Saalgasse
| Saalgasse | |
|---|---|
 |
|
 |
|
| Postmodern residential buildings in Saalgasse | |
| Basic data | |
| place | Frankfurt am Main |
| District | Old town |
| Created | 13th Century |
| Newly designed | 1950, 1981-1983 |
| Hist. Names | Heiliggeistgasse, Saalhofgasse |
| Name received | 16th Century |
| Connecting roads | Weckmarkt, Römerberg , Fahrtor , Alte Mainzer Gasse |
| Cross streets | Am Schlachthaus (today Zum Pfarrturm ), Wobelinsgäßchen (†), Dreckgäßchen (†), Metzgergasse (†), Lange Schirn (†), Am Geistpförtchen, Gläsergäßchen (†) |
| Places | Holy Spirit Cookies |
| Buildings | Haus zum Storch (†), Scharnhäuser (†), Heilig-Geist-Spital and -Kirche (†), Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt , Saalhof , Historisches Museum Frankfurt , Alte Nikolaikirche |
| Technical specifications | |
| Street length | 210 m |
The Saalgasse is one of the oldest streets in the old town of Frankfurt am Main . It runs parallel to the banks of the Main from the Weckmarkt at the Imperial Cathedral of St. Bartholomew to the Römerberg and the Fahrtor . From the Middle Ages to its destruction in the air raids on Frankfurt in 1943 and 1944 , it formed an important east-west axis in the old city center. Important public buildings such as the Staufer Saalhof and the hospital church of the Holy Spirit Hospital, which was demolished in 1840, were located on Saalgasse . Today it is the access road to a residential area from the 1950s; on its north side are postmodern town houses from the 1980s and a staircase to the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt .
location
The Saalgasse is located in the oldest Frankfurt city center south of the Carolingian-Ottonian royal palace Frankfurt . Archaeological excavations from 1970 and 2012 indicate that the course of Saalgasse and the Alte Mainzer Gasse, which adjoins it to the west, roughly corresponds to the north bank of the Main at that time, which has since been shifted about 100 meters to the south. In the immediate vicinity of the ford that gave the city its name, there was probably a ship landing and a small suburb (suburbium) where merchants, craftsmen and servants of the royal court settled. In the 12th century the bank was moved to the south to make room for the building of the Saalhof . At the eastern end of the alley, the Holy Spirit Hospital was built around 1280 with its Gothic hospital church.
In the middle, the narrow alley widened to a small square, the Holy Spirit Square . Several streets branched off here: to the north the Lange Schirn , also known as Scharngäßchen , to the market , to the southeast the Metzgergasse and to the south the Geistpförtchen . To the north there were also two narrow passages to the neighboring Bendergasse : to the east of the Langen Schirn, the Dreckgäßchen , to the west of the Heilig-Geist-Platz between the Horneck and Lindenbaum houses, the Gläsergäßchen .
After the destruction in World War II, all rubble was cleared by 1950. During the reconstruction from 1952 onwards, the Saalgasse was redesigned as a rear access to the loosened residential development facing the main front. Since 1972 it has also served as an exit for the Dom / Römer underground car park that was built during the construction of the old town subway . In the west, the Saalgasse has since ended as a pedestrian zone on the Römerberg between the Alte Nikolaikirche and the Historical Museum . The north side of the Saalgasse was built on between 1981 and 1984 with 14 four-storey, gable-front town houses in the postmodern style . Although designed very differently by renowned architects, they are reminiscent of the earlier appearance of Saalgasse due to their closed construction with a uniform width of 7.50 meters each and a plot depth of 10 meters.
history
From the Middle Ages to the 20th century
During excavations in the 1930s in the area of the eastern Saalgasse, the remains of a paved road from Carolingian times were found at a depth of 3.10 meters below today's street level . The Carolingian layer was cut in by house cellars that belonged to the oldest Jewish residential area in Frankfurt south of the cathedral. The settlement of Jews in Frankfurt is documented for the first time in 1074, the oldest house cellars were from the middle of the 12th century.
