Municipal cattle and slaughterhouse (Dresden)
The municipal cattle and slaughterhouse (Erlweinscher Schlachthof for short) in Dresden is a listed building ensemble in the Great Ostragehege . It is located in the isolated outskirts of the Friedrichstadt district between the Elbe stream and the Friedrichstadt flood channel. The building ensemble was built in the so-called homeland security style.
prehistory
The old slaughterhouse of the city of Dresden was on the opposite side of the Elbe on Leipziger Strasse . The growing city had a steady increase in population in the 19th century and thus also in the food industry. The increasing quantities of animal products to be processed presented the previous slaughtering practice with growing and new technological and hygienic problems. Therefore, in 1873, the Dresden butchers' guild opened a central slaughterhouse and cattle market with an attached tallow melt, where a daily slaughterhouse, a weekly slaughter cattle market and occasional horse markets were made possible under professional supervision. With the start of operations at this facility, the number of slaughterings outside of this facility fell sharply. The municipality had thereupon, by enacting a local statute, legally forbidding new private slaughterhouses to arise in the Dresden city area.
In order to effectively counter the threat of epidemics and improper meat sales in the expanding German cities, there were numerous municipal technical changes and investments around 1900. In addition to the expansion of the drinking and wastewater supply, this also included the construction of municipal slaughterhouses.
The first clear signs of this new aligned communal objectives emerged at the German City Exhibition in Dresden in 1903 . As part of this exhibition, 32 German cities in the IV. Department / Group C Food Welfare showed their projects for the establishment of cattle and slaughterhouses as well as chemical investigation offices. These included projects in Augsburg , Berlin , Breslau , Chemnitz , Dresden, Düsseldorf , Frankfurt am Main , Hamburg , Königsberg , Leipzig , Mainz , Munich and Strasbourg . The size of these presentations shows the importance of such systems and the political will of the time to transfer this task to local authority.
The plan for the construction of a larger cattle and slaughterhouse under municipal supervision matured in Dresden. Under Lord Mayor Otto Beutler , the head of the structural engineering office, Hans Erlwein, was commissioned with the specific planning. Other people involved in the preparations were the head of the city council, Johannes Georg Stöckel , the councilor and clerk in the matter, City Councilor Wokurka, the chairman of the slaughterhouse committee, Mayor Hugo Richard May, and city councilors Hermann Robert Krumbiegel and Carl Schümichen .
The responsibility for the execution was in the hands of city planning officer Hans Erlwein as architect and city builder Bernhard Geißler for technical aspects.
Preparation and structure
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The construction activities began in 1906 under the direction of the young city councilor Hans Erlwein, who had worked on the planning the previous year. As early as 1902 to 1904, the city slaughterhouse was built under his direction in Bamberg , for which he received great public recognition at the site of his first professional years.
As a precondition for a safe construction, the Great Ostragehege, as an old floodplain, had to be equipped with safe building ground. The Friedrichstadt flood channel was built between 1891 and 1893 at the instigation of the city building authorities. In its western part there were ponds and, depending on the weather, two small watercourses (Schefflers Lache, Vogelheerds Lache). At its eastern end, the Weißeritz still flowed into the Elbe at this time . The flow conditions at the confluence of these two watercourses as well as the debris carried along created a fluvial embankment as an alluvial cone directly below the Weißeritz confluence, but also a constant risk of flooding. The Weisseritz was in her old underflow and before the industrial development of the Dresden West of islets and bayous accompanied. In times of high water, pools and an island-like situation formed in the Great Ostragehege, from which the colloquial name Ostra Island for the later slaughterhouse area goes back. The word "Ostra" comes from the Slavic language area and indicates " island " ( Czech ostrov , Russian остров ).
These natural starting conditions had to be changed in the run-up to the construction project so that there was a secure construction site for the slaughterhouse project. For this purpose, large parts of the large eastern enclosure were heaped up to form a terrace, and the mouth of the Weißeritz was relocated to the west in the years 1891 to 1893. This work of considerable scope was of fundamental importance because the Weißeritz was known as a tributary with "temporarily rapid flooding". In the 19th century, the state authorities commissioned extensive redesign work on the banks of the Elbe, including current regulation work, in order to improve both navigability and flood safety and to prevent silting up and silting up in the landscape near the river.
