Stone House (Frankfurt am Main)
The Steinerne Haus , also called Haus Bornfleck in older literature , is a historic building in the old town of Frankfurt am Main . It is facing the market (house address: Markt 44 ), which connects the cathedral with the Römerberg . It stands out from other buildings in the old town primarily due to its medieval architecture and its very long, well-documented history.
During the Second World War , the stone house was almost completely destroyed by explosive bombs in the air raids on Frankfurt am Main in March 1944 . Nevertheless, it was reconstructed in the early 1960s as one of only a few monuments in Frankfurt that was relatively true to the original at great expense, which makes it stand out from the rather simple post-war buildings in its vicinity. Today the house houses the Frankfurter Kunstverein .
history
Prehistory (Roman times until 1460)
Excavations in the old town in 1906 and in the 50s of the 20th century showed that the area on which the Stone House stands was built on in Roman times. Under the massive cellars of the building, which was built around 1000 years later, strong remains of the wall were found, which the archaeologists assigned to a former estate. Furthermore, roof tiles and slates from the same period were found. At this time, a tributary of the Main, the Braubach , flowed north of the site above ground , roughly along the current course of the street of the same name. The area south of it was therefore strategically and economically important. On the one hand, it protected it as a natural border, on the other hand, the proximity to the river enabled those who settle there to have quick access to the important resource water.
The oldest written evidence in the form of documents, which prove ownership, date back to the stone house and its predecessor buildings in the late 13th century. A large part of these sources was lost in the last world war, but fortunately they could still be evaluated by older research, especially by Johann Georg Battonn and Rudolf Jung, in order to draw a detailed picture of the house's history.
According to this, in the second half of the 13th century there were two narrow half-timbered houses on the later parcel of the stone house , the left or western house called the Rauchfaß , the right or eastern house called Bornfleck . The back of both bumped into the Braubach, which served as a city moat, and the front was oriented towards the market . Etymologically, the house name Bornfleck allows the conclusion that there was previously a well - in old German Born - was located there. In 1280 a Konrad Bornfleck was first documented as the owner of the house, who died in 1306 at the latest. Not only his mention as a lay judge in a document from 1291 shows that he was probably an important person. The then Archbishop of Mainz , Gerhard II , also called him his dear landlord in Frankfurt . His wife Hedwig was a daughter of Gypel von Holzhausen , one of the most important families of the Frankfurt city patrimony . This suggests that her husband was in the highest circles of Frankfurt social life at the time.
When Frankfurt was confirmed as the electoral site of the German emperors by the Golden Bull in 1356 , the market was nicknamed the coronation path or via regia because the newly elected emperor went to the Römer through it to receive homage from the people and the city council. This increased the importance of the street considerably in the following centuries and made the adjacent parcels a preferred place to live as well as building land for the aristocracy and the affluent urban bourgeoisie.
Four years later there is the next documentary mention of the said site, according to which in 1360 the children of Kulmann Weiß von Limpurg owned the Bornfleck house and the neighboring house zum Rauchfaß . The latter was first mentioned in a document in 1320 as the surname of its owner at the time, Konrad , who probably sold it to the children of the aforementioned family in the 1950s. In 1362 they made a division by erecting a wall between the buildings that reached as far as the city moat. House Bornfleck came into the possession of Alheid , the widow of Gypel Knoblauch , while House Rauchfaß became the property of the other children of Kulmann Weiß von Limpurg. In 1374 she sold the Bornfleck house for 1,600 guilders, and a little later also the Rauchfaß house to Albeid's son-in-law Peter Apothecker . From his family, the Bornfleck house passed into the possession of the Ergersheim in 1410 .
Date of origin and the Melem dynasty (1460 to 1708)
In the middle of the 15th century, the rich clothes dealer Johann Dorfelder from Mainz, whose daughters were married to Klas von Rücklingen and Johann von Melem , bought Haus Bornfleck. On January 4, 1462, Katharina , widow of the von Rücklingen class and wife of Georg Breidenbach , sold the building to her brother-in-law and sister Johann and Gredgen von Melem . On April 21, 1464, the new owners also acquired Haus Rauchfaß from Johann Apothecker .
