worms 1992. ISBN 978-3-88462-084-7
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 6f.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 8.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 9.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 9.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 10.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 11.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 12.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 13.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 20.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 29.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 35.
- ↑ Bönnen, pp. 38–40.
- ↑ Bönnen, pp. 41–44.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 45.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 45.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 50.
- ↑ Bönnen, p. 52.
- ↑ Spille, pp. 126–128.
- ↑ Bönnen, pp. 31–34.
Coordinates: 49 ° 37 ′ 48.3 ″ N , 8 ° 21 ′ 46.5 ″ E