Dessau town hall
The Dessau City Hall is a landmark of the city of Dessau and the seat of the city administration of Dessau-Roßlau, built from 1898 to 1901 according to plans by the Charlottenburg architects Reinhardt and Süßenguth .
With a total height of 73 meters, the town hall tower is the highest tower in Dessau. 159 steps lead to a viewing platform at a height of 41.24 meters.
history
Forerunner of today's town hall
At the site of today's town hall there was a department store in the 13th century , which was built towards the end of the 13th century by the then sovereign, Prince Bernhard III. , had been handed over to the Dreycken family as an inheritance . In 1323 a council of the city of Dessau was mentioned for the first time. On March 12, 1336 the fiefdom was transferred from the princes Albrecht and Waldemar to the city of Dessau. The building was now used by the citizens for their meetings and is therefore to be regarded as the first town hall. Little is known about the further history of the house. However, it is likely that it burned down in 1467. A subsequent building also seems to have been destroyed by fire.
The third Dessau town hall, with a large and small council chamber, a council chamber, as well as an armory and treasury on the upper floors and the council cellar in the basement, was built in 1563. In front of the building was an octagonal tower crowned with a hood, in which a spiral staircase led to the upper floors . The tower portal had a lion head as the keystone of a semicircular arch, two console-like human heads and the city coat of arms carved in stone with the year 1563. The gable on the market contained the city clock with bell. In 1601 the Ratskeller received an entrance portal with a cornice , obelisk and floor gable with shell.
After renovation work in 1883, it soon became apparent that the newly created premises were insufficient to accommodate the administration. In 1885 a room from the Ratskeller and in 1887 a floor of a neighboring house had to be used. On April 27, 1895, the municipal council therefore decided to build a new building.
Today's building
The construction drawings were available in August 1898. Architect Möbius from Berlin took over the local construction management for the new town hall in October 1898. The city set up a special town hall building office , which Möbius took over. He was given support by construction assistant Schütz, who however died after a few months, construction assistant Kramer and construction clerk Stürz.
The demolition of the old town hall took place until February 1899. A foundation stone was not found. The larger stones from the bottom masonry were later placed on Kaiserplatz in 1563 in memory of the old town hall with the name Grundsteine vom Rathaus .
The groundbreaking ceremony took place in mid-February 1899, followed by the laying of the foundation stone on the birthday of Duke Friedrich I , April 29, 1899 . The shell was completed at the end of 1900. After the demolition of the old town hall in 1899, the tower and Ratskeller portal were reinstalled in the courtyard of the new building from 1901. On the night of January 27th to 28th and April 4th, 1901, severe storms caused considerable damage to the building, including the storm in Schloßstraße tearing down the crowning of the southern front gable from above. The panes of the windows in the large meeting room of the town hall were dented and the roof was damaged by falling scaffolding boards. After the damage had been repaired, the wing of the building received a new weather vane and copper decorations, as the old ones were too heavy for the construction and had also been damaged. As a result, the tower, which had originally measured 75 m to the outer tip, lost height. The windows were made in the glass workshop of Rudolf and Otto Linnemann from Frankfurt. Sketches and old photos are in the Linnemann archive.
The interior designer Bernhard Pankok designed a hall for weddings for the new building . The establishment and equipment of the large conference room was in the hands of Gustav Kuntzsch , Wernigerode . The construction of the new town hall cost a total of about 1.25 million marks.
On the evening of April 2, 1910, less than ten years after completion, a fire destroyed large parts of the building.
Thousands of files stored in the attic, old city bills and other archive material dating back to the time of the Thirty Years' War , as well as the construction drawings of the town hall were destroyed. On April 4, 1910, the local council decided to rebuild, which was again entrusted to the architects Reinhardt and Süssenguth, who had already carried out the new building.
From May 3, 1912, the meeting room, which had been restored in its old form, was again available to the local council. The restoration work with some improvements and extensions cost 319,000 marks, which were covered up to around 63,000 marks by the payments of the insurance companies (state fire fund and some private companies).
From 1934 to 1935 the east wing of the town hall was extended because there was again insufficient space in the building. Back then it housed institutions such as the Sparkasse , the fire station or a police station , which can now be found outside the town hall walls. Figures and reliefs, such as the fire helmets over the gates in the old inner courtyard, in the outer facade of the town hall building, however, still partly indicate this use. The iron bars and gates on the ground floor point to the police station. Departments had to be outsourced years earlier. An expansion project that was created in 1910 as part of the restoration after the fire could not be carried out due to the First World War and in the post-war period with inflation.
During the heaviest of the air raids on Dessau on March 7, 1945, the upper floor of the town hall burned down during the Second World War , but large parts of the structure, the Ratskeller rooms and the ground floor were preserved. The newly formed city administration began its work there in July 1945.