The Melem couple used the fact that both buildings were now in one hand again to demolish them in October 1464 in order to merge both parcels into a new building. The events more than half a millennium ago can be learned with great accuracy from the Lersner Chronicle :
- 1464. On the Saturday day next before St. Galli day [d. H. Saturday, October 13] Johann von Melem builds that Hauß zum Bornflecken on the Haber-Marckt; The first stone was laid by his son Johann von Melem [the younger] and placed the stone for three Alturnes or Turonos for the Werck people to drink. This happened at the place against the smithy at 1 o'clock in the afternoon.
Although Lersner's chronicle is viewed critically by modern historical research, in this case an entry in the church book of the St. Nicolaus Chapel confirms the information as far as possible:
- Item anno 1464 the huss called zum Bornflecken was broken off and then buwet with steynen and muwern nuwe and the same huss is located under the kremen [note: Krämergasse, medieval name for the market] to the alden Guldenschaffe and Kursener louben.
The newly created building towered over the surrounding rooftop landscape for almost 500 years until the old town fell victim to the Second World War in 1944. In addition to the stone house itself, a courtyard complex consisting essentially of two-storey half-timbered houses was built to the north. It served both the domestic staff of the respective owners as a residence and as an accommodation option for guests at the Frankfurt trade fair or for coronation ceremonies. The complex with its undoubtedly significant buildings from the first half of the 15th century was preserved until the beginning of the 20th century and was only closed when Braubachstraße broke through .
The client, Johann von Melem, wasn't born in Frankfurt, but came from Cologne . After he had married Johann Dorfelder's daughter as a wholesale merchant in 1454 , he was granted citizenship in Frankfurt two years later as the first member of his family. The Melemsche Handelsgesellschaft founded by him soon became one of the most important companies of the late Middle Ages in Frankfurt and Johann one of the richest citizens of the city. The influences from the Lower Rhine, which can be derived from Melem's external origin, are also reflected in the architecture of its building, for which reference is made to the architectural section of the article.
After Johann's death on March 20, 1484, he was followed in the same year by his son of the same name, Johann von Melem the Younger - who laid the first stone of the stone house - in the management of the trading company (see picture). In addition to the business, he was active, unlike his father, also in the administration of the city. His career there already marked the development of his descendants, who were increasingly able to live off the family's wealth and vast estates and who could devote themselves to politics instead of primarily working as merchants: in 1486 he was accepted into the patrician society Zum Frauenstein , and in 1511 up to after his death in 1529 he was a member of the city council and in 1516 was even the junior mayor.
The stone house remained in the family for generations to come. Ogier von Melem , the son of Johann von Melem the Younger, was accepted into the old Limpurg patrician society in 1522 after his marriage to Brun von Brunfels . With this, the Melem family had established themselves in the top social ranks of the city just 60 years after their arrival in Frankfurt. Ogier, who died in 1575, and his son of the same name, who died in 1611, put a heavy mortgage on the house. In 1607 the latter Ogier von Melem sold the half of the house belonging to him for 2,040 guilders to the guardian of Juliane Margarete Steffan , who married Johann Philipp Weiß von Limpurg in 1610 . The other half was already in the possession of Fraulein Steffan, who was the granddaughter of one of Ogier's sister.
In 1642 Johann Philipp Weiß handed the house over to his son-in-law Johann Hektor von Holzhausen for an annual payment of 250 guilders. After the death of his father-in-law in 1644, the house became his property. His son Johann Maximilian followed him as owner . With his death in 1708 the era ended in which the stone house had passed into the possession of the next generation solely through family ties. Almost 50 years earlier, the Melem family had died out with Philipp Ludwig von Melem when he died in 1654 as the Frankfurt ambassador at the Reichstag in Regensburg .
From inheritance to town ownership (1708 to 1898)
In 1708 the six remaining heirs founded a ganerbschaft . Among them were some outstanding families of the city: Maria Sibylla Ruland , a née Glauburg , Anna Sibylla von Holzhausen , a née von Lersner , Johann Philipp von Stalburg as well as Johann Hieronymus and Justinian von Holzhausen .
