Malstatt-Burbach town hall

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Town hall in Malstatt around 1900 (Saarbrücken City Archives)

The town hall of the formerly independent Saarland town of Malstatt - Burbach in Paul-Schmook-Straße (formerly Rathausstraße) was built in 1874. After the city union to form the city of Saarbrücken , the town hall building was converted into a school between 1909 and 1910.

Original design

The town hall, with its architecturally highlighted main façade, the north façade accommodating the main entrance, was arranged along the town hall square and had the address Breitestrasse No. 12. The town hall street and Breitestrasse bordered the old town hall square. According to a list from 1879, the total costs were around 50,000 marks. Until then, the city had rented an apartment as its administrative center. The town hall square, which was removed as part of the renovation from 1909, was accessible via a two-flight flight of stairs from the higher Breitestrasse. The three-storey historicist town hall building was determined by antiquing, classicist form details. The basement was sloped on the gable ends and, because of the sloping terrain towards the south, was designed as a full floor in the rear view of the building. The north facade, at the same time the main facade, was architecturally highlighted in the form of a central projection, which, like the rest of the building, was covered with a gable roof and accommodated the main entrance. The main entrance itself had an outside staircase framed by cheeks with pillars supporting an entablature consisting of a three-faced architecture, a frieze and a cornice. The cornice continued as a dividing horizontal line across the entire structure. The brick basement had low rectangular window openings with folding shutters, while the ground floor and first floor had tall rectangular lattice windows with profiled walls. The sills of the upper floor windows and the two-part windows of the mezzanine floor were designed as circumferential sill cornices. The entablature and cornices were cranked in the area of ​​the central projection. The lintels on the second floor were divided into fascia in the manner of the antique architrave. The window on the second floor of the central projection was further emphasized with respect to the window design. The entire structure was given a strong horizontal structure and weighting by circumferential, profiled cornices, which balances the vertical of the elevated central projection on the north facade counteracted, so that a balanced and harmonious overall impression was achieved. The two-storey extension with attic design, built in 1906, was connected to the old town hall building. From 1906 to 1907 there were minor structural changes to the town hall. This involves a roof window structure, built-in windows in the stairwell and on the rear of the building, as well as a two-storey extension in the right part of the building. Since the building was soon no longer sufficient for the administrative business, a house was bought in the neighborhood, which was called "Town House II". The construction of a large representative town hall was considered, but not implemented.

Conversion to a school building

The conversion of the town hall into a school building comprised the relocation of the stairwell, the removal of partition walls and the installation of new walls, as well as the widening of the windows that exposed the classrooms and the stairwell. The room program consisted of four school halls on the ground floor and four first floor, a director's room on the upper floor, and two halls for drawing and singing lessons, a teacher's room and a teaching material room on the top floor by raising the ceiling. The school servant's apartment was in the basement. The toilet facilities were housed in the annex.

Until 1913, the building served as the first classroom for the newly founded reform school, which then moved to a new Art Nouveau building in Otto-Straße, today Klausener Straße. The former town hall building was then used to raise children with learning difficulties. In the Pestalozzi commemorative year of 1927, the school building was given the name "Pestalozzi School" in honor of the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who died in 1827, by resolution of the city council .

In 1935, after the Saar was reintegrated into the German Reich, the so-called auxiliary school had to leave the building. From then on, the NSDAP uses the school building. The Breite Strasse in front of the building was renamed Jakob-Johannes-Strasse. Jakob Johannes (1877–1919) was a railway fitter in Malstatt-Burbach. After his arrest and execution by the French occupation authorities for illegal possession of weapons during the League of Nations, he was stylized by the National Socialists as an anti-French symbol in the 1935 Saar referendum campaign. The renaming lasted until 1945. After the collapse of National Socialism, the street address was named after Paul Schmook. Schmook, mayor of the municipality of Malstatt-Burbach since 1900, held his office until April 1, 1909, the day when the municipalities of St. Johann, Saarbrücken and Malstatt-Burbach merged to form the city of Saarbrücken, with the mayor as one of the driving forces had supported.

Destruction in World War II and reconstruction

As in the First World War , the Pestalozzi School also served as accommodation for troops during the Second World War . During the air raid on July 30, 1942, the school building on Jakob-Johannes-Strasse was badly damaged by bombs and burned out.

In the immediate post-war period, there was an aggravated school space shortage in Malstatt, which was initially met with the reconstruction of existing schoolhouses that had yet to be rescued from the war. In the case of the Pestalozzi School, an existing wooden barrack of just under 229 square meters was initially set up on the premises of the school building to re-establish an auxiliary school for the city of Saarbrücken. An appraisal and test of the stability of the existing building structure of the former Malstatt-Burbach town hall had shown that the quarry stone masonry of the outer and inner walls was still well preserved, so that it could be rebuilt on the foundation walls of the destroyed building.