How this oldest part of the street was originally called is unknown. After the construction of the Holy Spirit Hospital, first mentioned in 1267, the name Heilig-Geistgasse or vicus hospitalis S. Spiriti , abbreviated vicus hospitalis , became common for the alley between Saalhof and the hospital . The eastern extension to the Weckmarkt was still part of the Jewish quarter at that time. After the massacre of Frankfurt Jews on July 24, 1349, Frankfurt patricians and citizens gradually appropriated the houses of the Jews. Since 1462, all Jews had to live in the newly built ghetto in Judengasse. Since then, the name Heilig-Geistgasse has been extended to the eastern part of the street.
The western part between Römerberg and Saalhof carried the name Gläsergasse until the 15th century , as in the topography of Baldemar von Petterweil published in 1350 . The name Saalhofgasse came up for this in the first half of the 16th century , while only the narrow passage to Bendergasse is still referred to as Glass Alley . The abbreviation to Saalgasse as the name for the entire street was in use from the end of the 17th century.
The small square, to which the alley widened roughly in the middle, was usually called the Holy Spirit Square . The church of the Heilig-Geist-Spital , located on the southern edge of the square, was originally a small chapel built shortly before 1288. That year, 12 Italian bishops gave indulgences to visitors to this chapel on certain feast days . From the beginning, the chapel not only served the pastoral care of the sick in the hospital, but also the residents of the surrounding district. When the Magdalen floods in July 1342, the chapel is said to have stood four shoes high under water. Siegfried zum Paradies was buried in the chapel in 1386 , next to his wife Katharina zum Wedel, who died in 1378.
Between 1460 and 1467 the chapel was replaced by a new building. The late Gothic hall church had two bays with star vaults , richly decorated corbels and a hexagonal choir . The slate hipped roof carried a small ridge turret with initially three small bells, which were cast over in 1723 to form a large bell of 443 pounds. After the Reformation was introduced in Frankfurt in 1533, the small church served the Protestant community for over 300 years. In 1840, one year after the Heilig-Geist-Spital had moved to a spacious new building on Langen Gasse , it was sold to a private investor and demolished against the resistance of Frankfurt architects, historians and politicians. It was replaced by the Old Nikolaikirche on the Römerberg , which was not previously used as a parish church . The epitaphs Siegfried and Catherine and other ornaments of the Holy Spirit Church were transferred to the Nikolai Church.
Opposite the church, on the corner of the Langen Schirn, were the Scharnhäuser . They are mentioned for the first time in a document in 1324 as newe butcher , i.e. covered meat bank . Probably in the late 15th century, the semi-detached houses with brick vaulted cellars were built from this . To the east of the Scharnhäuser was the Brodhalle or domus panum , a roofed public sales point for bread , which had also existed at least since the 1320s . According to the Vicariate Book of 1453, the bread hall consisted of two departments, the eastern ( orientalis ) or upper ( superioris ) and the western ( occidentalis ) or lower ( inferioris ), each with two rows of sales tables. After the bread hall, the whole square was sometimes called the bread market or weck market . In 1555 the council ordered the removal of the bread tables in the Saalgasse and their relocation to the cloister of the barefoot monastery . The bread hall was demolished and replaced by a semi-detached house. The new building created two new narrow connections between Bendergasse and Saalgasse, to the east the Dreckgäßchen and to the west the Scharngäßchen , actually the southern extension of the Long Schirn.
A public fountain , the Heilig-Geist-Brunnen , had been on the Heilig-Geist-Platz since the 13th century . Initially it was a draw well with a lined shaft and a parapet made of Main sandstone . A bucket that ran on a chain over a pulley was used as a scoop . To prevent accidents and contamination, the well shaft had a wooden cover. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the draw wells were gradually replaced by more effective pump wells . They were safer and more hygienic - the draw wells were repeatedly contaminated by animal carcasses and accidents with water-scooping children - and had a higher delivery rate of up to 40 liters per minute. This made it easier to fight fires in an emergency, to which all citizens were obliged. When they took their citizenship oath for the first time , they were given a leather fire bucket that they had to keep ready in their apartment at all times. In the event of a fire, the citizen captain of the respective quarter took command of the citizen fire brigade .
On July 15, 1768, the draw well was demolished and then a magnificently decorated, baroque pump well was built. The statue, as it stands on top of it, represents virtue , in her right hand she has a stick with which she measures everything, in her left hand the weight entrusted to her, whereupon a ball with which she weighs everything and the ball, whereupon she stands with one foot, represents that she tramples all vice on earth. The fountain was renewed in 1822 with a simpler column and renovated in 1887.