As evidenced by its last owner from the Holzhausen family, the company relied primarily on renting the building to middle-class families as a source of income and no longer used it as a residence itself. Among the countless tenants who stayed in the stone house over the next two centuries, one from the 18th century deserves special mention: around 1750, the French painting and drawing teacher Roland moved an art school into the building that was different from other schools of this type took off through an exceptionally free style of teaching. Goethe's sister Cornelia is likely to be one of the most well-known traceable pupils of the institution.
When letting became more and more difficult at the beginning of the 19th century due to the increasing loss of importance of the old town, the Ganerbe also allowed the tenants to independently assign free rooms to other subtenants. The main reasons for the loss of importance were two developments: as a result of the French occupation, the blockade of trade with England and the beginning of industrialization, the classic trade fair business was reduced to an economically meaningless fair within a few decades. On the other hand, with the fall of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in 1806, the imperial coronations and related celebrations came to a sudden end. The economic effects for homeowners in the old center of the city can be proven by the tax books of the time: in the time of Johann Hektor von Holzhausen, the permanent rents brought in 172 guilders 30 kreuzers, but the renting to non-Messers brought in 325 guilders. This means that the trade fair alone accounted for almost 2/3 of the building's income. The leasing at the time when the imperial coronations only took place infrequently should not be underestimated: in the 18th century, for example, the gan heirs explicitly reserved the right to close the front rooms with their many windows, which offered an excellent view of the market, in all rental contracts To award times of imperial coronations to well-paying onlookers.
Despite all this, the building served as a meeting place for the conservative faction of the Frankfurt National Assembly, which met in the nearby Paulskirche , in 1848 and 1849 . Under Joseph von Radowitz , the ultramontanes , as they were called at the time , met regularly to discuss church and school issues; the best known of them were probably Ignaz von Döllinger , August Reichensperger and Beda Weber .
By the second third of the 19th century at the latest, when the Wilhelminian building boom set in at the gates of the city, the Stone House, along with the rest of the old town, also began to deteriorate and suffered greater damage to its external (see picture) and internal architectural decoration . This had remained essentially unchanged from the 15th century up to this point. In view of the simultaneous breakthroughs in streets in the old town and the demolition of medieval buildings, some of which were of great historical value, the Frankfurt headquarters of the Melems was at risk like never before.
From city ownership to World War II (1898 to 1944)
Since the 1880s, the city of Frankfurt began to buy up important civil buildings in the old town and to extensively restore them in order to protect them from further decay and to preserve them as architectural monuments. Examples of this are the Haus zur Goldenen Waage (bought in 1898, restored in 1899, destroyed in 1944) or the Big and Little Angel (bought and restored in 1906, destroyed in 1944, reconstructed in 1982).
In 1898, the city also acquired the Stone House, which was one of the last remaining Gothic stone buildings in the city alongside the Fürsteneck and the canvas house . 250,000 Reichsmarks were paid for the inheritance, which to date had essentially survived despite slightly different family shares. The underlying monument preservation intentions can be seen in the justification of the city council for the purchase:
- The city must attach great importance to acquiring a building, which is of such outstanding importance for the architectural history of Frankfurt, in its own possession and thereby prevent such a monument from being gradually neglected or even destroyed.
The fact that this did not apply to all buildings in Frankfurt's old town was shown by the construction of Braubachstrasse between 1904 and 1906, to which well over a hundred, including numerous half-timbered houses from the Middle Ages, fell victim. This included the entire backyard buildings of the stone house as early as 1904, although the wound was immediately closed again with a historicizing building facing Braubachstrasse. This was designed from the start as an upscale restaurant and, with its neo-Gothic shapes, was based on the style of its counterpart located on the market.
Only a few years later, at the suggestion of artists, the city left the building to the Frankfurter Künstlergesellschaft , for whom it had often been a meeting place in the decades before. In order to acquire the financial means for a fundamental renovation, the artist society organized an old town festival on April 6, 7 and 8, 1905 in the festival rooms of the Römer. The idea behind the festival was to revive life and goings-on in the days of a medieval imperial coronation in Frankfurt for three days. In retrospect, the campaign can be described as a success, as the net profit amounted to 60,000 Reichsmarks.