In the two systems of the Pestalozzi School, an educational welfare facility for poorly gifted children who could not attend elementary schools, around 350 children were enrolled. As a central school, it should offer these children special training so that they can survive independently in later life. The lessons consisted primarily of teaching manual skills such as painting, handicrafts, crafts, cooking and gardening. The reconstruction took this form of teaching into account with special facilities such as work rooms (handicrafts and craft rooms), kitchen and gardens, as well as large blackboards and school furniture in the classrooms that can be moved to groups.

The construction project to rebuild the Pestalozzi School was approved on September 29, 1949. The reconstruction, which means a redesign of the previous building, takes place in the improved form proposed by the municipal building department. In order to avoid inadequate classrooms on the gable ends of the attic, the knee of the previous building was dispensed with. Instead, the building was given a second upper floor and thus another full floor. The three-storey, rebuilt school building, accommodating 12 classrooms, has since been a solid masonry structure with ceilings made of reinforced concrete beams and solid concrete. The outer walls consist of quarry stone masonry, the load-bearing inner walls of brick masonry. After the demolition work in December 1949, the shell of the building was completed in June 1950 and lessons could be resumed on October 16. In 1951 the school yard was designed and fenced in.

Shaping the immediate post-war period

How school looks today (2018)

In the exterior view, the reconstruction shows itself as a clearly structured, unadorned structure. A characteristic feature of Peter Paul Seeberger is the roof, which is set back from the building structure by a setback purlin, so that the individual structural elements are identified as having their own particular value. Pointed color settings on the sills are typical of the architect's facade design and contribute to the enlivening of the facade. The decisive design element of the exterior is the window grouping and arrangement, which is based on the previous building.

The central projectile and the mezzanine floor were dispensed with on the north facade. The window axes of the previous building were retained. The two-part mezzanine windows of the old building were extended to form a group of four on both sides of the former risalit. The original separation of the town hall and the uniaxial extension in the west was retained. The two-storey extension was also increased by a full storey. Rectangular lattice windows now divided the north, south and west views. Vertical ribbon windows were added to the east and south facades. The south facade showed the greatest change. The central axis with the door to the school yard has been completely revised with regard to the window and door design. The individual windows were enlarged to a maximum size of 4.65 m.

Remodeling in the 1980s and 1990s

The current appearance is determined by the change in use and the renovation in 1983/84 as well as the expansion in the south of the school premises that was started in 1990. In 1983 the building, now used as a commercial vocational school, was rebuilt and renovated as a result of the steadily increasing number of students under Johann Peter Lüth, head of the Saarbrücken building authority. The building owner was the Saarbrücken City Association, which had taken over the building from the City of Saarbrücken in January 1974 as a school authority. On August 16, 1978, the building was transferred to the Saarbrücken City Association in the land register and given a new use. The renovation of the Paul Schmook School included the renovation and expansion, as well as the reorganization of the school location as a branch of the Technical-Commercial Vocational Training Center II of the City of Saarbrücken, TGBBZ II for short. This belongs as a branch from 1952 to 1962 according to plans by Peter Paul Seeberger built complex of the technical-commercial vocational training center "Am Mügelsberg" ( Mügelsbergschule for short ).

In 1990, the planning phase began for the two-storey extension building with a square floor plan that would adjoin the school building in the north and the still existing bunker in the east. From 1992 onwards, the construction project was carried out according to drafts by the Bernhard Focht and Partners planning group. The overall height of the new building is subordinate to the old building and is connected to it via an entrance hall, but is also deliberately marked as a later extension. The extension is a courtyard solution with all classrooms facing the inner courtyard. There is a one-hip construction in which the classrooms have a hallway on only one side. The reference to the old building is evident in the use of upright rectangular windows and their subdivision and arrangement to form ribbon windows. The topping-out ceremony took place on February 16, 1993.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Saarbrücken City Archives, Malstatt-Burbach, No. 286.
  2. ^ Rolf Wittenbrock: Die Drei Saarstädte (1860-1908): Local self-government and political culture, in: Rolf Wittenbrock: Geschichte der Stadt Saarbrücken, Vol. 2, From the time of stormy growth to the present, Saarbrücken 1999, p. 11– 38, here pp. 35–36.
  3. ↑ Journal for the History of the Saar Region 47 (1999), pp. 346-349.
  4. ↑ Johannes Jakob . saarland-biografien.de. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved April 5, 2016.
  5. ^ Karl August Schleiden: Illustrated history of the city of Saarbrücken, Dillingen / Saar 2009, p. 325 and p. 367–368.
  6. ^ Jeanette Dillinger: Peter Paul Seeberger (1906–1993), works from three decades of his Saarbrücken architecture (1949–1977), Saarbrücken 2007, unpublished master's thesis in the subject of art history at the Saarland University.
  7. ^ Jeanette Dillinger: Peter Paul Seeberger, Three decades of architecture in Saarbrücken (1949–1977), exhibition catalog for technical-industrial vocational training center I, Saarbrücken 2007.
  8. ↑ Stadtverband Saarbrücken: Technical and commercial vocational training center II Saarbrücken, Malstatt branch, tradition and progress, commemorative publication for the inauguration of the extension building, undated

Coordinates: 49 ° 14 '24 "  N , 6 ° 58' 4.4"  E