University riding stable (Göttingen)
The university riding stable of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen was a building complex with outside area at the northwest end of the Weender Straße in Göttingen and consisted of a riding hall, an open-air riding arena, stables and a house for the stable master. The complex was completed between 1734 and 1736 on what was then known as the Freudenberg and was one of the first buildings to be rebuilt for the university that opened in 1734 and inaugurated in 1737. The architect was the master builder of the monastery, Joseph Schädeler (1692–1763), who was also responsible for the construction of the college and library building of the university and the London tavern , later the Michaelishaus.
The Hanoverian minister and first curator of the new Göttingen University, Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen , planned this explicitly as a rich university for Georg II . From his point of view, the target group were especially noble students, if possible with their own entourage. This had to z. B. Pay double the fee for non-aristocrats when riding. On the part of the new establishment, this required not only a qualified offer of respected scholars from the four classical faculties, but also the promotion of the then fashionable sports and manners . This included dancing , riding , fencing and hunting , and even the professional carving of game was taught to the students.
Göttingen, which was still marked by the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War , offered fewer prerequisites in this regard than, for example, the residential cities of small German states. On Münchhausen's initiative, the riding hall of the new university was built as one of the new buildings . It was a six-axis structure with a large central portal with a classical gable under a hipped roof. The baroque structure was made of quarry stone and edged with stone at the corners. The window reveals were also made of stone. The university riding stables in Göttingen were particularly well-respected during the Rococo period for the high school of riding practiced here in Germany and thus represented a clear unique selling point compared to other German university cities.
The best in the industry were hired as riding instructors, starting with Valentin Trichter (who failed to organize the ceremonial entry to the university opening) and continued with father and son Ayer. When Goethe came to Göttingen, he absolutely had to take riding lessons from Ayer (and discuss with the Brothers Grimm). The salaries of the university riding instructors corresponded to those of the professors. At the ceremonial opening of the semester they went after the full professors, but before the associate professors, which regularly caused trouble because they only moved in with the lecturers and language teachers at other universities. To prevent a job in the riding stable of the King of Saxony, Ayer's salary was doubled, but the King of Prussia then offered another double salary, so that he then went to Potsdam. In Ayer's day, five percent of the student body had enrolled in ars equitandi , although it was not actually a subject. Ayer also held the first equine medicine lectures (Europe), the beginning of the veterinary institute of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen .
In the second half of the 19th century, dressage riding took a back seat among students compared to hunting riding due to fashion. The connection of Göttingen to the railway network in 1854 also meant that fewer students kept horses in Göttingen. At the same time, the importance of student fencing increased around the middle of the 19th century with the move away from pure duels towards determination censorship, and the demand for pau floors for holding fencing lessons rose rapidly. So the conversion of the riding arena into a fencing hall was considered, but ultimately not implemented. Rather, the university opened a specially built fencing hall in Geiststrasse 6 in 1903, where the university's fencing masters gave their lessons from then on.
During the First World War, the university came to an almost complete standstill, and with the students the need for this facility dwindled. The area of the Reitstallviertel was already in the focus of Göttingen's urban planning before the Second World War. After the Second World War, the riding stable was used for vaulting , which was first resumed here in 1950. A show group was set up, which had the same function as that of the "Seideltruppe". The vaulters increasingly organized themselves in clubs and organized their own tournaments. The first was organized in 1953 in Göttingen at a horse show.
In 1966, the city acquired the property with the listed riding stables building against the background of plans to build a town hall, a swimming pool, adult education center, city library and a car park on the site near which the university had now built the auditorium . At the end of 1967 there were calls in the citizenship to keep the building and to convert it, for example as a student center. In the summer of 1968, the city tore down the riding stable building against massive protests from the population and the student body.
The huge natural stone portal was stored. The planning on which the demolition decision was based was never implemented. The property was initially used as a parking lot on the edge of Göttingen city center for several years. In 1974 Hertie built a department store on the property, but gave up its use again in 1986. After a few years of vacancy, the department store building was converted into a passage for smaller retail stores and has since been used in this form under the name Carrée. A major renovation took place in 2014.
The stored portal of the former university equestrian center was rebuilt in isolation in 1974 on the then new campus of the humanities center.
literature
- Katharina Klocke: 200 year old riding institute gives way to department store in: Göttinger Tageblatt of February 4, 2011, p. 11
- Arnd Krüger : The professors for riding instruction. The beginnings of the organized science of sport, in: Stadion 12/13 (1986/87), 241–252.
- Johann Friedrich Penther : Detailed instructions on civil architecture ... (third and fourth part) , Augsburg 1746
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ This register sheet, described in the literature as a comitat, is actually a solemn solicitation according to riding direction and buildings, the riding stables on Weender Strasse, i.e. the opposite. However, the sequence and formation are essentially the same.
- ↑ Göttingen City Archives: City History 1734-1866
- ↑ Göttinger Tageblatt of February 4, 2011
Coordinates: 51 ° 32 ′ 11.4 " N , 9 ° 56 ′ 3.7" E