Silver Bear (Leipzig)

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Silbener Bear House (around 1890)

The Silver Bear was a historic building from 1765 in downtown Leipzig . Its successor building, which was destroyed in World War II , also bore this name.

Location and shape

Rococo jewelry

The Zum Silbernen Bären house was located at Universitätsstraße 18 (until 1839 Alter Neumarkt) on the corner of Kupfergasse (until 1903 Kupfergäßchen) with the entrance on the Kupfergasse side, which is why it is sometimes referred to as Kupfergasse 18. The Golden Bear House was on the opposite side of the street and the old Gewandhaus on the other corner of Kupfergasse .

The Silver Bear was a four-story building with an extended mansard roof . Eleven window axes faced Universitätsstrasse, eight faced Kupfergasse. The two axes above the entrance with the bear as a house sign in the Kupfergasse showed rich Rococo jewelry. The central dormer was larger and richer than the others.

story

The House of the Silver Bear was built in 1765 after two previous buildings were demolished. The builder was the music publisher Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf (1719–1794). His father Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf (1695–1777) had erected the Golden Bear on the opposite side of the street in 1738, which gave rise to the name of the new house. Breitkopf acquired the corner property in 1765, the neighboring property in Universitätsstrasse as early as 1763. This was known under the name “Die Arche”. From 1531 one of the previous owners was the “Prince Painter” Hans Krell (1490–1565), who was approved by the city council in 1538 to build a tower on his house so that he could “paint the clouds better”, which is probably the name of the house led. The administrator of Electoral Saxony , Prince Franz Xaver (1730–1806) , laid the foundation stone for the Silver Bear .

In the early days of the new house, Goethe was studying in Leipzig , who was friends with Breitkopf's sons and was therefore allowed to go in and out of the house and also to use the house's library. Goethe's student apartment was only a few houses away in the Great Fireball . The engraver Johann Michael Stock (1737–1773) and his family moved into the attic . With him, Goethe learned the beginnings of copperplate engraving and woodcut. The doctor Georg Christian Reichel (1717–1771), who treated Goethe during his hemorrhage in 1768 , also lived in the Silver Bear .

  • Silberner Bär exhibition center at the corner of Universitätsstrasse and Magazingasse (1902)

  • Residential and commercial buildings at the corner of Universitätsstrasse and Schillerstrasse (1964)

After Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf died in 1794, his son Christoph Gottlob Breitkopf (1750–1800) had to sell the House of the Silver Bear, among other things. In 1795, 19511 books were auctioned off by the auctioneer Johann August Gottlob Weigel (1773–1846), who opened his shop in the Silver Bear in the same year.

One hundred years later the house was demolished and in 1895/1896 a new neo-baroque model fair building of the same name was built , including the property at Universitätsstrasse 20, which extends to Magazingasse . He owned two dwelling houses facing Universitätsstrasse, each adorned with a bear figure.

The exhibition center and the building between Magazingasse and Schillerstrasse were destroyed in the Second World War. In 1959/60, a new residential block with shops on the ground floor was built in the traditional style, spanning Magazingasse and culminating in a ten-story high-rise on Schillerstrasse.

literature

  • Ernst Müller: The house names of old Leipzig . (Writings of the Association for the History of Leipzig, Volume 15). Leipzig 1931, reprint Ferdinand Hirt 1990, ISBN 3-7470-0001-0 , pp. 83-85
  • Alberto Schwarz: The old Leipzig - cityscape and architecture . Sax-Verlag, Beucha-Markleeberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-86729-226-9 , p. 136
  • Cornelius Gurlitt : Silver Bear . In:  Descriptive representation of the older architectural and art monuments of the Kingdom of Saxony. 18. Issue: City of Leipzig (Part II). C. C. Meinhold, Dresden 1896, p. 251.
  • Peter Schwarz: Millennial Leipzig. From the beginning to the end of the 18th century . 1st edition. tape 1 . Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2014, ISBN 978-3-945027-04-2 , pp. 399 .

Web links

Commons : Silver Bear  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gina Klank, Gernoth Griebsch: Encyclopedia Leipziger street names . Ed .: City Archives Leipzig. 1st edition. Verlag im Wissenschaftszentrum Leipzig, Leipzig 1995, ISBN 3-930433-09-5 , p. 213 .
  2. ↑ The house names of old Leipzig, p. 84
  3. ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Poetry and Truth . Part two, book eight (digitized version)
  4. ↑ Peter Schwarz: The millennial Leipzig . From the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century. 1st edition. tape 2 . Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2014, ISBN 978-3-945027-05-9 , pp. 76 .
  5. ↑ Sebastian Ringel : How Leipzig's inner city has disappeared. Leipzig 2018, ISBN 978-3-948049-00-3 , p. 56

Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 16.7 ″  N , 12 ° 22 ′ 38.7 ″  E