Welfenstadt
The Welfenstadt is the oldest part of the Upper Swabian city of Memmingen .
The Guelph city was surrounded by a wall with four gates. Remnants of this oldest wall still exist behind the town hall and the elephant pharmacy. Of the gates only the West Gate has been preserved. The largest secular buildings of the imperial city period are in the old Guelph city, such as the Antonier monastery , which was important in the Middle Ages , the St. Martin's Church and the town hall .
history
It is believed that the Guelph royal court was in the Guelph city as early as the 6th to 8th centuries. The first residents, including many ministerials of the Swabian ruling dynasty of the Guelphs , settled around it . The first fortifications can be traced back to before 1000. Stone walls from around 1170 are secured. With the extinction of the Welfs with Welf VI. the old Guelph city passed to the Staufers . The market square, which was previously built on, was expanded into a central trading center in the 13th century; the houses in the middle were demolished. (Emergency excavations on the market square in 1990 brought these finds to light.) After the city had reached its full size in the 15th century and almost all craftsmen and farmhouses had been relocated to the other parts of the city, the political arena developed around the market square Citycenter. The patricians and wealthy merchants gradually settled in the old Guelph city, so that the largest secular buildings were built there. The area around the largest church in the city, St. Martin's Church, developed into the spiritual center of the city. The historic guard house was replaced by a new building in the 1970s. The entire area behind the Fuggerbau on Schweizerberg up to Zangmeisterstraße is marked by religious buildings. The Welfenstadt was and is the political center of the city.
Today's streets of the old Guelph city
The old Welfenstadt comprised today's streets Antoniergasse, Apothekengasse, Bauerntanzgasse, Buchdruckergasse, Bärengasse, Eichhausgasse, Furtgasse, Hermansgasse, Herrenstraße, Kalchstraße (to Ratzengraben), Kramerstraße (to the wine market), Kühgasse, market square, Martin-Luther-Platz, Pfaffengasse, Ratzengraben, Roßmarkt, Schlossergasse, Schweizerberg, Seelhausgasse, Traubengasse, Ulmer Straße (former fish market), Untere Bachgasse, Weinmarkt, Zangmeisterstraße and Zwinggasse.
literature
- Karl Fackler: The old Memmingen. The development of the city of Memmingen from the time of its foundation to the Thirty Years War . Publishing and printing cooperative Memmingen (Bavaria), Memmingen 1929 (Munich, Technical University, dissertation, 1929).
- Tilmann Breuer : City and district of Memmingen (= Bavarian art monuments . Volume 4 ). Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1959, p. 30 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Michael Dapper: The settlement and city history of Memmingen from an archaeological point of view. In: Joachim Jahn (ed.): The history of the city of Memmingen. Volume 1: From the beginning to the end of the imperial city. Theiss, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-8062-1315-1 , pp. 21-73, here p. 35.
