Oberhausen town hall

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Oberhausen town hall
Entrance portal to the office of Lord Mayor Daniel Schranz in the Oberhausen town hall
Stones of the old town hall built in 1873, which was destroyed in 1942
art

The town hall of Oberhausen has been the seat of the council and administration of the city of Oberhausen since 1930 .

The old town hall was built in 1873/1874 on what would later become Schwartzstraße, but after just a few decades the three-story building no longer met the requirements of the rapidly growing city. Since the beginning of the 20th century there were plans to build a larger town hall in the vicinity of its predecessor, which gradually and increasingly developed as a “town hall district” into an upscale bourgeois residential area according to the concept of “city as a park”. An architecture competition announced in 1910 was won by the design by Friedrich Pützer , according to whose plans the first savings bank building in Oberhausen was built in 1911 on the corner of Grillo and Schwartzstrasse. However, his design for the new town hall was never implemented. First World War I delayed the realization; after the early death of Pützer in 1922, the plans disappeared in a drawer and they were initially content with an extension of the old town hall, often referred to as an "emergency building".

Mayor Otto Havenstein and the technical assistant Eduard Jüngerich stuck to the idea of ​​a new building, which was actually realized towards the end of the 1920s. In 1927, on their behalf, the head of the municipal building construction department, Ludwig Freitag , a pupil of Pützer, presented a new design that took up some of his teacher's ideas. Friday was also responsible for the interior of the building. This time, the construction project was tackled quickly. The topping-out ceremony was celebrated on October 15, 1928 . The building, which was completed in March 1930, was inaugurated on May 20, 1930 as part of a festive special session of the city council. On this occasion, Dr. Heuser, the first Lord Mayor of Groß-Oberhausen, which was created in the previous year through the merger with the cities of Sterkrade and Osterfeld , was introduced to his office.

The town hall stands on a hill that is popularly known as "Galgenberg" because high court was previously held there and there was a gallows. The main front, which is around 100 meters wide and facing west, overlooks the Grillopark below , with which the town hall is connected through terraces and open stairs and, according to some experts, forms a total work of art .

North wing with Grillopark

The style of the building can be classified between Brick Expressionism and the "New Building" . It is characterized by expressive contrasts from light natural stone to dark clinker; the composition of different structures is typical of this time. Historicizing elements were largely dispensed with; the building achieves its special effect primarily through the tension between different building cubes, which have different heights and sometimes protrude or recede. The massive facade is also loosened up by arcades on the south side and the high windows and the wide balcony of the council meeting room, which is flanked by two shell limestone figures by the sculptor Adam Antes . There were two sculptures by the sculptor Leopold Fleischhacker on the south portal , but they were destroyed in the Second World War. The remaining bomb damage was quickly repaired after the end of the war; however, the more severely affected old town hall was demolished in 1946. The surviving "emergency building" was demolished in 1957 after the east wing, which had been added to the central wing of the new town hall for expansion, could be moved into.

In 2000 the technical departments and offices were relocated to the so-called Technical Town Hall, a former administration building of the Gutehoffnungshütte in the center of the Sterkrade district. Like the town hall itself, this building has one of the few paternoster lifts still in operation . In connection with the 75th anniversary of Groß-Oberhausen, the Grillopark was returned to its original state in 2004 in order to make the planning concept of the Park-Stadt visible again.

“In contrast to conventional architecture, this dramatic event does not begin with the building, but with the park. The green forms into terraces and from this the building grows [...] Extensive area. Interpenetrating cubes. Close rows of windows. Flowing, white ribbons do not want to stop, repeat themselves next to and on top of each other. […] Empty surface against a filigree texture. Long ribbons and short elements. Dark, small-scale bricks against light, large-format stone elements. Extended versus contracted. A virtuoso dramaturgy. "

- Roland Günter

literature

  • Dietrich Behrends: 75 years ago: Groß-Oberhausen “starts” in the town hall. Trouble abroad over the magnificent building on the Galgenberg. In: Oberhausen '05. A yearbook , pp. 29–36.

Web links

Commons : Rathaus (Oberhausen)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinz Reif: The belated city. Industrialization, urban space and politics in Oberhausen 1846–1929. Textband, Cologne, 1993, esp.p. 201.
  2. ↑ Quoted from Roland Günter: This city breathes. In: Parkstadt Oberhausen. Rebirth of a historic city center with modern architecture. Oberhausen, 2004, p. 157 f.

Coordinates: 51 ° 28 ′ 26.4 "  N , 6 ° 51 ′ 37.6"  E