Villa Madelung
The Villa Madelung was a classicist city villa in Gotha , Gartenstrasse 31. It was built in 1837–1838 according to plans by Gustav Eberhard and demolished around 2007 by the building company of the city of Gotha (BGG) .
history
construction
The villa was built by Finance Councilor Wilhelm Madelung (1774–1855), whose family was among the richest in Gotha around 1830. She was in close contact with Duke Ernst I and owned, among other things, the bank “Madelung & Sons” and the “Gothaische Zeitung” . Madelung was also the director of Gothaer Feuerversicherung, founded by Ernst Wilhelm Arnoldi in 1820, and on the revision committee of the first German life insurance company founded in 1827 . He was not only connected to the family of the publisher Friedrich Christoph Perthes in business terms: his son Moritz married Eleonore Perthes in 1831, his niece Marie married Clemens Perthes in 1839.
In 1837, the 32-year-old Gotha court architect Gustav Eberhard von Madelung was commissioned to plan a spacious villa north of the Gartenstrasse, which had recently been built in place of the baroque city fortifications . He designed a three-storey building on an almost square floor plan. The facades each had seven window axes and were closed at the top with a cornice resting on curved consoles. The side facing the city was given a slightly protruding central projection with three window axes, which was crowned by a flat triangular gable. The central entrance portal was emphasized by a boss block and a balcony arranged above it . Inside, the rooms were accessed through a central, oval staircase , which was illuminated through the upper arcade of a roof tower . In the spandrels of the stairwell there were four chimneys, which, as corner towers, towered over the lantern floor and gave it a somewhat solemn character.
The construction was carried out simultaneously with the construction of the plans by Karl Friedrich Schinkel incurred Gotha Court Theater , was employed by the Eberhardt as executive architect and construction manager. So the excavated earth from the theater could be used to fill in the former moat.
owner
In 1855 Madelung's daughter Agnes and his son-in-law Leopold Braun (1812–1882), a son of the ducal forester Friedrich August Braun, took over the house. After attending the universities of Heidelberg , Göttingen and Jena, Leopold entered the Gotha civil service in 1835, where he worked his way up from unpaid assistant to privy councilor with the title of “Excellenz” and then married Madelung's daughter. The couple had six children, from whom the firstborn Otto later inherited the house. The family's friends and frequent guests included Camillo von Seebach , Gustav Freytag and Leopold's brother-in-law Peter Andreas Hansen .
After the Second World War , the municipal housing administration of the city of Gotha took over the family-owned villa and initially divided it into small apartments. In the eighties there was another conversion to use as the administrative headquarters of the KWV . In 1990 restitution claims were made for the property. Nevertheless, the property came into the ownership of the Gotha construction company as legal successor to KWV. She vacated the villa and offered it for sale. Preservation measures were not carried out.
demolition
On April 28, 1999, the Gotha City Council decided on a development plan for the property at Gartenstrasse 31 , which envisaged the demolition of the villa, which was still intact at the time, and the dedication of the area as a “ special area of culture ”. There was no contradiction by the Thuringian monument authority , which was involved in public affairs . The construction company then let the building fall into disrepair, which led to the collapse of parts of the roof in November 2006 and complete demolition in 2007. On August 30, 2013, she sold the 3000 m² property to a Bad Hersfeld cinema operator belonging to the Cineplex group, who in 2014 built a six-screen film palace there.
meaning
The Villa Madelung, built in the focal point of Huttenstrasse, was one of the main works of classicism in Gotha , along with the Prinzenpalais (1776) and Winterpalais (1822). It was also an important early work by its architect Gustav Eberhard, who creatively combined ideas from the Italian Renaissance ( Villa Rotonda ) and Northern European classicism ( Laveshaus ). The conception of the house with the central staircase illuminated by a lantern was imitated several times in Gotha. In 1840 Ludwig Bohnstedt built a similar villa for the painter Emil Jacobs at Mozartstraße 3 , albeit with a square staircase.In 1852 another villa of the same type was built for the court stable master Wilhelm Arnim, later Villa Kunreuter .
literature
- Mark Escherich: Villas in Gotha, Volume 1. Rhino Verlag, Arnstadt / Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-932081-26-9 .
- Dirk Moldenhauer: History as a commodity. The publisher Friedrich Christoph Perthes (1772–1843) as a pioneer of modern historiography. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar 2008, p. 453. ( online at Google books )
- Uwe Jens Wandel: "... So deeply felt as respectful thanks ...". Addresses of artistic thanks from Hamburg after the Great Fire in 1842 using examples from Thuringia. In: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History , 85th year 1999, pp. 35–62. ( online as PDF )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dirk Moldenhauer 2008, p. 453, Uwe Jens Wandel 1999, p. 39, on the other hand mentions Wilhelm Madelung's younger brother Ernst as the father-in-law of the Perthes children
- ^ Message from Christine Riede, Managing Director Baugesellschaft Gotha GmbH, to Elmar Nolte dated September 30, 2014
- ^ Gotha Engineering GmbH, Dipl.-Ing. Gumbrecht: Development plan No. 3 AI, Gartenstrasse 31 of October 8, 1999, adopted as a statute on May 28, 2000. [1]
- ↑ Axel Eger: Big Cinema on Gartenstrasse: New Film Palace for Gotha, Thüringer Allgemeine Gotha , September 4, 2013
Coordinates: 50 ° 57 ′ 8.6 " N , 10 ° 42 ′ 24.2" E