In the following time the stone house was extensively renovated according to the plans of the building council von Hoven according to its architectural significance; Among other things, non-stylistic fixtures were removed, valuable parts of the building exposed and modern lighting and modern cloakrooms and toilets were installed . The inauguration ceremony of the artist society took place on January 19, 1907 after the construction work was completed. With exhibitions and publications, the house quickly made a name for itself again beyond the city limits. As a comparison of the exterior photographs of the building shows, the original Gothic exterior and the building decorations were partially reconstructed in the following years; in particular the crenellated wreath walled up in 1842 and the canopy of the statue of the Madonna on the southwest corner of the house, which was broken off in 1872 , soon showed their original appearance (see picture).
Second World War, Reconstruction and the Present (1944 to the present day)
During the Second World War, the building burned down completely in an air raid on March 22, 1944, which also left the rest of the old town in ruins. Due to the massive construction, the outer walls were initially well preserved. Two days later, on March 24, 1944, it was hit by an explosive bomb , which tore down the entire facade due to the lack of internal statics . From an art historical point of view, the loss of the entire interior from the Gothic era is extremely painful. As if by a miracle, the Gothic vault with the stone coats of arms of the Melem couple in the gateway on the ground floor as well as the historic building on Braubachstrasse have been preserved almost undamaged.
Although the ruins of the rest of the old town had been cleared away at the beginning of the 1950s and soon replaced by functional buildings in the style of the time, the Stone House was spared this fate. From 1959 to 1962 it was rebuilt at an unusually high cost of 2.4 million DM (today, around 4 million euros). In contrast to many other reconstruction projects, they were very much based on the original; At that time, the Stone House, together with the Goethe House, was the only civil building in the old town to be reconstructed. However, the reconstruction was limited to the external appearance, the interiors were built in the functional forms of the time and then made available again to the art association. Furthermore, the building received a modern extension on the east side in order to enlarge its usable area and to ensure accessibility . On November 8, 1962, the reconstructed Stone House was inaugurated with an Edvard Munch exhibition and since then has once again served its old purpose with exhibition rooms as one of the centers of art in Frankfurt. The northern part of the building on Braubachstrasse was soon used again as a restaurant and, after minor war damage was repaired, it has remained unchanged, both internally and externally.
As part of the Dom-Römer project , the historically important streets Markt and Hinter dem Lämmchen with their small-scale buildings, some of which have been reconstructed according to historical models, were built from 2013 to 2018 to the south and east of the Stone House . As part of the project, the Frankfurter Kunstverein added a second entrance to the modern extension, which opens to the east to the Gasse Hinter dem Lämmchen . In September 2018, the outdoor sculpture The Great Illusion by the artist duo Wolfgang Winter and Berthold Hörbelt was installed on the facade of the extension . The new entrance, together with the sculpture, forms a line of sight from the chicken market through the alley behind the Lämmchen, with a striking contrast between the modern and the reconstructed architecture.
architecture
General
The stone house is the last remaining civil secular building of its type in Frankfurt, of which there were around twenty in the Middle Ages in the area of today's old town. Only a few of these Gothic stone buildings, but all the more important such as the Große Braunfels or the Fürsteneck , survived into the 20th century, but they all fell victim to the bombs of the Second World War. The same happened to the canvas house , which was only rebuilt in the 80s and is architecturally very close to the stone house. However, since its construction in 1399, it has been part of the public secular building.
The stone house is hardly medieval in the conservation sense: although - apart from the facade - the outer walls have largely been preserved, most of them had to be removed during the reconstruction. On the one hand, the immense heat of the firestorm had weakened the plaster, as Fried Lübbecke had feared and reported in 1944. On the other hand, the ruin was exposed to wind and weather for a long time uncovered, so that moisture could penetrate the masonry.
Thus, apart from the preserved vaults on the ground floor and small parts of the outer walls, the stone house today consists largely of building materials from the 1950s. The interior has also changed as much in the slightly more than 15 years between the destruction in 1944 and the completion of the reconstruction in 1962 than in the more than 500 years before.
