Kassel town hall

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Central building of the town hall, 2012

The town hall of Kassel on Oberen Königsstraße was built between 1905 and 1909 and has since housed the city administration. However, there were previously several town halls at various locations in Kassel.

Building history

Around 1180 a first town hall was built in the old town of Kassel and later town halls were built for all municipalities, the old town, Untereustadt and Freiheit. In the 15th century, a joint town hall was built on the Altmarkt . From 1837 to 1909, the French town hall on upper Karlsstrasse, diagonally opposite today's town hall, served as the seat of the city administration. This building dates back to 1669 and was built by Simon Louis du Ry for the Huguenot community of Kassel.

Floor plan of the town hall - the old part from 1909 in brown and the extension from the 1970s in gray

Since the French town hall was too small at the end of the 19th century, an architectural competition for a new building on Obere Königstrasse was carried out in 1901/1902 . Of the 118 submitted designs, the one with the keyword “Stadtbild” was awarded first prize of 9,000 marks . The author of this design was the then Darmstadt- based architect Karl Roth , who had already won a purchase a few months earlier in the competition for the new construction of the Dresden City Hall. Roth was commissioned "with the artistic processing of the execution drafts". The further planning process dragged on for more than two years, Roth's competition design was initially supplemented - apparently at the request of the city councils - by a massive tower, which was a classic motif of most town hall buildings of historicism . As a result of these and other changes, the cost estimate increased from the 1.65 million marks mentioned as the cost framework in the competition to finally 3.2 million marks. Under the impression of this cost explosion, it was decided to forego a tower, and the city ​​council approved 2.65 million marks in the autumn of 1904. The new town hall was built from 1905 to 1909 with a high roof turret (as a replacement for the tower) arranged in the central axis above the large gable - as was apparently already planned in Roth's original competition design. The inauguration took place on June 9, 1909.

Two gilded Hessian lions were erected on both sides of the flight of steps and the Kassel city coat of arms was attached above the main portal . The sculptors Wilhelm Widemann and Carl Hans Bernewitz and the painter Waldemar Kolmsperger the Elder are named as the artists involved in the building decoration .

  • Town hall on the Altmarkt

  • French town hall Kassel (1837–1909)

  • New Town Hall Kassel, picture postcard from 1912

The Kassel entrepreneur Sigmund Aschrott donated the 12 meter high ash fountain , which was built in 1908 in the forecourt of the town hall to the right of the outside staircase , which was also based on a design by Karl Roth. The fountain was later destroyed by the National Socialists because Sigmund Aschrott was Jewish. In 1987 a new fountain in an inverse or negative form was built at the same location .

  • Aschrottbrunnen, 1908

  • Inverse ash fountain, 2009

  • Henschelbrunnen, 2013

To the left of the outside staircase, the Henschel Fountain was built in 1912 as a counterpart to the Aschrott Fountain , donated by Sophie Henschel in honor of her deceased husband, the entrepreneur Oscar Henschel , and executed according to a design by the sculptor Hans Everding .

During the Second World War , the town hall was badly hit in the bombing of Kassel on October 22nd, 1943 and burned out. After the end of the Second World War it was built in 1950 in a simplified construction, e.g. B. rebuilt without the large central gable and the ridge towering over it. Later, an extension was added to the rear of the Obere Karlsstrasse - as had been part of all planning since 1900, so that an inner courtyard was created. However, the extension was built according to a new design in modern architecture.

literature

  • Hugo Brunner : History of the Cassel town halls. Festschrift for the inauguration of the new town hall of the royal seat of Cassel on June 9, 1909. Kassel 1909. ( digital copy )

Web links

Commons : Rathaus Kassel  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Charlotte Kranz-Michaelis: Town halls in the German Empire 1871-1918. (= Materials on 19th Century Art , Volume 23.) Prestel, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-7913-0384-8 .
  2. ^ Deutsche Bauzeitung , Volume 38, 1904, No. 89 (from November 5, 1904), p. 556.

Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 44 ″  N , 9 ° 29 ′ 34 ″  E