Structure of the plant
At the time of its construction, the area of the municipal cattle and slaughterhouse had a total area of 36.1 hectares. Of this, 19.2 hectares went to the cattle yard and 16.9 hectares to the slaughterhouse . In total, the complex consisted of 68 individual buildings. When it opened in 1910, this system was one of the largest of its kind in Europe. At the start of operations, cattle from northern Germany and Austria were processed in addition to domestic orders .
The functional units were:
- stockyard
- slaughterhouse
- Administration and catering
- Official slaughterhouse
- Horse and dog slaughterhouse
- Shop building with official apartments
- commercial plants (including sebum melt , incinerator, blood processing plant)
Traffic routes
The transport connection had been solved in two ways. For car traffic, the city had the slaughterhouse bridge built over the Friedrichstadt flood channel , which ended in a ramp system in front of the main entrance and thus separated the traffic in two directions (flowing left and right).
Another bridge in a westerly direction led a standard-gauge track from the area of König-Albert-Hafen , which flowed into the west side of the Ostra Island and encompassed the entire area on the north side. The unloading ramp in the slaughterhouse had a total length of 315 meters. With all the branches to side tracks, the track connection to the slaughterhouse had a length of 4,363 meters and had 21 switches, two smaller turntables , a shed for locomotives and a bridge scale .
A narrow-gauge track system with a length of 2740 meters, 64 switches and 9 crossings was available for the internal traffic of the products and waste .
stockyard
There were 3 feeding stalls for large animals and 1 feeding stalls for pigs to feed the live cattle . During the planning, care was taken to ensure that only round profiles were used in the stable areas for iron constructions on the floor so that the cattle did not suffer any injuries from abrasion.
A large hall with a length of 116.4 meters and a width of 58.3 meters existed for keeping large animals in the market. 1200 animals could be temporarily housed in it. The small cattle market hall was just as long, but 75 meters wide. 396 bays were built into it. Another hall measuring 48 × 29 meters was used to keep sheep on the market . It had a capacity for 2200 animals. In the head building of the sheep hall there were rooms for the registers of royal and municipal authorities, lounges for the cattle yard inspector, the veterinarians and other technical staff. There were two overhang stables (large cattle, small cattle) with a special enclosure for the unsalable animals. There were also stables for foreign cattle, public toilets, a small building for the porter and a gatekeeper house.
In the complex of the cattle yard there were several green storage areas, which were deliberately created as a reserve for expansion projects of the slaughterhouse.
Official slaughterhouse
This area was used by the official veterinarians for veterinary assessments and the slaughter of sick animals. The meat obtained there and the raw product recognized as sick in the large slaughterhouse was disinfected and sterilized at this point. Then it was stored in the official slaughterhouse's own cold store.
In this area there was a slaughterhouse, a stable building, administration building, cold store (88 square meters), vehicle shed as well as the tripe and a fertilizer house. The official slaughterhouse had a laboratory, examination rooms and common rooms for the veterinarians and the technical staff. There was also a milk sterilization room, a feed kitchen and separate stalls for large, small and pigs in the stalls.
The buildings of the official slaughterhouse were removed in the course of the construction of the Dresden Exhibition Center .
Horse slaughterhouse
The horse slaughterhouse took up only a small area and was set up immediately north of the official slaughterhouse. Here was a stable building, a slaughter area, the tripe and a cold store. There was a special area for dogs in this slaughterhouse. The necessary staff had their own premises.
Shop building with official apartments
With the establishment of the municipal cattle and slaughterhouse, apartments were planned for the servants, which were created in several houses on the Schlachthofring. The residential complex is loosened up with a few green areas in the courtyards at the back. On the ground floor area, several residential buildings had business premises for shops.