Exterior
general description
The massive outer walls of the building cover an almost square plot of land, which was enormous by medieval standards, about 15 meters wide and 20 meters deep (see pictures and Ravenstein plan). With an obtuse angle to the southeast corner, it still shows the original floor plan of the Bornfleck house, which was demolished in 1464 in favor of the stone house. The resulting asymmetry of the floor plan was skilfully compensated by the medieval builder with a cornice which - at first sight strange - is only located on the south-eastern corner of the house between the ground floor and the first floor. Only the masonry on the first floor follows the asymmetrical floor plan up to the cornice, the floors above are straight.
The facade facing the market is divided vertically into five axes in the area of the ground floor by a large ogival gate with two round arches each on the left and right. The horizontal structure can also be seen from the outside: with the ground floor, the house has three floors, with the first and second being separated from each other by a strong cornice. A low mezzanine, the so-called bobsleigh floor, also connects to the ground floor . This construction is characteristic of the Frankfurt houses of the Middle Ages; the mezzanine served as a storage room, while the goods for sale were stacked on the ground floor during trade fairs .
In the area of the bob pavement there is a stone carving with the coat of arms of the Melem family above the pointed arched gate, left and right a small pair of rectangular windows above each round arch. The floors adjoining it are pierced with numerous cross- storey windows, which were enormously large for the time of construction , which are, however, irregularly distributed over the front.
The first floor shows a group of four equally distributed windows next to a group of three equally distributed windows that differ both in terms of construction material and in their profile. The first group is - unlike the other windows on the house - made of red Main sandstone and again framed by separate profile strips; the second group, like all other windows in the house, is made of basalt and does not have any additional profile strips. Separated by a strong horizontal cornice over the entire facade, the second floor has similar proportions; Here there is a very narrow window on the far left, an adjoining group of three windows of the same size, a large open space, now a single window of the same size as the previous group, and then on the right again a very narrow one, so to speak half a window Cross-frame window.
Around the steep hipped roof adjoining the second floor there is a walk-on battlement with a crenellated wreath , which - but only on the street front - ends in two-storey overhanging corner towers crowned by crenellations. A three-pass frieze runs under the battlements as a classic Gothic design element . The hipped roof itself has another four attic storeys, into which some light falls through small dormers .
The asymmetrical distribution of the windows has repeatedly led to speculation in the literature about the extent to which this may reflect the structural situation of 1464, when the stone house was built on the parcels of two previously independent houses. Further evidence that the Stone House, as we know it today, was possibly built in two autonomous construction phases, is believed to be seen in the fact that historical documents of the time only refer to the Bornfleck house, but not the Rauchfaß house. In fact, a comparison of plans that show the old room layout (see pictures) is sufficient to prove with the greatest possible certainty that the window spacings result solely from the original interior spatial structure.
The Madonna at the Stone House
On the south-western corner of the house, at the level of the first floor, there has been a Madonna figure since the building was constructed . An old legend describes how it came about:
As was customary in the Middle Ages, Johann von Melem wanted to have a Madonna attached to the side of his new house facing the Römerberg. He hired a young Frankfurt stonemason named Andreas to do this work. Andreas had been touring Italy after his apprenticeship. Now he came back to his hometown with a recommendation from his Italian trading partner Melems. He was assigned a workshop in the house, where he worked on his work day and night.
One evening he stepped outside the door of his workshop and saw Ursula behind a window, Johann von Melem's younger daughter, who had been his playmate in his youth. Ursula recognized him at once too. The two fell in love, but soon realized that a connection between the craftsman and the patrician daughter was hopeless.
Soon afterwards a Cologne merchant's son asked Johann von Melem for Ursula's hand, and he agreed. Melem set the date of the wedding and asked Andreas to finish the Madonna figure by then.
Shortly before the wedding, Ursula and her parents passed the workshop one morning. The door was ajar, the workshop tidied up and abandoned. In the middle stood the Madonna with the child; she had Ursula's features. Andreas had left the city the night before, never to return, so that someone else had to finish the canopy. According to legend, Ursula asked her father to cancel the planned wedding in order to stay single.
In fact, the surviving Melems family book tells us that Ursula married the Frankfurt patrician Walter Schwarzenberg and, after his death, Bernhard Rohrbach . Ursula's older sister Katharina was married to the patrician Jakob Heller .
