Weyertor

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Weyertor, 1889 ( Wilhelm Scheiner )
Weyertor with bastion and the beginning of Weyerstrasse
Diagonal view from the field side with the bastion immediately in front of the gate building since 1632

The Weyertor , located in the south-west of the city of Cologne , was one of the 14 land-side large city gates that were built in conjunction with the new protective and circular wall in the course of the last city expansion . The building project planned by the Council of the Holy City was carried out with the consent of the Emperor. The construction of the late Romanesque Weyertore began in the first third of the 13th century. Over the centuries the Torburg has undergone several modifications. It was canceled in 1889 as a result of another city expansion.

Location and origin of name

According to Adam Wrede , the Weiher or Weyertor was the highest gate in the new curtain wall. Its original name, just like that of the medieval street "Weyerstraße" and the Weiher monastery a little further in the foreland , is said to have referred to an area called "Weiherkülchen" there, in which a pond was probably formed by the end of the Gleueler brook which later seeped away in the Hohenlind area .

Around 1232 the gate was named “porta piscine (ae)” in Latin documents, around 1257 it was called “wierporce”, “wijerportze”. The sentence “zo wier daervan still die ein portze the name hait genoempt (taken) die wierportze” dates from 1474. The cartographer Arnold Mercator called the gate “Die Weier pforts” on his Cologne cityscape from 1570 , and the French authorities named the city gate (1812/13) “Porte de l'Etang” - Weyer-Pforte.

history

The many decades of conflict between the citizens of Cologne and their archiepiscopal lord led over time to an extensive emancipation of the citizenry. This hard-won independence had also led to the formation of a secular tax system, which was valid in all the old town districts but also in those of the newly added suburbs. The increased income of the city was the basis of the plan to carry out the large-scale construction project of a new ring wall with its walls and gates.

Guns from Cologne tower shooters

The area of ​​the “villa s. Pantaleonis ”, bordering the districts of Oversburg and St. Severin to the west with St. Aposteln , whose most developed development was on Weyerstraße with its own place of jurisdiction , was included in the Cologne city area by the new wall. With their inclusion in the city, the residents received a new status: From then on they had citizenship , but were now also subject to general tax and military service in the event of a defense, as well as being subject to duty of guard. The district now had to carry the loads of people (security personnel) and material for the wall sections and gates located in its area, in particular for the large Weyertore.

The streets leading to the gate

Location of the former Greek gate

The newly built gate castle of the fortification , which was advanced to the west, was the replacement of the old south-western Greek gate . At the foot of Weyerstrasse, which was documented as early as 1265, across from St. Pantaleon, it enabled the previous external entrance through the Roman wall into the Greek market quarter or the exit into the unprotected suburb. This task was now taken over by the new gate castle, the Weyertor. The country road opened in front of him, which the citizens used when they wanted to go to the farms and houses of the "Klettenberg", to the Sulzpe of glory or to the villages on the hillside of the Ville . But also travelers and traders to the Zülpich and Trier region or to the Eifel and Luxembourg made their way through this city gate leading to the southwest.

It is said from the 15th and 16th centuries that Weyerstraße was called "Kaiserstraße". This was based on the fact that emperors and kings, when they came to the city of Cologne from the west, came through Weyertor and -strasse.

Building description

As early as 1386, under the municipal rentmaster Constantin von Lyskirchen , a second outer ditch was placed in front of the ditch that had hitherto accompanied the city wall, which was equipped with hedges and which Koelhoff's chronicle described as “a useful buwe”. At that time, some of the city's main gate-locks were probably already given outer kennels, the one at Weyertor was mentioned in 1442. Arnold Mercator's depiction of the “Weier pforts” from 1571 was out of date at the latest 12 years later, as conversions were carried out between 1583 and 1592 through which the bastion is said to have received a Zwingerhof at the end of the 16th century. Around the year 1583 the demolition of the Vorwerk was carried out so that space was created for the construction of a planned bulwark and a parapet. During the earthworks involved in this, three Roman sarcophagi made of red sandstone were uncovered in April 1589 , which contained small earthen jugs, glasses and unknown coins. In the same year, two more “stone graves” were found during the work, the contents of which included coins from Emperor Constantine . Further construction work included a new drawbridge construction over the moat of the gate, which however collapsed and was later replaced by a solid stone bridge. The fault of this disaster, which resulted in damage of over 6000 thalers, was blamed on the young inexperienced master stonemason and circulation of the city, Peter von Sieberg.

