World Heritage House

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World Heritage House in Wismar

The World Heritage House is a listed hall house in the Hanseatic city of Wismar in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . Since June 2014 there has been a 400 m² exhibition on the UNESCO World Heritage Site .

history

The house was built around 1350 during the Hanseatic League at Lübschen Strasse 23, which at the time was part of an important trade route and at the same time the east-west axis of the city. On the first floor there was a large room, the hall , in which the handling of goods was organized and carried out. Large light windows facing the street and courtyard brought sufficient daylight into the room. There were storage rooms above the hall. A wing extension on the courtyard side, the Kemlade , served as living space. In the course of the 17th to 19th centuries, the owners gradually converted the building into a purely residential building. The originally high ceiling of the hall was lowered and the clear height on the upper floors was increased. Further renovations were carried out in the 19th century at the instigation of the mayor Gabriel Lembke, who lived in the house at the time. In 1924, a merchant company bought the building and used it as business premises with a restaurant and a small museum. In 1950 the Kulturbund of the GDR moved in and used the house until 1990. It then fell into disrepair until it was secured by the city in 2004 when it was recognized as a World Heritage Site. Extensive renovation work was carried out between 2013 and 2014 for around four million euros.

During the renovation work, restorers uncovered a natural stone basin from the 17th century in one corner of the room. It consisted of a narrow, originally painted wall niche in which a washbasin was set. It is the first find of its kind in the Hanseatic city.

exhibition

On the ground floor, UNESCO provides information on a tour using several international examples about the world heritage and the criteria for recognition as a world cultural heritage or world natural heritage using the example of Stralsund and Wismar. The curators had the city plan of the old town of Wismar laid out on the floor , on which the World Heritage House is highlighted in color. The visitor can find out more about the history of the Hanseatic city at several audio stations. In addition, display areas provide information about the history of the trade and the hall house.

Then the visitor is taken to the Kemladen. There the restorers discovered the original painting behind a blue wooden ceiling. In the back of the Kemladen you can see found objects such as utensils made of wood, but also a wooden plate that served as a book cover. The upper floor of the Kemladen must have been divided at some point in the past. This is indicated by a non-continuous rococo painting from 1770, which was uncovered during the restoration behind a brown paint on the wall panel in 240 working hours.

On the upper floor there is a wallpaper room with a rare wall paneling of around 64 m². It was created in 1823 in the Parisian manufacture Dufour & Leroy and shows a story from Greek mythology , Telemachus' journey to the island of the goddess Calypso . It consists of joined sheets of paper that are applied to a Hessian underground . For the work, 2,027 different printing blocks were cut and 87 colors rubbed. From this once very popular wallpaper cycle there are other pieces in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York , in the Belmont Mansion and in The Hermitage , the mansion of the seventh  President of the United States , Andrew Jackson near Nashville , Tennessee .

  • Wallpaper room

  • Natural stone basin from the 17th century

  • Ceiling painting in the Kemladen

  • City plan

Outdoor area

Together with the neighboring property (Lübsche Straße 23a), the Welt-Erbe-Haus has a shared outdoor area with a garden on the inner courtyard side. There is a water feature made of concrete, which is embedded in the ground and shows the floor plan of the city center of Wismar. The egg-shaped round with a length of about 6 meters and a width of about 5 meters is traversed by water-bearing trough channels, which are intended to illustrate the historical water supply of the city to the visitor. The basis for the design of the water feature was the city water pipe plan from 1710. The water feature was inaugurated in June 2014 together with the opening of the World Heritage House. However, the applied paint quickly faded, so that renovation had to start in 2018. In the course of the renovation, which lasted until June 2019, the painting was replaced by weather-resistant and elaborately designed ceramic tiles.

Web links

Commons : World Heritage House  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

  • Hanseatic City of Wismar (ed.): World Heritage House Wismar , flyer, no date

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jessica Thörner: World Heritage Center opened in Wismar, NDR website, accessed on April 3, 2015.
  2. ↑ Information board : Natural stone basin , ground floor of the house, inspection in March 2015.
  3. ↑ Not in the Museum of Modern Art , as the exhibition in the Welt-Erbe-Haus claims, website of the city of Wismar, accessed on April 1, 2015.
  4. ↑ Telemachus Wallpaper ( Memento from April 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on April 8, 2015
  5. ↑ Hanseatic City of Wismar: City Center - Urban Renewal / Monument Preservation . Edition August 2019, Verlag Koch & Raum Wismar, page 4.

Coordinates: 53 ° 53 ′ 32 "  N , 11 ° 27 ′ 43"  E