The Madonna that can be seen today is a copy of the original, which was also badly damaged by the effects of the war and is only preserved in fragments in the Historical Museum. The canopy that can be seen today is also only a moderate substitute for the original, which with its masterfully crafted pinnacles, the same again adorned with finials , was an important work of medieval stone carving. However, it was canceled as early as 1872 following complaints from some market women, because after more than 400 years it was disintegrating into its components and these threatened to topple onto the street. Some fragments could still be saved and used for its restoration at the beginning of the 20th century.
This restored canopy then shared the fate of the Madonna under it and was replaced during the reconstruction by the much simpler variant that can be seen today. A reconstruction of the original condition seems at least possible in view of the good documentation.
References to architecture on the Middle Rhine
Some of the aforementioned properties of the stone house - such as the mezzanine floor, which otherwise only appeared on the half-timbered building in Frankfurt, but in particular the separation of the floors by a cornice, the sometimes over-rich profiling of the window walls and the type of half cross-frame windows used - are different in Frankfurt , of course no longer preserved stone buildings of the Middle Ages not detectable.
For the year 1461 the Gothic house Saaleck (address: Under Taschenmacher 15-17 , see picture) Johann von Melem can be proven as the owner. Apart from the fact that it is made of ashlar, the building has all of the special features mentioned above, which are repeated in the Stone House, which was built three years later. So there is no question that the builder of the Stone House brought these Middle Rhine, especially Cologne influences with him to Frankfurt. However, as practically always in old Frankfurt, they have remained an import and have not found any imitators in the local architecture.
The fact that the Cologne building also has a house Madonna, whose prominent niche on the corner of the house is adorned with elaborate, fully sculptural jewelry, is not clearly verifiable as an influence from the Middle Rhine, but it is striking.
Haus Saaleck suffered the same fate as the Steinerne Haus and was largely destroyed by fire bombs on May 31, 1942 . However, the reconstruction was carried out until 1957 using the original structure as much as possible, so that the building, apart from minor changes in the area of the ground floor, is presented in its original form and can serve as an example of this interesting architectural context from the late Gothic period .
Interior (1464 to 1944)
ground floor
Behind the ogival gate in the middle of the facade stretched a passage that led straight out on the north side through a similar ogival gate. Up until the Braubachstrasse was built at the beginning of the 20th century, there was an associated courtyard with buildings for domestic workers and trade fair guests since the Stone House was built. It can therefore be assumed that the passage was used to enable horse-drawn vehicles to drive directly into that courtyard in order to distribute the goods directly to the courtyard. This assumption is supported by the fact that on the north side of the roof of the stone house facing the courtyard there was a dwelling with a cable winch, with which the goods of a wagon could also be loaded into the attic. It can often be seen well on pre-war pictures showing the roof landscape of the old town (see picture in the historical part) due to the enormous height of the stone house.
The back third of the passage was designed as an elaborate ribbed vault. In the middle between the two yokes of the vault, the ribs of which cut smoothly into the wall, three-dimensional angels held the heraldic shields of the couple who built it - Melems and his wife, who was born in the village . In addition, the vault was richly decorated with late Gothic crabs , whereby the virtuoso stonemason had adorned them with tiny human and animal figures (see pictures). The greatest possible protection from the weather has preserved this part of the building, which, as already mentioned, was the only one to survive the destruction of the building in 1944, from major signs of aging to this day.
At the northern end of the vault there were entrances through pointed arched doors to rooms, which were also spanned by - but simple - vaults, which presumably served as house chapels. From here exits again led to the north to the courtyard, and to the south to long-drawn-out rooms with simple furnishings, in which originally trade or measurement traffic was carried out. The fact that practically its entire south wall was opened by the arched entrances to the market, the main artery of medieval Frankfurt, underpins this. The skylights of the mezzanine, which was traditionally used to store goods, were probably brightened up sufficiently for this, at least during traditional business hours.
Interestingly, the inner walls of this area, which took up about two thirds of the entire house lot and separated the rooms to the left and right from the passage described above, were not made solid. Instead, a timber frame construction emerged : as plastered infills, the walls stretched between three sturdy stems on each side, on which, connected by curved headbands , the joists of the beamed ceiling rested. The headbands running parallel to the wall had been worked into the wall and stiffened with a bolt underneath.
