Reichenhall town fire in 1834
The town fire of Reichenhall in 1834 on the night of November 8th to 9th was the last town fire in Bad Reichenhall that did not have the suffix Bad before 1890 .
prehistory
City fires have plagued Reichenhall and its residents over the centuries. The town fires of 1196, 1265, 1353, 1415, 1424, on January 6, 1448, 1515, on December 1, 1756 and last on November 8, 1834 are documented. In 1196 the cause was an attack on the city by Archbishop Adalbert of Salzburg , a reaction to the destruction of the city of Salzburg by the Counts of Plain in 1168. In 1265 the Bishop of Olomouc incinerated the city. In 1353 and 1415 carelessness caused the city fires. In 1424 the city burned down to four houses after a fire broke out in the house of Chaplain White - a canon of St. Zeno . At that time only escape saved the clergy from the anger of the population. In 1515 arson was the cause and with the exception of the main fountain and the Hällinger or rectory, the entire city was destroyed, 200 people were killed. 1756 broke into the Pottinghütte of Clozensieders from a fire that four Saline buildings destroyed and two private homes.
After the air raid on Bad Reichenhall on April 25, 1945, there were 53 large fires, 110 medium fires and around 200 small fires in the city. The fire fighting took place over five days, but in this context - also because even the large fires were locally limited - one does not speak of a city fire.
The city fire
Emergence
On the night of November 8th to 9th, 1834, a fire broke out in the Karl-Theodor-Sudhaus at around 10:30 p.m. after burning soot had escaped and settled on the wooden roof of the brewhouse . The warning signal of the fire watch tower, which was specially built for such cases, only sounded when the roof structure was already on fire. When the bells of the Aegidikirche rang the storm at around 11 p.m. , the catastrophe could not be stopped. A strong wind from the southwest favored the fire, which immediately hit the neighboring houses, which were mostly made of wood. Shortly afterwards, other saltworks buildings were on fire, including the main fountain house and the saltworks library there. The fire safety measures of the 18th century, when town houses adjacent to the saltworks were bought up and demolished, had no effect. The saltworks personnel soon had to give up fighting the fire with the only fire engine available in order not to perish themselves in the flames. The wooden shingles on the roofs whirled through the air, spreading the fire across the city.
course
The strong wind fanned the fire further and after a short time it also affected the town houses to the northeast of the saltworks. Money and important files were moved from the main salt office to the fire-proof archive of the Salzmeierhaus and the St. Zeno Abbey, some distance from the city . Around two o'clock in the morning the tower of the Aegidikirche, from which the city tower had sounded the alarm and woke the citizens, stood in a huge pillar of fire before the dome, the belfry and the roof of the nave collapsed. The flames raged between the Gruttenstein and the northeastern Weißgerbertor. The city fire is said to have been visible as a huge sky even as far as Passau and Regensburg . From the neighboring communities and cities Salzburg , Wals , Siezenheim , Hammerau , Piding and Teisendorf zoom geschafften fire engines could do nothing more against a fire of this size. Even Achselmannstein Castle, 800 paces from the city wall , caught fire and burned down. The saltworks staff succeeded in extinguishing the fire nests on the graduation houses that stretch across the valley . Otherwise this and large parts of the parish of St. Zeno would have been destroyed by flames. The wind was already carrying burning wooden shingles from the city to St. Zeno. The fire roller ate its way further north-east in Reichenhall and left behind only rubble and ashes of the Salzmeierhaus, the grain store, the higher customs office building and the hospital. Only ten houses in Im Angerl and two in Katzenwinkel (today's Heilingbrunnerstrasse ) were spared in this area, as were the houses in the Florianiplatz area . Since the wind did not change, the saline buildings to the west of the city wall, such as the hammer forge, the buyer's saw and the firewood store with 23,000 fathoms of wood, were not affected by the fire.
damage
It was not until around 5 a.m. on November 9, 1834 that the fire slowly subsided, at which point there were still innumerable embers in the city . About three quarters of the city was in ruins, including the entire saltworks, the city administration buildings, the hospital and the schools. The St. Johannes Hospital Church also suffered damage, which was only repaired between 1876 and 1878, the St. Aegidi Church and the Brunnhaus Chapel were completely burned out. Money that the citizens had left behind had melted into large lumps of metal, the pavement had burned to lime from the great heat, manhole covers had been destroyed and the bridges over the city streams destroyed. Of the businesses there was only a baker, a butcher, a Kramer , a landlord and a brewer. Other breweries subsequently used the monastery brewery in St. Zeno and the town hall was moved to the tax collector's house outside the city.
At that time the city consisted of 302 houses with 563 families and around 2700 inhabitants. About 2500 people were called homeless after the city fire , only 24 houses were spared. The damage to all the burned down buildings was estimated at 1,014,795 guilders . These were insured with the Bavarian real estate insurance company for 391,180 guilders, of which 191,140 guilders were accounted for by the salt works. The private buildings were insured for a sum of around 59,000 guilders, around 240,000 guilders were necessary for the reconstruction of the private buildings.
Victim
Some sources speak of 13, others of 11 fatalities. Named are:
- Anna Schmid, single, 30 years old, day laborer and hostel owner , house No. 18,
- their child, 1 year old,
- Therese Eder, 86 years old, retired toll servant
- Liberat Inzinger, 78 years old, retired master cooper
- his wife, 64 years old,
- their daughter, 44 years old,
- Elisabeth Gaisreiter, 60 years old, widow of a saltworks smith,
- their daughter, 42 years old,
- their daughter, 3–4 years old,
- Elisabeth Unterlechner, 58 years old, single
- the day laborer's son Mathias Hager, 3–4 years old.