In contrast to the other gates of the city wall, the bastions had been designed since 1632 in such a way that they were directly connected to the gate itself. For this purpose, the trenches were modified and diverted around the bastion. A bridge access to the bastion had been built at the northern bend of the laid trench. The illustration "Finkenbaums" (above) shows parts of the entire facility, obliquely seen from the bank of the northwestern side of the field. In the foreground stood a corner building with a large bay window, which was covered by a hipped roof . The crenellated gate castle towering in the background had a four- story , angular central tower, which was flanked by three- story , semicircular side towers. A small bay window was added to the side of the central building under the battlements , and a bell hung on the field side, which probably announced the closing of the gate. At the height of its upper floor, fitted between the side towers, there was an over room above the archway . The buildings were still equipped with a large number of the original Romanesque arched windows.

Weyertor around 1878

The watercolor by Jakob Scheiner (right) from 1878 shows a very different appearance. The central tower has been shortened; it and its flank towers had lost their Romanesque pewter decorations. The central building was evidently given a gable roof, and the side towers were covered with conical roofs. It is not known when these changes were made. The city wall adjoining both sides with its loopholes was still intact.

Use of the gate

The Torburg was primarily a defense tower and served as part of the city wall to protect the city. It was also the gate or the barricade of a mostly heavily frequented traffic route as well as one of the stations of the municipal customs collection , at which, as with other open field gates, customs officers levied what is known as land customs. In the 16th century the customs houses went into private ownership.

The Weyertor owned a kennel and two of the prison service rooms, the door was similar with this institution its adjacent gates in the city walls: The southern stream gate had little capacity as a prison, and the Pantaleon Porte had also two prison facilities . The northern sheep gate had three prison rooms.

Environment and resignation

Weyertor (from: CF Kaiser, Cölner Thorburgen and fortifications: 1180–1882, 1884, sheet 21)
Passenger transport to the Weyertor
House Töller (third house from the right) in front of the Weyertor in 1886

Not only the exterior of the Torburg itself had changed a lot, the city with its suburbs had grown considerably in population. This also applied to the area around the Weyertore. As early as 1836, a telegraph station was built on the tower of St. Pantaleon across from Weyerstraße, and around 1850 the country road in the direction of the Eifel and Luxembourg was expanded as a district road. In the 1860s it was directly on the city side in front of the gate, since the 14./15. The Töller house, which existed in the Weyerstraße in the 19th century, has become the terminus of a daily travel service between the town of Erp near Lechenich , via Liblar and Cologne by means of a horse-drawn "omnibus". The travelers took care of their concerns, and from 3 p.m. the journey began.

At the end of the 19th century, measures were taken to expand the city, which had become inevitable, especially the creation of improved traffic routes through the medieval city wall. In 1882 the demolition of the bulwarks and the glacis began. In 1883, construction work on the new wall was in progress for this area, with which the “Luxembourg Gate” was built in the run-up to the Weyertore. The previous Zülpicher Landstrasse in the Cologne area was probably renamed to the name Luxemburger Strasse, which is in use today . A few years later the Weyertor was torn down.