On the right or east side of the house, between this room and the chapel described above, the stairwell was inserted, which led to the upper floors along a railing made of beautifully turned rods. Smaller windows in the east wall naturally lit the stairwell.
Upper floors and roof
What the upper floors had in common was that the large windows facing the market were in deep niches in the south wall. Stone seats in these niches made it possible for the residents of the house to follow both the market activity and the imperial coronations from a privileged position. The first floor of the two west-facing rooms were below the ceiling corbels one one person sitting in the nest - with animal figures Adler (see picture.), The other one out looking for foliage monkey pointing. Due to this design, there is much to suggest that at least these two rooms originally appeared as a single room and were only divided by subsequent changes (see floor plan). It is even assumed that this was the room in which the Melems received guests, as the west wall was also adorned with an extremely representative wall cupboard (see picture). Due to its age and its obviously museum quality, it is all the more regrettable that this piece of furniture was also destroyed as a result of the war.
In terms of art history, a really painful loss, however, is the fireplace that adorned the north-eastern room on the first floor (see picture). The ornamentation that can be admired on it originated without a doubt from the heyday of German sculpture. The fact that an antique motif in a Gothic version was taken up on him indicates a stonemason who remained unknown and who not only mastered his craft, but also had a high level of education. In addition, the ceiling of this room was decorated with a simple, geometric stucco ceiling , which, however, was to be understood more as an ingredient of the late Renaissance. To the west of this room was originally the kitchen, the remaining rooms on the floor were unadorned or, at the time of their documentation, could no longer be assigned to a specific purpose.
On the second floor, too, there was nothing strange except for a row of four and a half hanging arches under the ceiling of the western front corner room, the exact meaning of which remains unclear. The representative staircase ended here, a separate, purely functional staircase led to the first attic. The individual attic storeys were in turn connected to one another by simple wooden stairs, the stairs leading to the last attic storey ran parallel to the ridge , unlike the others . The small dormers in the roof on all floors, considering the height, allowed a view that was probably breathtaking by medieval standards.
Interior since 1962
As much as the reconstruction of the stone house - quite atypical for the time - tried to restore the exterior true to the original, this was not the case with the interior. On the other hand, with regard to the war damage to the interior decoration, one can basically speak of a total write-off. Any reconstruction, even of parts, would have entailed costly handicraft work, which would have increased the cost of the reconstruction, which was financed entirely from tax revenues.
Only the division of the storeys, which is already given by the facade, is based on the pre-war situation; the extent to which the exact floor height was actually restored remains unclear. On the first and second floors there are sober, light-flooded exhibition rooms in the typical style of the 1960s. Even the cafe on the ground floor facing the market is no longer reminiscent of the once rich Gothic furnishings in any detail with its large glass surfaces and unadorned concrete pillars. Behind a wall made of matt glass blocks, which limits the cafe to roughly two thirds of the building plot to the north, there is still the ribbed vault, which was the only part of the building to survive the war. It still shows the coat of arms of the Melem couple, who laid the foundation stone for the house over half a millennium ago.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Emperors and Kings in Römer. The Frankfurt City Hall and its surroundings. Verlag Josef Knecht, Frankfurt 1980, pp. 64–70
- ↑ Johann Georg Battonn: Slave Narratives Frankfurt - Volume III . Association for history and antiquity in Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main 1864, pp. 164–165
- ↑ a b c d Rudolf Jung: The stone house . In: Association for history and antiquity, association for the Historical Museum and the Numismatic Society in Frankfurt am Main (ed.): Alt-Frankfurt. Quarterly for its history and art . Volume 3, Issue 1, Frankfurt am Main 1911
- ↑ The widely-famous Freyen imperial, electoral and commercial city of Franckfurt am Main Chronica, or Ordinary Description of the City of Franckfurt Origin and recording . Self-published, Frankfurt am Main 1706
- ↑ With Turoni one after the French town Tours named currency meant. In 1266 Louis the Saint introduced the Turon silver groschen (French: gros tournois , Latin: grossus turonus ), which was distributed throughout Europe and after which the groschen of other trading cities were sometimes named in the late Middle Ages.