Main slaughterhouse
This functional area formed the main area of the entire system. The following buildings were the individual assemblies:
- Slaughterhouse for large cattle
- two slaughterhouses for cattle (76 × 26.3 meters)
- Slaughterhouse for small livestock (59.6 × 45.9 meters)
- Pig slaughterhouse
- Slaughterhouse for pigs (73.45 × 46.2 meters)
- Connection hall (186.4 × 20 meters)
- Cold store (185.8 × 50 meters)
- Tripe with manure house
- Boiler and machine house
- Workshop
- Locomotive depot
- Building for hides and sebum acceptance
- Horse and dog stable
In the buildings intended for slaughter, the walls were covered with yellow tiles up to a height of 2 meters. The floors consisted of screed or were covered with granite slabs . The floors were given a slope and drainage channels. A generous water supply made it possible to thoroughly clean the floors and walls every day. The rooms for the veterinarians, the supervisory staff and the storage of equipment were located in the head buildings of the halls. The small cattle were brought to the waiting bays (16 per long side) on the company's own narrow-gauge railway, which were built on the outside of the slaughterhouse for small cattle.
The pig slaughterhouse had 20 waiting bays. The fresh meat of each animal was examined in microscope rooms to examine for trichinae . Their capacity was designed so that around 100 spectators could be active on main battle days . There were also rooms for the veterinarians, the slaughterhouse inspector, the hall supervisor and other supervisory staff.
The slaughtered goods prepared from the halls were brought to the connecting hall by means of an elevated railway transport. Here it was decided which quantities would be immediately transported to the city on butcher carts for further use or what would be stored in the cold store.
Cold store
In the cold store there was a main cold room with a temperature of 4 ° C. The pre-cooling rooms had a temperature of 8 ° C. When it started operating, chilled meat only remained in the municipal cattle and slaughterhouse for up to 8 weeks. Individual cool boxes were intended to be rented to butcher shops. There was also a curing room with cabins that could be rented , a meat mincer for sausage production and a sales room for large butchers . The lounges and changing rooms for masters and journeymen were set up on the top floor of the cold room .
Disc cooling devices were located in the eastern part of the attic to generate the required cooling capacity . The rotating disks brought the air to be cooled into contact with salt water, which had a temperature of −15 ° C. In the circulating air process, the cooled and cleaned operating air was returned to the cold rooms by fans.
The economic development in the post-war period made a new cold store necessary for the slaughterhouse, which started operations in 1953. It was built northwest of the Erlwein complex.
Main tripe and manure house
Here the contents of the stomachs and intestines were disposed of and prepared for transport by train. The entrails of cattle, calves and sheep were scalded in the tripe. The vapors that developed intensively had to be continuously suppressed with a defog system. This was done using hot and dry air.
Boiler and machine house
In this functional area of the slaughterhouse produced its required electric power . The building is the most distinctive and widely visible part of the entire complex and consists of a generously proportioned chimney, the so-called slaughterhouse tower . Its height is about 50 meters. The renovation was not done for aesthetic reasons, but had an important technical function. The condensers for the cooling system were on the ground floor . The 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors housed the accumulators . The first floor was initially vacant and was later to accommodate a washing station.
A hot water tank (400 cubic meters) consisting of four chambers was housed on the 5th floor. The 6th and top floor was equipped with the cold water tank. A special technical feature of this tower building was that the exhaust air ducts of the accumulator rooms were placed close to the chimney in order to avoid excessive cooling for this area during the heat exchange process. For the same reason, the roof of this building was pulled very far upwards.
The pump system for the cooling machine area and steam turbine condensation was located in the basement of the tower . A high pressure pump ensures a process water supply and, in the event of a fire, an extinguishing water supply with a pressure of 7 atmospheres .
In the machine house there were steam turbine systems with an output of 675 kilowatts, with whose power the cooling system was operated. An ammonia compression system was used for cooling, the evaporator of which was also located in this building. An ice machine could produce 25,000 kilograms of ice per day. Their product was temporarily stored in an ice storage room until it was used.
In 1984 the power generation systems were supplemented by a more modern boiler house.
Operating systems
For operational safety there was a fire alarm , guard control and signaling system throughout the site . A telephone network and many clocks were also installed. There were also three electric generators in the machine house that generated the operating current. There was a main network and an emergency power supply .
