City Hall (Bonn)

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The former Bonn city hall
Remains of the bank reinforcement and the stone railing
City hall in front of the banks of the Rhine, postcard (1912)

The town hall was an event building in the Bonn district of Gronau , which was built from 1899 to 1901 and blown up in 1953 after being destroyed in the Second World War . It was located directly on the banks of the Rhine in the area of ​​today's Rheinaue leisure park .

history

The town hall was built according to a design by the town 's building authority under the direction of town builder Rudolf Schultze (1854–1935) in the so-called Gronau on the then largely undeveloped southern edge of the town. The inauguration took place on May 8, 1901. It included the largest hall in Bonn at the time and was designed for all kinds of social events - including concerts, theater performances, exhibitions and carnival celebrations. A business enterprise was also attached to it. Due to its appearance and function, Kaiser Wilhelm II coined the name “beer church” for the building, which also became popular . From September 1906 the town hall was the terminus of a newly opened tram route .

After French troops marched into Bonn from February 1920 in the course of the Allied occupation of the Rhineland , the town hall was one of the mass quarters in which around 5,500 crew members were housed. In 1925/26 a sports and public park was created in the Gronau, which included the Gronaustadion and other play and sports facilities. The town hall was also included in the sports park and from then on took up indoor sports and water sports clubs, for which boat sheds were built on the Rhine side of the building.

At the end of the Second World War , the town hall was destroyed on October 18, 1944 in the Allied air war in the most devastating of the bombing raids on Bonn, except for the surrounding walls. In 1953 the ruins were mostly blown up, and in 1962 their last remains were also removed. The Gronau was also considered for the construction of a new town hall, but it was built as a Beethoven Hall at the height of the city center. The site of the former town hall is on the edge of the Rheinaue leisure park, which was established in the 1970s. It serves as a parking lot. All that remains of the building are the fortification of the embankment and a stone railing facing the Rhine .

architecture

The town hall was designed in the German Renaissance style and made of red brick with sand or tuff stones. It offered space for more than 3,000 visitors. The main hall with attached orchestra or stage room and gallery was barrel-vaulted and had a length of 40 m, a width of 23 m and a height of 18 m. On the Rhine side of the building there was a spacious terrace from which the view of the Siebengebirge was exposed.

Web links

Commons : Stadthalle  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Edith Ennen, Dietrich Höroldt: From Roman fort to federal capital: a short history of the city of Bonn , Stollfuss, 1985, p. 259.
  2. ^ Karl Gutzmer , Max Braubach (Ed.): Chronik der Stadt Bonn , Chronik Verlag, 1988, p. 144.
  3. ↑ Jens Klocksin: Separatists in the Rhineland: 70 years after the battle in the Siebenbirge: a review , Pahl-Rugenstein, 1993, p. 10.
  4. ↑ Chronicle: 100 Years Bonner Ruder-Verein ( Memento from January 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) . In: Heimat- und Geschichtsverein, Stadtarchiv Bonn (Ed.) Bonner Geschichtsblätter , Volume 33 (1981), Bonn 1982
  5. ↑ a b War fates of German architecture. Loss - damage - reconstruction. Documentation for the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany. Volume 1: Nord , Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1988, ISBN 3-529-02685-9 , p. 382.
  6. ^ Jörg Rüter: Town halls in the Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin: a social architectural achievement of the post-war period . In: Europäische Hochschulschriften , Volume 18, P. Lang, 1996, p. 91.

Coordinates: 50 ° 43 ′ 2.5 ″  N , 7 ° 8 ′ 0.3 ″  E