- ↑ a b c d e The architectural monuments of Frankfurt am Main - Volume 3, private buildings . Self-published / Völcker, Frankfurt am Main 1914, pp. 41–60
- ↑ The “Stone House” in a new guise. 30 years of the Frankfurter Kunstverein . In: Frankfurter Verkehrsverein (Ed.): Frankfurter Wochenschau . Bodet & Link, Frankfurt am Main 1937, pp. 470-471
- ↑ The Fate of War German Architecture - Loss, Damage, Reconstruction - Volume 2, South . Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1988, pp. 820-821
- ↑ The old town in Frankfurt am Main within the Hohenstaufen wall . Moritz Diesterweg publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1937, p. 49
- ↑ Frankfurt in the firestorm . Verlag Frankfurter Bücher, Frankfurt am Main 1965, pp. 168–171
- ↑ a b The community center in Frankfurt a. M. until the end of the Thirty Years War . Wasmuth, Tübingen 1959, pp. 11-47
- ↑ Hans Otto Schembs, The Madonna at the Stone House , in: Walk through the history of Frankfurt , Verlag Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-7829-0530-X
literature
- Achilles Augustus von Lersner : The far-famous Freyen imperial, electoral and commercial city of Franckfurt am Main Chronica, or Ordinary description of the city of Franckfurt origin and recording . Self-published, Frankfurt am Main 1706 ( digitized version )
- Architects & Engineers Association (Ed.): Frankfurt am Main and its buildings . [Self-published], Frankfurt am Main 1886, p. 35 ( archive.org ).
- Johann Georg Battonn : Local description of the city of Frankfurt am Main - Volume III. Association for history and antiquity in Frankfurt am Main , Frankfurt am Main 1864, pp. 164–165. ( Digitized version )
- Hartwig Beseler , Niels Gutschow: War fates of German architecture - losses, damage, reconstruction - Volume 2, south . Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1988, pp. 820-821
- Gerhard Bott: At the old market in Frankfurt. The stone house . In: Office for tourism and congresses (ed.): Frankfurt, vibrant city. Quarterly magazine for culture, business and transport . Volume 5, Issue 1, Frankfurt am Main 1960, pp. 34–35
- Georg Hartmann , Fried Lübbecke : Old Frankfurt. A legacy . Sauer and Auvermann publishing house, Glashütten 1971
- Rudolf Jung : The Stone House . In: Association for history and antiquity, association for the Historical Museum and the Numismatic Society in Frankfurt am Main (ed.): Alt-Frankfurt. Quarterly for its history and art . Volume 3, Issue 1, Frankfurt am Main 1911
- Adolf Meuer: The “Stone House” in a new guise. 30 years of the Frankfurter Kunstverein . In: Frankfurter Verkehrsverein (Ed.): Frankfurter Wochenschau . Bodet & Link, Frankfurt am Main 1937, pp. 470-471
- Hans Pehl: Emperors and Kings in the Romans. The Frankfurt City Hall and its surroundings. Verlag Josef Knecht, Frankfurt 1980, pp. 64–70, ISBN 3-7820-0455-8
- Walter Sage: The community center in Frankfurt a. M. until the end of the Thirty Years War. Wasmuth, Tübingen 1959 ( Das Deutsche Bürgerhaus 2), pp. 11–47.
- Otto Schembs : The Madonna at the stone house . In: Walk through the history of Frankfurt , Verlag Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-7829-0530-X
- Wolf-Christian Setzepfandt : Architecture Guide Frankfurt am Main / Architectural Guide . 3. Edition. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-496-01236-6 , p. 10 (German, English).
- Rudolf Jung, Julius Hülsen: The architectural monuments in Frankfurt am Main . Third volume. Private buildings. Heinrich Keller, Frankfurt am Main 1914, p. 41–60 ( digital copy [PDF]).
Web links
- The stone house. altfrankfurt.com
- The reconstruction of the stone house ( Memento from December 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Hrsg.): Stone House In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hessen
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 39 " N , 8 ° 40 ′ 58" E