Burned on cattle:
- 12 pigs
- 24 sheep
- 10 lambs
- 2 goats
- 125 pieces of poultry.
causes
Dozens of people were heard as witnesses in the first few days after the fire. The rumor that the fire was caused by negligence and that the salt works did not fight it with enough determination did not come true. The official reason for the cause of the catastrophic extent was the old age and the deafness of the fire guard, who recognized the fire too late and did not sound the alarm in time. Nevertheless, the citizens of Reichenhall long accused the saltworks management of not fighting the fire bravely enough and of concentrating exclusively on the state-owned buildings during the extinguishing work, while other houses were deliberately sacrificed. Four days after the city fire, the apartments of salt works officials, who were temporarily housed in the former monastery buildings in St. Zeno , were set on fire by two Reichenhall merchants.
Contemporary witnesses
Above all, the main report on the operation of the royal salt works and the hammer smelter at Reichenhall in the budget year 1834/35 have come down to us . This report from December 1835, signed by a royal company official, describes the course of the fire and the attempts to extinguish it. The saltworks master mason Rudholzner wrote a letter to a relative and described his experiences of the night. He signed it with your dead godfather .
Effects
Donations and relief supplies
Donations were collected for the Reichenhall population throughout Bavaria. From Salzburg , which had provided several fire engines that night, truckloads of food, clothing and household items arrived daily . The Mayor of Reichenhall also tried to appeal to trading partners across Europe to make donations. A letter of appeal to the royal Bavarian trade consul in Gibraltar has survived .
Salt production
Since most of the salt works had been destroyed, salt production in Reichenhall was temporarily only possible to a very limited extent and was resumed in temporarily built brewing huts. The main focus was on the brine line . Just two days after the end of the fire, on November 11, 1834, Reichenhaller brine flowed through the wooden dikes again . The branch saline in Traunstein and the one in Rosenheim bore the brunt of Bavarian salt production at that time.
Reconstruction of the salt works
King Ludwig I promised a financial aid of 10,000 guilders, but made "straight lines, symmetries and axially designed main roads" a prerequisite. For this, 51 private plots had to be acquired in favor of the planned road expansion and the size of the salt works. In the course of this, much that had shaped Reichenhall for centuries was lost, including squares, houses and street names. The architecture was based on the model of baroque castles and the builder Friedrich von Gärtner was commissioned for the project favored by the king . He designed the administration building, the official staff opposite the saltworks, which is reminiscent of the execution of the State Library in Munich. The foundation stone for the new construction of the saltworks was laid in June 1838, the architect Joseph Daniel Ohlmüller and the director of the royal general mine and saltworks administration, Friedrich von Schenk , were responsible for the development plan . The last building, the brewhouse IV, was handed over to its intended use in 1851.
The building complex made of red brick , white Untersberg marble and Nagelfluhquadern is grouped symmetrically and has a central square, two inner courtyards and a street. The new , now old salt works of the city of Reichenhall consists of the main well, brine reserves, salt magazines and brewhouses. During construction, care was taken to create a generous amount of space between the individual buildings in order to prevent or at least make it more difficult for a fire to spread within the salt works. The Prussian Oberbergrat Carl Karsten described the new industrial building as the most beautiful salt works in the world .
Rebuilding the city
The reconstruction of the city was strongly influenced by the construction of the new salt works. Generous streets and squares replaced the old alleys. Parts of the city wall with gates and towers, which were damaged by the fire , were removed to make room for new buildings and streets. The houses on today's Florianiplatz have remained almost unchanged, and were again miraculously spared the fire.
Mount of Olives Chapel
Some saltworkers and bricklayers erected the Mount of Olives Chapel in the neo-Gothic - Byzantine style on the Kirchberg - as a thank you for surviving the city fire and as an intercession to avert a similar disaster in the future . A similar chapel was located outside the city walls in the area of today's Innsbrucker Straße until the beginning of the 19th century, but the saltworks administration had the building demolished in order to build the new Kufsägermühle there.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Fritz Hofmann: The years of horror in Bad Reichenhall, wdv-Verlag Mitterfelden
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Johannes Lang: History of Bad Reichenhall
- ↑ Pfisterer: Bad Reichenhall in his Bavarian history, p. 288
literature
- Johannes Lang : The downfall of the "Old Reichenhall" - The city fire in 1834 in: History of Bad Reichenhall. Ph.CW Schmidt, Neustadt / Aisch 2009, ISBN 978-3-87707-759-7 ; Pp. 558-563.
- Herbert Pfisterer: Bad Reichenhall in its Bavarian history . Motor + Touristik-Verlag, Munich, 1988; Pp. 288-291.
- Fritz Hofmann : The terrible years of Bad Reichenhall . wdv-Verlag, Mitterfelden; Pp. 17-28.
- Hubert Vogel: History of Bad Reichenhall . Published by the city of Bad Reichenhall in 1995; Druck Anton Plenk KG, Berchtesgaden; P. 75f.
- Johannes Lang: On dealing with disasters . Heimatblätter from April 25, 2015 as a supplement to the Reichenhaller Tagblatt