The funds earmarked for the reconstruction of the town hall in the two-year plan 1949/1950 were primarily used to implement structural changes: the gables facing the market and on the east and west wings were not rebuilt. Instead of the high gable roof , a flatter one without roof turrets and hatches was built. The bay window on the corner was retained in its simplified form. The east wing was given a narrow head building at its south end, in which a second staircase was hidden. The west wing was also expanded and connected to the old south front. A quick reconstruction failed mainly because of the lack of material in the GDR in the post-war period. The topping-out ceremony was celebrated in December 1950 and the western entrance hall was opened on November 18, 1952. Not all of the administrative offices could be accommodated in this somewhat enlarged building, so some remained in branch offices.
The Ratskeller has already earlier, on March 1, 1949 as the first Dessauer HO -Gaststätte under the name Free restaurant at the market , later Ratskeller be opened.
After the fall of the Wall , after the HO was wound up, the restaurant got various tenants. In 1990/91 the city administration announced a competition for an appropriate extension of the town hall building. The Dessau-based architecture firm Dieter Bankert and Anne Sommer were also involved with a design that won first prize. However, the second-placed design was realized by Josef Paul Kleihues (the buildings with the conspicuous copper roofs that can be seen in the aerial photo below).
From 1993 to 1996 the Ratskeller was extensively reconstructed. Since January 1, 2006, the Zum Alten Dessauer company has been the operator of the Historischer Ratskeller zu Dessau restaurant .
In 2006 the west wing of the town hall was extensively renovated.
Use of the building complex since 2007
The Dessau town hall was the seat of the city administration of Dessau until 2007. Since the district reform on July 1, 2007 , when the city of Dessau-Roßlau emerged from the independent city of Dessau and the city of Roßlau, which was part of the disbanded district of Anhalt-Zerbst , it has been the seat of the joint city administration and most offices such as the citizens' office and city information , the mayor's area, the finance department, the residents' registration office and the registry office . The Roßlau Town Hall, Markt 5, as the Technical Town Hall, houses the Department for Economics and Urban Development, as well as the associated specialist offices.
Surroundings
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Since November 9th, 2002 the peace bell has been in front of the town hall , a memorial for the political change in 1989 in the German Democratic Republic with the inscriptions “No violence” and “I ring for peace and freedom + without freedom no peace + without peace none Freedom " . Today it is a meeting place for peace prayers and other activities. Regular meetings took place here, especially during the times of the Iraq war and the anti-Hartz demonstrations .
In September 1995, the “Rathaus-Center” shopping center with around 20,000 m² of retail space and around 80 specialist shops was opened between the city park and the town hall, which is being built by Deutsche EuroShop and operated by ECE project management .
Artistic illustrations
On April 22nd, 2002, the Polish artist Krysztof Nitsch from the Dessau twin town Gliwice presented a commemorative medal limited to 250 copies, commemorating the centenary of the town hall.
literature
- Frank Kreissler: The Dessau town hall. History of the building and city administration. In: Hans Wilderotter (Ed.): Scene of reasonable people. Culture and history in Anhalt-Dessau. L-und-H-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-938608-00-5 , pp. 55-80.
Web links
- The history of the town hall of Dessau ( Memento from February 10, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
- Mysterious town hall
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dessau town hall tower view as far as the Brocken (PDF document; 370 kB).
- ↑ Chronicle of the City of Dessau ( memento from July 23, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) on Anhalt-geschichte.de
- ↑ a b c The history of the town hall up to 1895 ( memento from August 11, 2006 in the Internet archive ) from HS Art'l: All sorts of things from the town hall to Dessau. 1902, on dessau-geschichte.de
- ↑ a b c The planning of the new town hall from 1895 to 1898 ( memento from February 10, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) from the history of the town hall of Dessau. 1901, on dessau-geschichte.de.
- ^ The new building from 1899 to 1901 ( Memento from August 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) from the history of the town hall of Dessau , 1901, on dessau-geschichte.de
- ↑ a b c d e f g Destruction and later conversions and additions ( memento from August 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) from the city of Dessau's house book , issue 5, on dessau-geschichte.de.
- ^ Gordon Campbell: The Grove encyclopedia of decorative arts . tape 1 . Oxford University Press US, 2006, ISBN 0-19-518948-5 ( full text in Google Book Search).
- ^ Soproni Múzeum, Sopron ( Hungary ), Inventory No. P. 2425 E 251 ( Storno Könyvtár): Gustav Kuntzsch folder , not paged .
- ↑ The former police station , accessed on January 29, 2020.
- ↑ Illusions and Visions - and still an infinite amount of them on www.ak-lsa; accessed on April 14, 2019.
- ^ History of the historic Ratskeller in Dessau
- ↑ Sights : Dessau City Hall , accessed on April 14, 2019.
- ^ The Dessau City Hall - seat of the city administration ( Memento from January 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ The town hall - seat of the Dessau-Roßlau city administration. (No longer available online.) In: dessau-rosslau.de. City of Dessau-Roßlau, The Lord Mayor, archived from the original on May 14, 2014 ; accessed on May 14, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Portrait of the Rathaus-Center Dessau by Deutsche EuroShop
- ^ City partner city Polish artists greet Dessau's town hall , mz-web.de, April 22, 2002.
Coordinates: 51 ° 50 ′ 4.1 ″ N , 12 ° 14 ′ 48.8 ″ E