Administration building Marktplatz 6

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South and east facade
West facade with main entrance and forecourt

The listed administration building Marktplatz 5 and 6 in Düsseldorf's old town was built from 1952 to 1956 by the city's structural engineering department under the direction and according to a design by the architect Julius Schulte-Frohlinde on the market square in the style of homeland security architecture. The house was home to the city's finance department and the city treasury . It is considered to be a trigger of the Düsseldorf architectural dispute , which ignited the person Schulte-Frohlinde and the architectural language of the building.

Location and description

The building extends over the entire area between Marktplatz and Rheinstrasse , delimited in the west by a green area between Zollstrasse and Rheinstrasse and in the east by Marktstrasse. It has arcades on the four-storey north, east and south sides , which rhythmically structure the ground floor towards the market square, Marktstrasse and Rheinstrasse. Behind the arcades of the porticos there are shop windows and entrances to various shops that enliven the ground floor. The main entrance to the administration building is on the quieter west side, which is designed as a three-storey façade. A small terrace is in front of it. This facade, which has a symmetrical design made up of eleven ashlar-framed window axes with relief fields, was oriented towards a green area that was then open to the Rhine, but which has now assumed the character of a back courtyard due to a development from 1984. The main entrance in the central axis of the facade is emphasized by a light canopy on filigree metal columns with laurel capitals. The view of this side of the building was also emphasized by an asymmetrically positioned, free-standing granite column with a sculpture of the "City Lion" by Hans Breker , an allusion to the column with the St. Mark 's Lion in the Piazzetta San Marco . In 1956, the goose fountain by the sculptor Willy Meller was built into the outer wall of Zollstrasse, where it joins the market square .

Goose fountain by Willy Meller

The building is decorated with other architectural sculptures:

  1. Relief "Elevation of Düsseldorf to the City" by Ferdinand Heseding (arcade)
  2. Relief "Gebrüder Jacobi" by Max Kratz (archway)
  3. Relief " Lorenz Cantador " by Willi Hoselmann (archway)
  4. Relief of the "market women" by Jupp Rübsam (archway)
  5. Relief of the "Martinskinder" by Ferdinand Heseding (archway)
  6. Sculpture "the poor and the rich" by Max Kratz (door handle)
  7. Reliefs "Tailors", "Drinking", "Farmers", "Bricklayer", "Architects and Artists" and "Fishermen" by Max Kratz (facade)

history

The architect Julius Schulte-Frohlinde was a representative of the traditionalist architecture of the early post-war period in Düsseldorf, which can be assigned to homeland security architecture . Schulte-Frohlinde was appointed to Düsseldorf by Friedrich Tamms , where he headed the structural engineering department from 1952. He was known to him from the workforce commissioned by Adolf Hitler in 1943 for the reconstruction of cities destroyed by bombs. Schulte-Frohlinde had previously been the head of the construction department of the German Labor Front .

He had received the order from Tamms to design the new administration building in such a way that the historical character of the market square was preserved. Schulte-Frohlinde met this conservation concern by opting for a brick building with a hipped roof and arcades in granite stone. The construction was intended as the first stage of a new town hall building on the banks of the Rhine. The urban layout of the building was based on plans to expand the town hall from the 1920s, in particular Karl Wach's competition entry from 1924, as well as the 1952 reorganization plan developed under the direction of Tamms . Schulte-Frohlinde's controversial design, which envisaged the construction of the new building in two construction phases and a main entrance on the Rhine side with a representative forecourt, sparked the Düsseldorf architectural dispute in 1952 , with the accusation that the building was reminiscent of the “now obsolete architecture in the Third Reich ". This later established the monument value of the building and the subsequent entry in the city's list of monuments .

The Hamburg magazine Der Spiegel thought the excitement about the building was worth an article. It joined the critics in pithy words:

"The design, which is fatally reminiscent of the long-overcome architecture of the 'greatest master builder of all time', thus denies all the achievements of modern architecture that uses a lot of glass, concrete and steel and corresponds in style to the large German barracks."