The owners of the houses whose residents used it, the so-called well neighborhood, were responsible for the maintenance of the well . They were registered in the municipal fountain roll and every two years elected a younger and an older fountain master who were responsible for the maintenance and cleaning of the fountain. For this, the neighbors paid an annual well fee .
After the completion of the new water pipeline from Knoblauchsfeld in what is now Nordend , the city abolished the well neighborhoods in 1832 and transferred the maintenance of the city wells to the building authority, which also collected the well money. The well fee was not abolished until 1862 after more and more households were connected to the central water supply and the city wells ceased to be vital supply facilities. The Heilig-Geist-Brunnen was not rebuilt after the Second World War.
The house at Saalgasse 13, east of the Heilig-Geist-Platz, was one of the well-known architectural monuments of Frankfurt under the name Drei Schinken . In 1371 it was first mentioned as Hus zum Threschenkil . In later documents it says to Drynschenken , to the three taverns , in the 16th century, it is even for drinking Schenk or trunk Schenk garbled . Around 1500 it was an elegant inn where the council preferred to accommodate its high-ranking city guests. For example, in 1507 it served as a quarters for the French ambassador.
From 1567 to 1570 the house belonged to Count Ludwig zu Stolberg , then lord of the County of Königstein . During the time of the tipper and wipper, he had a mint for small coins and pennies operated here according to the Imperial Coin Order of 1566 . In 1569, his mint master embezzled 1,800 guilders that he had borrowed from Jews. In 1570, until further notice , Emperor Maximilian II prohibited the operation of the mint in the drinking tavern and in Oberursel and Königstein .
In 1713 the house belonged to a Catholic merchant from France named de Poulles . He had the old house torn down and a new baroque building built on the same area. The front building on Saalgasse was connected to the rear building on Metzgergasse by a small square atrium. The Drei Schinken house was made entirely of sandstone, but stylistically like a half-timbered house with two cantilevered upper floors. The eaves roof carried a two-storey dwarf house with a baroque gable. The areas under the four double-wing windows on each upper floor were originally decorated with frescoes that were plastered in the middle of the 19th century. The rear building had a gable facing the Heilig-Geist-Platz and a dwelling facing Metzgergasse, where the entrance was.
A well-known inn in the eastern part of Saalgasse was Haus zum Storch in Saalgasse 1, first mentioned in 1317. It was located on the corner of Gasse Am Schlachthaus (today Zum Pfarrturm ) opposite the canvas house . It was located in the old Jewish quarter south of the cathedral and was originally owned by Jews. During the pogrom on July 24, 1349, its owner is said to have shot an incendiary arrow against the old town hall, which was located on the site of today's cathedral tower, while fighting with the murderers . The arrow hit a wooden shutter and ignited a fire that spread to the roof of the town hall and the new choir of the parish church of St. Bartholomew. After all, numerous houses in the surrounding Jewish quarter are said to have fallen victim to the fire. Jews first settled in Frankfurt again in 1360, but the house came into the possession of Christians in 1405 at the latest, and in 1460 it was sold to a Jeckel von Schwanau . The house was badly damaged in a fire on March 27, 1677. In 1704 the pastor's son Vincenz Assum set up a wine bar. Since then it has always been used as an inn. In 1798 the house was rebuilt.
Destruction and rebuilding
On March 22, 1944, an air raid destroyed the historic old town. In the quarter between the cathedral and the Römer, all the houses burned down, including in Saalgasse. Only remnants of the stone buildings had survived the firestorm, especially the ground floors and fire walls. In May 1947 the Frankfurt magistrate decided that a comprehensive restoration of the old town, apart from a few striking monuments, was out of the question. In the area between the cathedral and the Römer, the rubble was completely cleared by 1950.
In 1952, general reconstruction began in the old town. In the area between Saalhof and Mainkai, the city built several four-story residential buildings with large, green courtyards. The Staufer Saalhof with the Saalhof Chapel, the oldest building in Frankfurt, was released. To the east of the Saalhof, the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau built a complex of buildings for the Propstei Frankfurt. Today it is used as a community center by the Evangelical Women's Encounter Center EVA and the Evangelical St. Pauls Congregation. The new building erected in 1953 on the corner of Saalgasse and Zum Pfarrturm houses the historic Zum Storch restaurant . South of the Old Nikolaikirche, the new western end of Saalgasse was built in 1971/72 with the construction of the Historical Museum .