Then, according to plans by Karl Henrici from Aachen and under the direction of the city architect Josef Stübben, the ring road sections and in front of the former bastion of the gate the Barbarossaplatz, reminiscent of imperial times . In addition to this, the foothills train station was built in 1898 , where travelers from Bonn and the foothills of the mountains disembarked from the “Fiery Elias”, a steam train .

literature

  • Adam Wrede : New Cologne vocabulary . 3 volumes A - Z, Greven Verlag, Cologne, 9th edition 1984, ISBN 3-7743-0155-7
  • Thomas Adolph: History of the parish St. Mauritius in Cologne. With an illustration of the old Abbey of St. Pantaleon after Stengelius. 1st edition JP Bachem, Cologne 1878
  • Hermann Keussen : Topography of the City of Cologne in the Middle Ages , in 2 volumes. Cologne 1910. ISBN 978-3-7700-7560-7 and ISBN 978-3-7700-7561-4
  • Günther Binding : Cologne and Lower Rhine views in the Finckenbaum sketchbook 1660–1665. Greven Cologne 1980. ISBN 3-7743-0183-2
  • Gerd Schwerhoff : Cologne in the cross-examination , publisher: Bouvier (1991). ISBN 978-3416023320
  • Hans Vogts , Fritz Witte: The art monuments of the city of Cologne , on behalf of the provincial association of the Rhine province and the city of Cologne. Published by Paul Clemen , Vol. 7, Section IV: The profane monuments of the city of Cologne , Düsseldorf 1930. Verlag L. Schwann, Düsseldorf. Reprint Pedagogischer Verlag Schwann, 1980. ISBN 3-590-32102-4
  • Johannes Krudewig (sources), in: Die Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Köln on behalf of the Provincial Association of the Rhine Province. Volume VI, Section I. Sources, and Section II. Josef Klinkenberg, Das Römische Köln . In connection with Otto von Falke, Eduard Firmenich-Richartz, Joseph Klinkenberg , Johannes Krudewig, Hugo Rahtgens and Edmund Renard. Edited by Paul Clemen . Druck und Verlag L. Schwann, Düsseldorf, 1906. Reprint Pedagogical Verlag Schwann, 1980. ISBN 3-590-32108-3

Web links

Commons : Weyertorburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexander Hess: The Cologne Weyertor. In: Fortis Das Magazin 2019. Cologne 2019, pp. 25 - 33, here p. 25.
  2. ^ Günther Binding, Cologne and Lower Rhine views in the Finckenbaum sketchbook
  3. ^ Thomas, Adolph: History of the parish of St. Mauritius in Cologne . Section Weiher Monastery, page 49
  4. ↑ a b Adam Wrede, Volume III, page 268
  5. ↑ Hermann Keussen , Volume I, page 67, with reference to Lau: “Property taxes are to be proven in the first half of the 12th century. So for the districts of S. Martin, S. Laurenz, S. Brigida, and S. Kolumba. "(Lau, Cologne 229 Ann.7; 332)
  6. ↑ Hermann Keussen, Volume I, page 67
  7. ^ Thomas, Adolph: History of the parish of St. Mauritius in Cologne . Section Weiher Monastery, page 447 f
  8. ↑ a b Vogts, Witte: Die Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Köln , on behalf of the Provincial Association of the Rhine Province and the City of Cologne. (Ed.) Paul Clemen, vol. 7, section IV: The profane monuments of the city of Cologne , city fortifications p. 27 ff
  9. ↑ Paul Clemen “The Roman Cologne”, “Die Außenstraßen”, p. 247 ff, with reference to “Book Weinsberg IV, p. 62”
  10. ↑ Hans Vogts, Das Kölner Wohnhaus up to the beginning of the 19th century , Volume II, pages 672 ff
  11. ↑ Günther Binding, page 156
  12. ^ H. Keussen, vol. 1 p. 137
  13. ↑ Gerd Schwerhoff, page 96
  14. ↑ Paul Clemen "The Roman Cologne" p. 303 "The outer area of ​​Colonia", with reference to "Bonner Jahrbücher, LXXV"

Coordinates: 50 ° 55 ′ 48.2 "  N , 6 ° 56 ′ 33.8"  E