Winter Palace (Gotha)
The Winter Palace in Gotha , Friedrichstrasse 2, was a classicist city palace built predominantly in 1822 and an important cultural monument. It was largely demolished in 2010 and replaced by a new building completed in 2014.
history
Predecessor buildings since 1730
Predecessor buildings of the Winter Palace can already be seen on a city view of Gotha from around 1730 . At that time, the property was outside of the city fortifications in front of the Siebleber Gate marked No. 25 . Around 1790, the court marshal Eberhard S. von Frankenberg (1731–1797), a cousin of the more well-known state minister of three dukes, Sylvius Friedrich Ludwig von Frankenberg (1728–1815), lived there.
In 1798, Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1745–1804) acquired the house in front of the Siebleber Barrier from the widow of the late Court Marshal von Frankenberg to use it as a guest house.
In 1802 his son and successor, Emil August von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg (1772-1822), married Caroline Amalie von Hessen-Kassel , after his first wife Luise Charlotte zu Mecklenburg 15 days after their daughter Luise was born on December 20, 1800 von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg had died. Duke Ernst II died on April 20, 1804, and his son Emil August took over the government.
After Napoleon occupied Hessen-Kassel in 1806, the couple fled into exile. While Wilhelm I. with his mistress a. a. stayed in Schleswig and Prague , Wilhelmine Karoline spent these years with her younger daughter Caroline Amalie in Gotha. The Electress was temporarily housed by her son-in-law, Duke August, in the Winter Palace, which was significantly expanded for this purpose in 1811 by including the smaller residential building between him and the court gardener's house. In addition, there was an extension to the rear to accommodate the servants.
In 1813 Napoleon had to flee back to France, and the Hessian electoral couple returned to Kassel on November 21st. The Winter Palace was now increasingly inhabited by Duchess Caroline. The reason for this can be seen in a growing estrangement from her husband, Duke Emil August, with whom the marriage remained childless and who is said to have caused her various inconveniences through his strange behavior. The Duchess therefore apparently considered it appropriate to withdraw from the public.
1821 gave Duke Emil August his wife Caroline, the Winter Palace and the opposite Schloss Friedrichsthal as a summer residence, together with the associated garden and grotto area, the adjacent Orangerie garden and the Teeschlösschen .
Expansion and redesign 1822–1823, used as a widow's palace
Duke Emil August died on May 17, 1822, and his brother Friedrich IV , who followed him in the government, confirmed the gifts. Just a few weeks later, on August 8th, Hofbaurat Heinrich Andreas Poersch submitted a "submissive report to the chief court master of Scheliha : the extension to the former royal house of the Electress of Hesse. Your Highness lived in the house on the Siebleber Barriere and its furnishings for the living quarters of the widowed Duchess Highness ”. Afterwards the Duchess wanted an extension to the house, a new wash house, new coach houses and stables. 38 heatable rooms including a dining room the size of the one in Friedrichsthal, 25 chambers and cabinets, a coach house for four wagons, a stable for eight horses, a wash house, a wheeled room, a flat room and a woodshed are required. Pörsch explained that an extension could only be continued on the northern gable in the main front of the house, taking into account skill and possible cost savings. Pörsch submitted three construction plans to the Duke. Only Plan III was considered because the cost estimate did not require more than 8,475 thalers. On August 19, 1822, Duke Friedrich approved this plan. At the same time, some of the Duchess's wishes regarding the interior design were approved, despite the additional expense of several thousand thalers.
In 1823 the building was largely completed in the form it still exists today. The extension to the north, the corresponding enlargement of the intermediate building to the Hofgärtnerhaus, the side wing bent to the west with a passage, the installation of a staircase and the extensive redesign of the facades in the classical style resulted in a practically new building. Only in the basement and plinth on the courtyard side are the remains of the previous buildings. On November 24, 1823, the outdoor complex was turned to, and the court chamber decided that the square on the north side of the palace, which had become desolate as a result of the current building , should finally be put back into order. Head gardener Johann Rudolph Eyserbeck was commissioned with this work as well as the construction of a “living fence” made of twelve Schock young linden trees.