A high-pressure steam heater with a converter for low-pressure operation was installed as the space heating system. It also supplied individual technical systems, such as the scalding tubs in the pig slaughterhouse.
The sewer systems were on their function in two areas separately . A day water sewer system is almost completely laid out and the weather-related surface water is disposed of via a pipeline flowing west of the Elbe. The used water from the halls, the car wash, the residential buildings and the lavatories was taken up with a waste water sewer system, cleaned in the company's own sewage treatment plant and then discharged into the Elbe.
Main entrance area
The former main entrance to the grounds of the municipal cattle and slaughterhouse is a square with various functional buildings. These include an inn with a garden, an administration building, the show office and several shops. This access is only used by today's trade fair company for transport and is not a visitor entrance . Because there is no longer a slaughterhouse here, this functional area has lost its importance.
Art and architecture
The slaughterhouse of city building officer Hans Erlwein , which consisted of 68 individual buildings, was inaugurated on August 19, 1910 after a five-year construction period. The building ensemble in the Heimatschutz style was built in the form of a settlement surrounded by a ring road . The urban highlight of the "small town" is a square that is surrounded by representative buildings such as a hotel with a restaurant, porter's house and administration building. The building complex shows an almost uniform but varied and elaborate design. The buildings have been designed as bright plastered buildings in a rural architectural style. With this, Hans Erlwein tried to give not only residential buildings, but also industrial and functional buildings a picturesque, nostalgic appearance. The result was a building style represented regionally by Erlwein in the external appearance.
The architecture of the slaughterhouse complex is characterized by numerous details in the facades and a varied roof landscape. Hans Erlwein preferred a rural style with small-scale basic structures where it was not technically necessary. The facility gave the impression of an oversized manor and was therefore sensitively integrated into the landscape of the large eastern enclosure . The overall picture lives particularly from the different roof shapes and heights. The roof landscape consists of deep red tile roofs as mansard and hipped roofs , hip or crooked hip, gables, dormers, chimneys and ventilation attachments. Most of the roofs have a hipped shape and are curved. This can be clearly seen in residential buildings.
Numerous small artistic works in the form of small sculptures by Georg Wrba , murals by August Strohriegl and ceiling and wall paintings by Paul Perks brought his buildings to life . This was intended to create a homely and culturally rich atmosphere in the residential building area.
The best known example is the bull fountain of Georg Wrba front of the former main entrance, the gatehouse at the slaughterhouse 6. Ring It consists of a conical stele from Lausitz granodiorite , a Serpentinitfigur in the form of a bull carries. Water can be dispensed into two small basins on the side. An inscription can be read on the pedestal below: The health of our beautiful city Dresden 1906 1910 . Another sculpture by the same artist is in front of the building at Schlachthofring 26, in the garden of the eastern part of the residential complex, behind the corner shop building. It is the bronze sculpture of the pig driver on the pig driver fountain. In the restaurant building at Schlachthofring 7, you can admire a painting by Paul Perks on the ceiling of the hall.
Numerous small sculptures as cartouches , individual stones or pillars can be found in the building architecture. Sometimes they are indicative, in other cases they just seem to be decorative. Often one only perceives these small works of art after closer inspection. Two mosaic friezes on buildings in the area of the former main entrance are particularly effective. A rectangular mosaic picture on the front of the old cold store shows two farmers and a cow. The other is an oval work and decorates the wall of the former municipal show office at Schlachthofring 6, which depicts a striding farmer with a sow.
The hall constructions are mainly made of reinforced concrete , which shows that Erlwein used modern construction methods of its time for this major project. In order to have optimal lighting in the slaughterhouse halls, most of the roofs were provided with generous skylight windows. In order to keep these systems in reliable operability, there were small stairwells at numerous corners of the building, which enabled easy roof access.
End of the slaughterhouse
With the settlement of new meat processing companies in the Dresden region and the new trading structures after 1990, the basic conditions for the slaughterhouse business changed. Due to this development, the facility was shut down in 1995. The most important subsequent use on this area is the Dresden Exhibition Center .