- Town hall with Figürkes , Der Spiegel 44/1952 of October 29, 1952

At the beginning of 2012, the city of Düsseldorf decided that the building would have to be comprehensively renovated, in particular due to the inadequate electrical wiring and inadequate fire protection. In addition, the building should be energetically renovated and u. a. get new windows.

Historical development

Development of the market square with gabled town houses on a historical photo (before 1909) - right, on the front of the square with the “Rathaus-Apotheke”, the current location of the administration building Marktplatz 6
Market square from above with individual buildings, around 1909

The entire property of today's administration building was built on with individual buildings until the destruction in World War II and the new building that followed. These houses were located in the south of the market square and on the west side, Marktstrasse. The forerunners of these buildings were originally laid out after the first city expansion in the 14th century. Bars were operated in almost all houses from time to time. Some of their names, including those of their owners, have been handed down.

Building names are available for the following houses: On the south side of the market square, No. 3 was called Zum heiligen Nepomuk , No. 5 was called To the three imperial crowns . No. 7 had several names, first to the golden bell , later to the white horse , then in the 18th century for a long time the sun pharmacy . Its owners were among others the court pharmacists Schrott from 1730, Stipelin from 1738 and his successor Heimbach. House no. 6 was a particularly stately house, owned by several noble families and other high-ranking people over the centuries. Around 1744 a coffee house was also operated here for some time . At the end of the 19th century, the house with several buildings on Rheinstrasse was demolished and Leussing's fish hall was built for it. This hall could be entered from the market square as well as from the Rheinstrasse, as it was designed as a passage.

On the west side of the market square (Marktstrasse) house names have been handed down for the house numbers 3, 5, 7, 9, 13 and 15, the corner house on Rheinstrasse, in the same order: The golden rose , the white feather , the Klevian coat of arms , the golden one Stern , To the White Horn and To the Big Stockfish . For house at Marktstrasse 11 it is recorded that the philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was born there on January 25, 1743 .

literature

  • Georg Ebbing: Continuities: Municipal Administration Building , Düsseldorf, Marktplatz 6, 1952–1956 . In: Sonja Hnilica, Marcus Jager, Wolfgang Sonne (eds.): At second glance: architecture of the post-war period in North Rhine-Westphalia . transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2010, ISBN 978-3-8376-1482-4 , p. 141.
  • Jörg AE Heimeshoff : Listed houses in Düsseldorf, with garden and ground monuments. Nobel, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-922785-68-9 , p. 178.
  • Jörg AE Heimeshoff: Architecture of the fifties of the 20th century in Düsseldorf. (= Rheinische Kunststätten , issue 360) Neuss 1990, ISBN 3-88094-671-X , p. 19 f.
  • Friedrich Tamms : The Düsseldorf town hall projects since 1900 . Düsseldorf 1953, p. 15.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ State capital Düsseldorf: Combing
  2. ^ State capital Düsseldorf: City treasury
  3. ↑ Georg Ebbing, pp. 141, 145
  4. ^ Jörg AE Heimeshoff : Listed houses in Düsseldorf, with garden and ground monuments. Nobel, Essen 2001, p. 178
  5. ^ Westdeutsche Zeitung: City Treasury: Building is cleared . Düsseldorfer Nachrichten of January 6, 2012. p. 15.
  6. ↑ H. Ferber; in: Historical walk through the old city of Düsseldorf , 1889, Verlag C. Kraus, Part II, pp. 7 to 10.
  7. ↑ H. Ferber; in: Historical walk through the old city of Düsseldorf , 1889, Verlag C. Kraus, part II, p. 7.
  8. ↑ H. Ferber; in: Historical walk through the old city of Düsseldorf , 1889, Verlag C. Kraus, part II, pp. 11 to 13.
  9. ↑ F. Ferber, in: 1632 Landsteuererbuch der Stadt Düsseldorf , reprint from 1889, p. [48] 38.

Web links

Commons : Marktplatz 6 (Düsseldorf)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 13 ′ 31.8 ″  N , 6 ° 46 ′ 20 ″  E