In August 1845 the British Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert visited Albert 's beloved step-grandmother Caroline in the Winter Palace. The Privileged Gothaische Zeitung wrote about this : “The entry was as festive as it was touching, because every Gothan was heartily delighted with the happiness that the esteemed noble princess, the widowed Duchess Caroline Amalia, the noble wife of her beloved grandson, Prince Albrecht, was to share to embrace her motherly arms. "
The Dowager Duchess Caroline died on February 22nd, 1848 in the Winter Palace. As a reminder of his childhood, Prince Albert had Ferdinand Rothbart make several watercolors of the interiors, as they looked during his grandmother's lifetime.
History of use since 1848
On December 1, 1849, Camillo von Seebach (1808-1894) was appointed Minister of State and moved into some attic rooms in the Winter Palace, which he lived in until his retirement in 1888. The ground floor and first floor were re-used in the following years for Department I of the Ducal State Ministry and for the Statistical Bureau.
His successor in office Gisbert von Bonin-Brettin (1841-1913) also lived in the Winter Palace until his retirement in 1891. The next Minister of State, Carl Stenge (1843–1907), however, stayed in his own property at 21 Gartenstrasse. Other tenants were Colonel Malotki and Colonel von Westernhagen from 1880–1885 , Royal Prussian Lieutenant Colonel von Treskow from 1887–1888 , and Baron Reinhard zu Berlin in 1891 .
From 1896 to 1900 the sisters Marie and Martha Seyfarth ran a boarding school in the Winter Palace, where architect Richard Klepzig also lived from 1899 to 1900 . The house was then moved back into by a minister, the lawyer Otto von Hentig (1852-1934), who among other things had the existing false ceilings made of gothic paper mache installed. He was followed in 1905 by Hofmarschall Fritz von Rüxleben (1860–1923), who only lived in Gotha during the winter and, among other things, directed the ducal court theaters. He had the house thoroughly repaired in 1905–1906.
After the abdication of Carl Eduard Herzog von Sachsen-Coburg and Gotha and the establishment of the Free State of Gotha in November 1918, the palace was rented to various institutions: including the welfare service for disabled people, the district library, the small settlement company, the state settlement company Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach and the Chamber of Crafts . For this purpose, modernization work was carried out on the building again from 1920–1923.
In 1938 it became the publishing house of the Thuringian Gauzeitung - Gothaer Beobachter and housed a branch of the weekly newspaper Der Stürmer . To this end, it was rebuilt and renovated again: the balcony on the south side was demolished and the entrance hall was enlarged by adding the two rooms facing south. The rustic facade on the ground floor was replaced by a new smooth plaster and the entrance changed in a neoclassical form. The roof was re-covered with red beaver tails .
In 1949 the Winter Palace became a branch of the GDR daily Das Volk , an organ of the SED district leadership in the Erfurt district .
Decay since 1990 and demolition
With the fall of the Wall in 1990, the Winter Palace became the property of the City of Gotha. The newspaper Das Volk was taken over by the Essen media group WAZ and continued as the Thuringian General . After an offer by the Thüringer Allgemeine to purchase the Winter Palace property for around DM 1,500,000 had been rejected by the city, the newspaper gave up the location. Thereafter, the Gotha youth club used the Winter Palace until 1991 and left traces there. Some of the rooms were heavily devastated and their walls smeared. After that the palace stood empty.
Since the zinc sheet covers and gullies, which were last renewed in 1938, gradually corroded and the city refrained from any maintenance work on the cultural monument, rainwater finally continuously penetrated the building, especially on the throats of the dormers and the concealed box gutter. Above all, the upper framing beams , which connected the ceiling beams with the facade, as well as the ends of the roof beams and rafters were damaged. In August 2006, two upstairs posts came loose and threatened to fall onto the street. Instead of properly repairing the damage that was still manageable at the time and sealing the roof, the Gotha City Council decided on September 13, 2006 to prepare for demolition. After vigorous protests from home and abroad, Mayor Knut Kreuch informed the city council and the public on November 21, 2006 that the Winter Palace would initially be secured with 50,000 euros. However, the roof was not properly sealed, so that water continued to enter the building. A little later, a plan for the use as a city library was commissioned, which, however, only provided for the preservation of the facade and a completely new concrete structure behind it. In April 2007, the servants' wing built in 1811 was demolished behind the main building.
