Heilbronn Beautification Association
The Heilbronn Beautification Association was a beautification association founded in Heilbronn in 1863 . After the Blaubeuren Beautification Association founded in 1859 and the Stuttgart Beautification Association founded in 1861, it was the third association of its kind in the Kingdom of Württemberg . In addition to numerous hiking trails and shelters, the association was particularly responsible for the construction of the Schweinsberg tower, the renovation of the tower on the Wartberg and the restoration and expansion of the Köpferbrunnen system. After 1900, the main focus was on the maintenance of the existing facilities and flower decoration competitions. The association's activities ended during the National Socialist era .
history
The first impulses for the beautification of the cityscape of Heilbronn, which did not always change for the better due to industrialization , came from the urban environment beautification commission , founded on March 24, 1846 as a stock corporation , which focused on the street-like design of the alley , the filled one eastern city moat, endeavored and also created children's playgrounds. The commission was active for about five years and then came to a standstill, the remaining assets were transferred to the city administration in 1860.
Former members of the Beautification Commission then founded the during the year 1863 Beautification Association . A constituent meeting took place on February 8, 1863, the association published its provisional statutes in the Neckar newspaper . At first there were great reservations about the establishment of the association, in particular the wine growers association feared impairment of agriculture. On March 15, 1863, the Beautification Association, with 228 future members who had since been recruited, wrote down its final statutes in its first general assembly and elected its committee, the u. a. Stadtschultheiß Christian August Klett and numerous merchants and entrepreneurs also belonged. With the gardener Krauss, the committee also included a Heilbronn Wengerter , who was supposed to represent the agricultural expertise of the association and to avert the reservations of the vineyard association. The first board member of the association was merchant CB Bläß, who had already been one of the founders of the beautification commission.
The purpose of the association was to beautify the city of Heilbronn and its surroundings by creating walking paths, viewpoints and benches. The association was financed through membership fees and special collections. Since the aim was the same as the former beautification commission, an application was made to the city of Heilbronn for the payment of the remaining commission assets in the amount of 546 guilders, which the local council approved on May 15, 1863.
In the first few years of the association's existence, the financial means were only sufficient for very minor beautification measures such as planting new bushes on the avenue or creating a sidewalk on today's Frankfurter Strasse. Larger projects could initially only be encouraged in financially strong positions, such as the improvement of the farm buildings on the Wartberg at the Heilbronn municipal council and the renewal of the facing of the Deutschhof at the Württemberg Ministry of Finance. With its own funds and a municipal grant of 1,500 guilders, the association, now headed by C. Linsenmeyer, was able to renovate the Wartberg tower in 1868 , which was raised and replaced with a crenellated roof instead of an old tiled roof. In 1870 the city recognized the association as a non-profit organization and approved an annual grant of 300 guilders (from 1876 it was 1,000 marks a year, later 1,400 marks).
In 1872 the association planned to build a spa hotel at the Jägerhaus , the construction of which should have cost 27,000 guilders. However, the plans failed because of the high costs, so that the Jägerhaus only maintained the existing facilities and set up a few new benches. In the same year the construction of an observation tower on the Schweinsberg was planned , but for cost reasons only a temporary, 20 meter high pyramid-shaped wooden frame could be erected for the time being. From 1879, the Beautification Association restored the half-ruined Köpferbrunnen installation in the Heilbronn city forest and later expanded it with a stone pavilion, two bridges and benches. Particularly time-consuming, the conditioning of the topper-shore path designed by the Köpfer wells for Trappensee, who was a key link in the network of trails between the destinations in the city forest, for which, however, only for years the necessary to build the path plots in Köpfertal be acquired had. The wooden construction on the Schweinsberg had meanwhile become dilapidated and was torn down in 1883, whereupon plans were made to build a stone observation tower at that point and an architectural competition was announced. The tower construction project, which was completed in 1886, was very popular among the population, so that numerous donations were received and the association with 681 members reached its highest membership level in the year after the construction of the Schweinsberg tower.
Among the 681 members in 1887, merchants made up the largest proportion with 274, followed by 111 civil servants, 64 single women and 59 artisans. With 25 doctors and pharmacists as well as seven booksellers and music dealers, all members of these professional groups in Heilbronn at the time belonged to the association.
After the Schweinsberg Tower was built in 1886, the Beautification Association no longer pursued any major construction plans, but instead carried out numerous smaller projects. A dozen shelters were built in the city forest, numerous hiking trails were laid out, trees were planted in the city area, children's playgrounds were laid out, signposts were put up and a train stop was made at Karlstor. The maintenance of the existing systems was increasingly busy. In 1903 a flower decoration competition was announced for the first time, which became very popular in the period that followed. Chief forester Lempp was the board member from 1881 to 1901, followed in 1901 by civil engineering inspector Hoffmann, who in 1902/03 was town planning officer Keppler. Numerous dignitaries from the city sat on the committee, including Lord Mayor Paul Hegelmaier .
In 1892, at the suggestion of the police officer and committee member of the Kopp Beautification Association, the Association for the Elevation of Tourism was founded, which partly pursued the same goals as the Beautification Association and worked with it on some projects. The tourist office later emerged from it. The work of the Beautification Association gradually came to a standstill from 1933 onwards as a result of the coordination of the associations and the nationalization of tourism promotion during the Nazi period. In 1935 Lord Mayor Heinrich Valid made himself chairman of the tourist association and set up a municipal traffic office. In the future, municipal funding went mainly to the tourist office and tourist office, but no longer to the beautification association.
After the air raid on Heilbronn on December 4, 1944, the purpose of the association in the destroyed city became obsolete. During the reconstruction, only the tourist office was re-established in 1950, to which the remaining assets of the beautification club, which had been administered up to then, were transferred on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Schweinsberg Tower in 1986.
literature
- Christhard Schrenk: 125 years of Heilbronn Beautification Association . In: Swabia and Franconia. Local history supplement of the Heilbronn voice . Volume 34, No. 3, March 1988