Villa Waldfriede (Wiesbaden)

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Front of the villa, 1892
View into the approximately 3 meters deep, partially collapsed caves

The Villa Waldfriede was built in the 1870s, representative villa with a large park. The building, located in the forest to the north of Wiesbaden , was demolished in the 1960s.

history

The villa was built between 1877 and 1879 on a piece of land in the Hebenkries forest district, which was then far away from the city, which the couple Friedrich Wilhelm Poths and Emilie Wegner had acquired from the city of Wiesbaden. In the following years they bought the adjacent land in the Adamstal through which the Kesselbach flows. The building was planned by the Wiesbaden architect Alfred Schellenberg .

Poths-Wegner sold the villa in 1889 for 200,000 marks to the merchant Carl Bonnet, who shortly afterwards married Marianne Beysiegl. They built the large palm house with a dome, large glass windows and an outside staircase. Carl died in 1904, his wife lived in the villa until around 1920. From 1921 the villa was owned by the city of Wiesbaden, which initially rented it to Duchess Nancy von Croÿ for three years . The villa was then assigned to the municipal forest administration.

In 1935 the villa was inaugurated as the Jungmädel school for women in the Upper Hesse-Nassau region. The Unter den Eichen concentration camp was located nearby from March 1944 to March 1945 . From 1946 the villa served as an urban retirement home; In 1947 35 people lived there. The villa became increasingly dilapidated and in 1962 was in dire need of renovation. Plans to build a new building were not implemented. In 1966 the villa was demolished and the park and gardens fell into disrepair. The porter's house was destroyed a few years later, the entrance gate and machine house at the main entrance in the 1990s.

The monument protection played no role at the time of the demolition. This time in Wiesbaden was shaped by the planning of Ernst May , who, with a few exceptions, wanted to tear down the city's “outdated building stock”. According to Sigrid Russ from the State Office for Monument Preservation in Hesse , the loss is "to be regretted". The Wiesbaden authors Birgit Funk and Thorsten Reiss describe the decision to demolish it as “incomprehensible barbarism that fits seamlessly into the series of building sins of the time”.

location

Area on the city map of Wiesbaden, 1910, Kesselbach on the left, Platter Strasse on the right and the Jewish cemetery at Nordfriedhof

The grounds of the villa are located in the Wiesbaden-Nordost district on Platter Strasse ( B 417 ), which runs from Wiesbaden to the Platte . The north cemetery is to the east, the Unter den Eichen leisure area to the south and the Adamstal estate to the west . The site is part of the City of Wiesbaden landscape protection area .

Plant and structures

The Villa Waldfriede was a three-story, luxurious building with a side tower with a square floor plan. The architectural style was a transition between late classicism and neo-renaissance . The lowest floor was used for representation purposes, the upper floor was used for private use, the mezzanine was used by the house staff. The tower floor with belvedere and flagpole was visible from afar. The building had two verandas and a one-story pavilion with a connecting passage to the house. There was a large terrace in front, from which a representative flight of stairs led into the garden. The “pompous” villa was decorated with balconies, balustrades, consoles and architectural decorations. The Rheinischer Kurier described it as "the most beautiful and most splendidly situated" villa in Wiesbaden, which lies in "delicious forest air at a vantage point".

At the entrance from Platter Straße there was a “spectacular two-winged astwood gate”, richly decorated and above it in wooden letters “Forest peace”. Rusted remains of it stood in the forest until the 1990s. In 2003 there was only a transformer house left there . To the left of the gate there was a two-story porter's house with half-timbering and carvings, in which the “sovereign gardener” initially lived. Other structures on the site were a two-story, twelve-meter-long house and a coach house with a stable northwest of the villa, hidden behind thick trees. Later a large palm house with a dome and glass windows reaching up to the roof and a wide flight of stairs as well as a square machine house were built.

In 1879, “shady forest paths adorned with statues lead from the“ villa furnished with great elegance and the greatest comfort ”to the Chaussee artificial ruin and just such a grotto conjured up ”. The almost seven hectare park was designed in the style of an English landscape garden, but also adopted other styles. A wide, low-planted ground floor with a central fountain led from the villa to the pond with a resting place. In the middle of the pond was the "Island of the Blessed". The other paths "artistically" followed the course of the terrain and the plantings and were lined with statues.

After the villa and the outbuildings were demolished, the parks and gardens fell into disrepair. At the beginning of the 2000s, remains of roads, rhododendron plantations, forsythias, box, yew trees and an old orchard were still visible in the area. The building sites for the buildings could still be recognized by the terraces in the area. The cellars were filled, the artificial grotto collapsed and the pond could only be seen as an oval depression in the terrain.

  • Cellar remains of the villa

  • Rhododendron in the park

  • The flat surface in the left half of the picture used to be a pond

  • The fortified bank can be seen in front of the two trees on the "Isle of the Blessed" in the pond

  • Drainage of the pond towards Kesselbach

literature

Web links

Commons : Villa Waldfriede  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Sigrid Russ: The former Villa Waldfriede in Wiesbaden. A mansion of "unusual type and size" . In: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Hessen (Ed.): Denkmalpflege & Kulturgeschichte , No. 1, 2005, ISSN  1436-168X , pp. 14-19.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Birgit Funk, Thorsten Reiss: Villa Waldfriede: A search for traces in the forest . In: Wiesbaden. Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow , No. 3, 2003, ISSN  1617-9641 , pp. 16-25.
  3. ↑ Bärbel Maul, Axel Ulrich: The Wiesbaden external command “Under the oaks” of the SS special camp / Hinzert concentration camp . Publisher: State Capital Wiesbaden Kdö.R., Cultural Office - City Archives, 2014.
  4. ↑ Ordinance on the designation of the landscape protection area "City of Wiesbaden" and on the amendment of the landscape protection area "Hessische Mainauen" of September 24, 2010 , City of Wiesbaden; Map of the protected area on protectedplanet.net, accessed March 18, 2021.
  5. ↑ a b Rheinischer Kurier , No. 197 I, 23 August 1879, quoted from Birgit Funk, Thorsten Reiss: Villa Waldfriede: A search for traces in the forest . In: Wiesbaden. Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow , No. 3, 2003, ISSN 1617-9641 , pp. 16-25.  

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 18 ″  N , 8 ° 12 ′ 44.7 ″  E