In March 2011, to the surprise of the public, demolition work began on the Winter Palace. According to statements from the city administration, the street facades of the building should be preserved and used for the reconstruction. After the side wing with gate passage, built in 1823, was demolished, the roof of the main building and the facade facing the courtyard were also demolished. A large part of the street-side facade, including the central riser, collapsed as the facade was neither statically secured nor separated from the rest of the building. Only small remnants of the ground floor of the street front remained of the palace.
New build 2011 to 2014
In September 2011 the foundation stone was laid for the new construction of the Winter Palace, which has housed the Heinrich Heine City Library since March 29, 2014 , which until then had been housed in the neighboring orange house of the Gotha Orangery . The exterior of the palace was rebuilt in its historical form, including the remains of the original building, whereby the new building was connected to the neighboring former court gardener's house (built in 1773 by Johann David Weidner ). 85% of the total construction costs of 5.7 million euros were financed by urban development funds. The interior of the new building is designed in a simple and functional way in accordance with the requirements of a modern library. The originally planned reconstruction of the balcony room on the first floor based on historical models was not implemented. Only in the vestibule were the ceilings provided with classicist stucco decorations based on the historical model. The Winter Palace was given a modern extension, which according instead of the old side wing next to the Philosopher Friede Springer as a peace-Springer building was named. In addition to library rooms, it also houses an event hall named after the Gotha author and librarian Hanns Cibulka . The servant wing of the palace from 1811, which was demolished in 2007, was not rebuilt. The courtyard of the current city library framed by the Winter Palace and the new side wing is named after the former resident of the palace, Duchess Karoline Amalie , Karolinenhof .
Others
In 2009 the Gotha-based authors Andreas M. Cramer and Ralph-Uwe Heinz made the Winter Palace the alleged place of origin of the Dinner for One in their stage play Dar ninezschsde Gebordsdaach or Dinner on Goth'sch . In the preface to her dialect adaptation of the New Year's Eve classic, it is claimed that the Dowager Duchess Karoline Amalie (Sophie Karoline Amalie, or Duchess Sophie for short) celebrated her birthdays here at the time with her four long-dead, prominent friends, who were represented by her servant were. The anecdote about this strange birthday ritual came to Great Britain in 1845 after Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha , the dowager's favorite grandson, where it was rediscovered in the 1930s by the playwright Lauri Wylie and adapted for the stage as Dinner for One . The tongue-in-cheek mixture of real names, places and events with fictional occurrences makes the palace the “place of origin” of the famous dinner.
literature
- Vera Dähnert: Winter Palace: Its demolition is getting closer. In: Thüringer Allgemeine Gotha, September 13, 2006
- Wolfgang Leissling: Gotha Winter Palace: construction instead of demolition. In: Thüringer Allgemeine, Erfurt, January 12, 2007
- Matthias Wenzel: The history of the Winter Palace in Friedrichstraße 2. In: Thüringer Landeszeitung Gotha, July 13th and 20th, 2002
Web links
- Private page from Elmar Nolte about the Winter Palace, Erfurt 2006-2007
- A picture gallery by Michael Neue from Gotha, which traces the development from the demolition in 2011 to the reopening in 2014.
Individual evidence
- ^ City press release, Work on the Winter Palace , March 2, 2011
- ↑ Claudia Klinger: Partial demolition of the Winter Palace in Gotha with collapse , in: Gothaer Tagespost / TLZ, March 14, 2011
- ^ Matthias Benkenstein: Laying of the foundation stone for the new winter palace in Gotha , in: Gothaer Tagespost / TLZ, September 6, 2011
- ↑ a b Renovation of the Winter Palace completed , press release from the City of Gotha, accessed on April 14, 2015
- ↑ Allgemeine Anzeiger Gotha from March 19, 2014
- ↑ Dinner in Goth'sch
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 52.1 ″ N , 10 ° 42 ′ 33.5 ″ E