The north side of Saalgasse initially remained undeveloped. The construction of the Dom / Römer underground station with a two-storey underground car park above raised the ground level by several meters.
Redesign in the 1980s
From 1983 to 1986 the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt was built in the direct north . Its monumental exhibition hall, 140 meters long, 10 meters wide and five storeys high, runs almost exactly over the north side of the old Bendergasse. The height difference to Saalgasse is overcome by a staircase in the cubic central building of the Schirn. Together with the Schirn, two rows of houses were built along the north side of Saalgasse, separated from one another by the Schirn central building.
The so-called town houses have typical old town proportions and plot sizes, but are all designed in the colorful, playful style of postmodern architecture of the 1980s. Schirn and town houses are grouped around two publicly accessible inner courtyards. The inner courtyard is accessed from the Saalgasse buildings via the first floor.
Web links
- Saalgasse. altfrankfurt.com
- Historisches Museum Frankfurt (Ed.): The Staufer Harbor of the Frankfurt Saalhof (PDF)
literature
- Johann Georg Battonn : Local description of the city of Frankfurt am Main . Fourth booklet, containing the description of the old town, namely the last part of the upper town and the beginning of the lower town. Association for history and archeology , Frankfurt am Main 1866, p. 59–96 ( full text in Google Book Search).
- Georg Hartmann , Fried Lübbecke : Old Frankfurt. A legacy. Sauer and Auvermann publishing house, Glashütten 1971.
- Peter Cachola Schmahl: The houses in the Saalgasse Frankfurt (1981-1984). (PDF), on the website of the State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stadtvermessungsamt Frankfurt am Main (ed.): Portal GeoInfo Frankfurt , city map
- ^ Ulrich Fischer: From Frankfurt's prehistory . Verlag Waldemar Kramer , Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-7829-0120-7 , p. 226.
- ^ Karl Nahrgang: The Frankfurt old town. A historical-geographical study . Waldemar Kramer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1949, p. 56.
- ↑ Johann Georg Battonn : Slave Narratives Frankfurt . Fourth issue. Association for history and archeology , Frankfurt am Main 1866, p. 59 ( full text in Google Book Search).
- ↑ JG Battonn: Slave Narratives Frankfurt. Fourth issue, 1866, p. 62.
- ^ Carl Wolff , Rudolf Jung : The architectural monuments in Frankfurt am Main . First volume. Church buildings. Völcker, Frankfurt am Main 1896, p. 348–355 ( digital copy [PDF]).
- ↑ The Frankfurt shoe length was 28.46 centimeters
- ↑ JG Battonn: Slave Narratives Frankfurt. Fourth Book, 1866, pp. 96-100.
- ↑ The square south of the cathedral, now known as Weckmarkt , was not built until 1569 to 1573, see Battonn, local description. Fourth issue. P. 1.
- ↑ JG Battonn: Slave Narratives Frankfurt. Fourth issue, 1866, p. 101.
- ^ Carl Wolff , Rudolf Jung : The architectural monuments in Frankfurt am Main . Second volume. Secular buildings. Völcker, Frankfurt am Main 1898, p. 351–357 ( digital copy [PDF]).
- ↑ C. Wolff, R. Jung: The architectural monuments in Frankfurt am Main. Volume Two : Secular Buildings. P. 355f. Fig., 1898, p. 354 and p. 357.
- ↑ JG Battonn: Slave Narratives Frankfurt. Fourth issue, 1866, pp. 69f.
- ^ Rudolf Jung , Julius Hülsen: The architectural monuments in Frankfurt am Main . Third volume. Private buildings. Heinrich Keller, Frankfurt am Main 1914, p. 136-139 ( digital copy [PDF]).
- ↑ Achilles Augustus von Lersner : The far-famous Freyen realm election and trade city Franckfurt on Mayn Chronica . Frankfurt am Main 1706, p. 442 ( full text in Google Book Search).
- ↑ C. Wolff, R. Jung: The architectural monuments in Frankfurt am Main. Volume Two : Secular Buildings. 1898, p. 133.
- ↑ JG Battonn: Slave Narratives Frankfurt. Fourth issue, 1866, p. 66.
- ↑ Reconstruction of the old town in 1952 ( Memento from June 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 36 ″ N , 8 ° 40 ′ 59 ″ E