Wasp house
The Wespienhaus was a baroque town house in Aachen from 1735 . Until its destruction in World War II, it was considered the most beautiful city palace in Aachen .
History of the house
Johann von Wespien , a former mayor of the imperial city of Aachen , was a wealthy cloth manufacturer. He received a large part of his fortune through his marriage to the daughter of a manufacturer, Anna Maria Schmitz, who came from Eupen , now in Belgium . He was looking for a way to have a representative private house built. For this purpose he gave the order to the Aachen baroque master builder Johann Joseph Couven . The first construction plans were drawn up in 1734, but they were still quite simple compared to the finished structure.
In 1734 work began on building a residential and factory building at Kleinmarschierstrasse 45 / corner of Heppionsgasse (Elisabethstrasse). The exterior work was completed in 1737. The Wespien family needed significantly longer for the interior work. In any subsequent expansion of the courtyard of the Wespienhauses was by Jakob Couven the son of Johann Joseph Couven, the local, Couvenwandbrunnen designed. Originally the fountain was ascribed to the father, but Anke Kappler explains this in her writing Johann Joseph Couven (1701–1763) from 2009 on p. 38 in note 116: “At an unknown time, Jakob Couven was commissioned to work on the courtyard facade to install a fountain on the work wing, which was installed after the war behind the church of St. Johann in Burtscheid. Here a badge wrongly shows him as a work by Couvens the Elder. Ä. out."
In 1838 the cloth manufacturer Joseph van Gülpen set up his cloth factory in the Wespienhaus, which his son Eduard van Gülpen (1820–1882) continued to run after his death, but which in 1867 moved to the Obere Müsch estate in the Soers . The estate and the associated Müschpark became the summer residence for the van Gülpen family, the headquarters remained in the Wespienhaus. After Edward's death, his widow Therese, née Claus (1819–1900) lived in this house until her death, which then passed on to the heirs of the van Gülpen family, as Eduard and Therese had no children themselves.
Due to the owner's economic problems, the basement was converted into a shop in 1901. The rental income from the shop barely improved the financial situation, so in 1902 the entire interior of the house was auctioned. The city of Aachen tried to acquire the building, but failed due to a lack of financial means. The wall fountain from the garden of the house was moved to the inner courtyard of the Fey am Seilgraben house in 1928 on the occasion of the establishment of the first Couven Museum Aachen there , and was finally repositioned in 1993 at its current location below the St. Johann church on Abteiplatz in Burtscheid . The Wespienhaus itself could only be comprehensively reconstructed in 1940 under the direction of the architect Johannes Everling.
During the bombing of July 14, 1943, the newly reconstructed house was badly damaged by flying sparks. A little later, high-explosive bombs finally destroyed the house. In 1951, the rubble of the remaining stone parts was removed from three of the five central axes and stored. In the course of the redesign of the so-called redevelopment area I between Judengasse and Kockerellstraße, the stored facade parts were moved into the outer wall of the gymnasium of the Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium by city curator Leo Hugot in the years 1972 to 1973 .
A memorial plaque at the foot of the rebuilt facade reminds of the historic house today.
architecture
Couven knew how to completely coordinate the exterior and interior of the Wespienhaus and thus corresponded to the baroque understanding of holism. The wasp house was a three-storey house with a five-axis facade and a gabled central projection in three axes, which must have been completed in 1737 due to the cartouche installed there . On the first floor there was a ballroom that spanned the entire width of the facade. It is noticeable that both the ground floor and the first floor had extremely high rooms, while the second floor is significantly lower. This can be seen in almost square windows that differ significantly from the other rows of windows. This is a typical construction practiced by Couven.
The gable window contains the coat of arms of Johann von Wespien and his wife Maria Schmitz. This has been preserved. The curved gable crown covered the alliance coat of arms held by putti above the central axis. There is no longer a 3.50 meter high gilded figure of Mercury that served as the roof crown. The forged balcony grille with the monogram Waspiens served as additional facade decoration.
This work of art is an example of Couven's Regency style , which forms the transition from the baroque Louis-quatorze style to the Louis-seize , the Rococo.
Interior decoration
The interior of the wasp house was extremely complex. This can already be seen in the long time it took to design the entire interior. While the construction time was only one year, the interior was only completed after 40 years.
The Aachen Couven Museum succeeded in acquiring part of the Rococo furnishings. The Museum of Fine Arts in San Francisco had until its sale in the late 1990s a room with wood paneling and some entire wall tapestries Aachen Wespienhauses. The Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg has other parts of the interior design , in which there is a complete room with its wood paneling and the wall-covering tapestries.
- Former interior of the Wespienhaus (around 1910)
Stairwell
dining room
Small tapestry hall
Large tapestry hall
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 35.7 " N , 6 ° 4 ′ 52.9" E
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wespienhaus on the pages of the NRW cultural server.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Marcel Bauer, Frank Hovens, Anke Kappler, Belinda Petri, Christine Vogt, Anke Volkmer: On the way on Couvens tracks . Grenz-Echo Verlag, Eupen 2005, ISBN 90-5433-187-9 .
- ^ Paul Schoenen: Johann Josef Couven . L. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1964, et al. P. 113.
- ↑ Ludwina Forst: King's Way. In the footsteps of the first city curator, Hans Königs (1903–1988) . Thouet, Aachen 2008, ISBN 3-930594-33-1 , pp. 93-94.
- Jump up ↑ Joseph Buchkremer : The architects Johann Joseph Couven and Jakob Couven . In: Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsverein (ZAGV) 17 (1895), p. 190.