Re-uses
Part of the Dresden slaughterhouse has been used as an exhibition and trade fair area since 1999. Messe Dresden is the operator of these areas. The redesign of the slaughterhouse and some areas in the Great Ostragehege were prepared in a variety of planning and design options in an urban development and landscape conservation ideas competition in 1995. The development plan no. 78 “Schlachthofinsel”, which is relevant for the Dresden Exhibition Center, was drawn up by the Dresden City Council on April 23, 1998.
To implement these resolutions, extensive preparatory work and renovation activities were carried out in the listed complex at the end of 1998 and in 1999. Buildings in the area of the official slaughterhouse were torn down. A special measure was the gutting of the hall building from the slaughterhouse. The old support system in the halls also had to be removed because it would have been incompatible with future use in the exhibition area. As part of the architectural project Neue Messe Dresden , a new municipal exhibition and trade fair center was built for Dresden.
Some areas of the former municipal cattle and slaughterhouse remained fallow land or are now being used in a different way than the traditional purpose. With the Ostrale , a large exhibition for contemporary art takes place every year. The objectives of the landscape conservation competition results have so far only been partially implemented.
reception
The American writer Kurt Vonnegut experienced the air raids on Dresden in 1945 as a prisoner of war in the grounds of the slaughterhouse. He processed his experiences in his most popular novel, Schlachthof 5 or The Children's Crusade , published in 1969 .
literature
- Adolph Canzler / Alfred Hauschild / Ludwig Neumann: The buildings, technical and industrial plants of Dresden. Dresden (Meinhold & Sons) 1878
- Georg Dehio : Handbook of German art monuments. Dresden . Munich Berlin (Deutscher Kunstverlag) 2005. ISBN 3-422-03110-3
- Illustrated guide, German cities exhibition 1903. 3rd edition, Dresden (Wilhelm Baensch) 1903
- Hans Weyer: The new municipal cattle and slaughterhouse in Dresden . Leipzig (Carl Scholtze) 1911
- Volker Helas : Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany, monuments in Saxony, city of Dresden Friedrichstadt . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1994, ISBN 3-364-00280-0 .
- Ulrich Hübner et al .: Symbol and truthfulness. Reform architecture in Dresden. Verlag der Kunst Dresden Ingwert Paulsen jun., Husum, 2005. ISBN 3-86530-068-5
- Gilbert Lupfer, Bernhard Sterra and Martin Wörner (eds.): Architecture guide Dresden. Dietrich Reimer Verlag. Berlin 1997. ISBN 3-496-01179-3
- Walter May , Werner Pampel and Hans Konrad: Architectural Guide GDR, Dresden District . VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1979.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Canzler, Hauschild: Die Bauten , 1878, pp. 571–573
- ^ Guide, German Cities Exhibition, p. 19
- ↑ Hans Weyer: Slaughterhouse . 1911, p. 16
- ↑ a b Hans Weyer: Schlachthof, 1911, p. 1
- ↑ H. Ebert, H. Grahmann, K. Pietzsch: Explanations of the geological map of Saxony on a scale of 1:25 000. No. 66 sheet Dresden . 3rd edition, Leipzig 1934, p. 130
- ↑ Canzler, Hauschild: Die Bauten, 1878, p. 450
- ↑ H. Ebert, H. Grahmann, K. Pietzsch: Explanations of the geological map of Saxony on a scale of 1:25 000. No. 66 sheet Dresden . 3rd edition, Leipzig 1934, p. 131
- ↑ Lupfer et al., Object no. 142 (Former municipal cattle yard and slaughterhouse, Schlachthofring, 1910, Hans Erlwein)
- ↑ Hübner et al., P. 40 [Hans Erlwein (1872–1914) - Stadtbaurat in Dresden 1905–1914]
- ↑ Helas, pp. 179–192 (Schlachthofring)
- ↑ Kurt Vonnegut - This is how it works. (No longer available online.) State capital Dresden, January 7, 2013, formerly in the original ; Retrieved February 19, 2014 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 51 ° 4 ′ 12.9 ″ N , 13 ° 42 ′ 52.4 ″ E