Bad Hersfeld town hall
The town hall of Bad Hersfeld has been the seat of the city administration of Bad Hersfeld since the 14th century . It is located in the heart of the old town between the Weinstrasse, the church square and "Am Treppchen" at about 210 m above sea level. NN height. The first town hall was built before 1371 in the Gothic style and between 1607 and 1612 it was expanded and rebuilt in the Renaissance style.
description
The town hall is a four-story two-wing building with high gables in the style of the Weser Renaissance and a roof turret on the south wing.
South wing
The south wing has two gables on its east side (facing the “Am Treppchen” square) and one each on the narrow sides (facing the Weinstrasse and the church square). The floors are emphasized with cornices at the height of the gables and the outer windows are framed with vertical flat rustic layers . The gables are also decorated with volutes , obelisks , spherical crowns, scrollwork and fittings made of sandstone . Except for the corner cuboid, the facade of the floors under the gables is plastered without any decoration. On the roof in the middle of the building wing there is an open, polygonal roof turret with a bell.
On the east facade there is still the representative main portal with the outside staircase . The portal has an ogival shape and has a front portal decoration with fluted columns, antique-style cross beams and a supraport . In it there is a coat of arms stone with a chiseled Hersfeld double cross. The entrance to the Ratskeller is to the left of the main portal . Its portal is rounded and the cellar rooms have groin vaults . Most of the windows are uniformly simply coupled .
At the southeastern corner of the building is just below the gable, on a boom , a metal helmet mounted. He recalls the events on Vitalis Night . On this side of the façade there are also two vast, dragon-headed gargoyles made of copper.
On the west side of the south wing, towards the town hall square, a polygonal stair tower rises, half of which protrudes from the facade. The entrance to the stair tower is decorated with scrollwork, diamond blocks and obelisks. To the left of the stair tower there is another ogival window (formerly a portal).
West wing
The west wing joins the south wing at a slightly acute angle and has a gable on its north facade (facing the church square). It has the same style as the gable in the south wing. The west wing shows on its south facade, towards the town hall square, a fourth floor designed as a half-timbered structure with an overlaid transom, diamond and heart motifs. In addition to the city and monastery coat of arms, the initials of the mayors at the time (Michael Gerwig and Abraham Grüning) and the two master builders are carved into the framework on the federal stands.
The portals on the north and south sides are again decorated with scrollwork, diamond blocks and obelisks. The portal on the ground floor, on the south side, has carved the old motto of the city "JUSTITIM, PACEM ET VERITATEM DILIGITE ANNO DOMINI (1) 612" into the lintel. An inscription stone, which is inscribed with Gothic minuscules , was used in an interior on the second floor. The stone probably comes from the Gothic town hall. It has the same motto on it. It was probably walled up again during the renovation in the Renaissance period, here standing on its head.
Town Hall Square
Rathausplatz is an open area behind the south wing. It is connected to the Weinstrasse via a staircase and towards the church square it is separated by a wall with three arched passages. This square emerged from the approximately 6 × 15 meter large town hall courtyard when the buildings around the courtyard were demolished in 1880. The house facing the Weinstrasse was the so-called Weinhaus. In it were the city bar and the city scales . The house was also used as a wedding house. The house facing the church square was a wooden warehouse.
A bronze sculpture by Arnold Rechberg on a travertine plinth has been located on Rathausplatz since 1925 , commemorating the dead of the First World War. After the Second World War, a plaque was affixed to the base of the sculpture in memory of two captured German officers who guaranteed the peaceful surrender of the city to the US troops and thus prevented an artillery bombardment of the city. Since 2009, a bronze model of the old town of Hersfeld with markings in Braille has been on the square .
Place "on the podium"
The street takes its name from a staircase that leads from “Am Treppchen” to the church square. The staircase is located between the town hall (Weinstrasse 16) and the other town hall building (Am Treppchen 1) from the 1950s, which stands across the corner.
The beginning of the street is extended towards the Wine Route and forms a small square here. It is the oldest market square in the city. In the middle, directly in front of the staircase from the town hall, is the Lullus fountain. It was created in 1830 when the old Feuerkump was replaced by a larger octagonal sandstone basin. The octagonal central column has four bronze lion heads as gargoyles. It was not until 1866 that a bishop's figure made of white marble was placed on this central column and the inscription “LULLS HERSFELDIÆ CONDITOR” was carved into it. This turned the town hall kump into a monument fountain with the name Lullusbrunnen, named after the first abbot of Hersfeld Lullus . The design for this fountain came from the Electoral Hessian Land u. Road builder Leonhard Müller.
Building history
The oldest area of the town hall is contained in today's south wing. It was built in the Gothic style with raised pointed arched windows and a high roof with a dwelling and a roof turret, presumably as a single-storey building. This town hall was first mentioned in 1371. It is shown in the Topographia Hassiae by Matthäus Merian, to the left of the town church. The copper engraving is based on a pen drawing by Wilhelm Dilich from his Hessische Chronica which appeared in 1605. It is therefore assumed that the copper engraving captured the appearance of the city and thus the town hall around 1600. Shortly afterwards, they probably started to convert and expand the Gothic building. Nevertheless, the Gothic origin of the south wing can still be seen today. On the facade, the ogival shape of the main portal and windows next to the stair tower still refer to this time.
swell
- Thomas Wiegand: District of Hersfeld Rotenburg III . City of Bad Hersfeld. In: State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany . Vieweg + Teubner, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-528-06248-7 , pp. 196-201 .
- Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments. Hessen . Ed .: Magnus Backes. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich et al. 1982, ISBN 3-422-00380-0 , p. 44 .
Notes and individual references
- ^ Translation: Respect peace, truth and justice
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 52 ′ 5.9 ″ N , 9 ° 42 ′ 26.9 ″ E