Rothschild Park

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The Rothschild Palais with park on the city map by Friedrich Wilhelm Delkeskamp from 1864
The neo-Gothic ornamental tower from the 19th century , view from the north

The Rothschild Park is a public park in the district Westend in Frankfurt . It was named after the Rothschild banking family from Frankfurt who acquired property here in the 19th century and had one of their palaces with a park built. Today's smaller park, which has been extended to the south by 2010, is located northwest of the Alte Oper between the streets Reuterweg and Oberlindau .

history

The park in the 19th century

The beginning of the Rothschild park fancied in 1810 (according to other sources in 1816) of Amschel Mayer Rothschild acquired land house with land at that time Bockenheimer Chaussee called Bockenheimer Landstrasse . The property was located in a garden suburb that was newly developing at the beginning of the 19th century - the later Westend - immediately in front of the then Bockenheimer Tor and the Frankfurt ramparts that had been set up only a year earlier in place of the Frankfurt city fortifications . First expansion plans for the country house, created by the architect Rudolf Burnitz , were discarded by Rothschild due to excessive construction costs.

Beginning in 1830, the Rothschild family had the existing house converted into a palace by the Frankfurt architect Friedrich Rumpf . His design for the house was in the tradition of the classicist architect Salins de Montfort . The conversion of the property into a park in the style of an English landscape garden from 1832 onwards is also attributed to Rumpf. The elongated shape of the property proved to be difficult in terms of garden architecture, as it made it difficult to visually enlarge the complex. The park received a neo-Gothic ornamental tower that has been preserved to this day. In addition, a greenhouse and an orangery were built and a pond was created in the northern part of the park, none of which have been preserved. In the years 1869/1870 Wilhelm Carl von Rothschild expanded the property on site through new acquisitions and had the palace expanded into a country palace. In 1891 the palace was rebuilt again and the park was redesigned.

Development in the 20th and 21st centuries

Ring of statues by Georg Kolbe
The southern entrance to Rothschild Park, which was reopened in 2010, viewed from Bockenheimer Landstrasse . In the background the Park Tower , on the right the Opera Tower .

In September 1938, the National Socialist city ​​administration forced the owner Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild to sell the park and the palace to the city at a price that was far below their value. The elderly banker was allowed to live in a small apartment in the palace until his death in February 1940. In 1941 the park was opened to the public and in 1943 it was renamed Wöhlerpark (after the chemist Friedrich Wöhler and his father August Anton Wöhler ). The date of the renaming to Rothschildpark could not be determined. The facility was badly damaged in World War II . The Rothschild Palais was destroyed in an air raid on Frankfurt in 1943 , the following year the orangery burned down as a result of the war. Since 1950 the property has belonged to the city of Frankfurt, which compensated the previous owners and reduced it in size in the following decade in favor of new building plots. The America House and a daycare center were built on the park's northern edge .

In the park there is a group of statues by the sculptor Georg Kolbe - the ring of statues . The seven larger than life bronze figures of naked people form a circle, they are each flanked by two dark marble steles. The figures are called Young Woman , Guardian , Chosen One , Amazon , Striding Down , Standing Young Man, and Pensive Man . The group of statues was purchased by the city of Frankfurt during the Nazi era and, according to the contract, was to be erected in what was then Wöhlerpark in 1941. However, it was not erected until 1951.

The 68-meter-high Zurich House , which was one of the first high-rise buildings in Frankfurt, was built along Bockenheimer Landstrasse from 1958 to 1960 . In 1972 the SGZ skyscraper was added on Reuterweg, which was then for a short time the tallest skyscraper in Frankfurt. For this construction, the park pond was filled in and several 120-year-old plane trees in the park were felled.

In 2002 the 19-story Zurich building was demolished. The 170 meter high Opera Tower was built on the site from 2007 to 2009 . The original park access from Bockenheimer Landstrasse was rebuilt by 2010, another access was created from the east side and the parking area was enlarged by approx. 5,500 square meters for a building permit. The park with its old trees was given a children's playground. A memorial in the redesigned southern part of the park commemorates the Rothschild Palais, which was destroyed in the war, which reproduces part of the floor plan of the house and which includes a sandstone stele from 1878 with the coat of arms of Amschel Mayer Rothschild. Today the Frankfurt branch of the Spanish cultural institute Instituto Cervantes is located on the northeast corner of the park, in the former America House .

literature

  • Frank Blecken: Historical parks in Frankfurt am Main - Rothschildpark. In: Tom Koenigs (ed.): City parks - Urban nature in Frankfurt am Main, pp. 80–117. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 1993, ISBN 3-593-34901-9

See also

Web links

Commons : Rothschildpark  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e Blecken: Historical parks in Frankfurt am Main in: Stadt-Parks, p. 106
  2. a b Klaus Merten, Christoph Mohr: Das Frankfurter Westend. A documentation by the Kuratorium Kulturelles Frankfurt with a focus on architecture and numerous historical images (maps and photos). Prestel, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-7913-0036-9 , p. 14.
  3. Information from the Institute for Urban History Frankfurt am Main (Steffi Lamla, Zeitgeschehen), Münzgasse 9, 60311 Frankfurt am Main, from August 31, 2019
  4. Ursel Berger: One-sided artistic. (pdf) Georg Kolbe in the Nazi era. Georg-Kolbe-Museum Berlin, 2018, p. 14 , accessed on October 24, 2019 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 7 ′ 4.4 "  N , 8 ° 40 ′ 11.6"  E