User:Happylilgerlzer/sandbox/Postplatz (Görlitz)

The Postplatz is an inner-city square in Görlitz, Saxony and was laid out in the middle of the 19th century. It connects the old town with the newer Gründerzeit city center, which extends in the direction of the train station. The square is surrounded by several representative buildings of that period and the Gothic Church Frauenkirche.

Location
The Postplatz is located on the axis between the historic parts of Görlitz such as the Upper Market Square and the newer, Prussian aged area that extends towards the railroad station.

The oval square is bordered to the south by a row of Gründerzeit buildings. Jakobstraße and Berliner Straße form the extension to the southern train station. Typical Prussian buildings border the square to the east and west. The post office in particular, with its large backyard, occupies almost the entire eastern area. The plain red clinker brick building in the west today houses the district and local courts. A prominent building of the late neoclassicist style of the early Wilhelminian period is located on the north side of the square. The Gothic Church Frauenkirche is located to the north-east. In the middle of the square stands an art fountain, the Muschelminna.

Early Modern Period


The area that was later to become Postplatz was located south of the Frauenkirche outside the city walls. At that time it was called Plan. Next to the Frauenkirche stood the Frauenspital, founded in 1483, which provided accommodation and meals for pilgrims and traveling scholars. The hospital grounds extended far to the west over parts of today's Postplatz and Demianiplatz. The Frauenkirche with adjacent cemetery and hospital grounds were extended as an additional line of fortifications. Travelers had to pass through the Spittel gate to get to the Frauenkirche and later pass the Thick Tower to reach the core city.

Until the 19th century, the area in front of the Frauenkirche and the Frauenspital was not spatially designed and was very rural. Several avenues branched off from the Spittel gate in the direction of the Lazarett (later Berlin Street), garden facilities (later Jakob Street) and Schützenweg (later Schützen Street). They thus provided the rough spatial layout of the future Postplatz.

Prussian Era
In 1844, the municipal hospital was built on the southwest corner, roughly on the site of today's municipal savings bank. Opposite was the old military hospital. With the completion of the Görlitz railroad station in 1847, the expansion of the development in its direction also began. Between the years 1851 and 1855, the new post office building was erected on the eastern side of the square. The large courtyard was walled in a semicircle and served as an entrance for stagecoaches. The new name Postplatz was first given to the triangle behind the post office, between Konsulstraße and Schuetzenstraße. The area in front of the post office, on the other hand, was at first only strewn with gravel and planted with trees at the edges. It was used as a fairground for some time.

In 1865, the Royal District Court relocated from the old stock exchange on Lower Market Square to the new building on Postplatz. The strictly structured, matter-of-fact clinker facade still shows the entry of Prussian building culture by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Behind the court extended the prison, in whose courtyard executions with the hand axe still took place until about the year 1900. The executions were announced in the Görlitz daily newspapers with the name and crime of the condemned.

In 1863, the Görlitz merchant Eduard Schultze purchased the entire site of the former womans hospital on the north side of the square opposite the Frauenkirche. The buyer had the building demolished and a new building erected there by master builder Pfeiffer. The building in the style of late classicism was of a width previously unknown in the city. It extended between the Frauenkirche and the courthouse. The building was completed in 1868. The Hotel Victoria moved into the central part. Retailers and the "Wiener Café" moved into the first floor to the left and right of the hotel. It was not until 1888 that Eduard Schultze's business, now already taken over by his sons Gustav and Alfred, was moved from Upper Market Square to the building.

German Empire
In 1882, the first streetcar, still pulled by horses, crossed the square. In 1897, the first electric streetcar followed. The tracks ran along the north and south of the square and were only moved to the north side with the reconstruction in 1937/38. From May 1898 to September 1905, the terminal stop of streetcar line IV to the Jewish Cemetery in the southern part of the city was located in front of the courthouse, and from May 1899 onward to Biesnitz district. The two tracks in front of the post office led to the marksmen club house and to the Lower Market Square, and from December 1907 also to the city hospital. North of the post office, another two tracks led further to the inn "Stadt Prag" and from May 1900 further to Moys district. Both of the latter terminuses have been located in the neighboring Polish city of Zgorzelec since 1945 and no longer exist as terminuses of the Görlitz streetcar network. Even today, the two municipal streetcar lines cross the Postplatz.

The Natural Research Society of Görlitz (de:Naturforschende Gesellschaft der Oberlausitz) received a cast-iron weather column in 1883. It was initially placed behind the post office opposite the Frauenkirche, but changed its location in 1931 in front of the court. It disappeared in 1938 and was not put up again afterwards.

On November 12, 1887, the inauguration ceremony took place under Lord Mayor Clemens Theodor Reichert for the art fountain in the center of the square. With the Muschelminna, as the fountain figure is popularly known, the transformation of the gravel area between the post office and the courthouse began. The reason for this is said to have been a walk in 1877 by Mayor Johannes Gobbin with Silesian Chief President Robert von Puttkamer. The chief president, impressed by the new buildings, is said to have criticized the gravel area in the middle and promised his financial support for the construction of a fountain.

The horticultural and urban design of the square was not completed until 1889. In a star shape, four ornately paved paths led from the fountain basin to a circular path around the square. The green areas were planted with shrubs and surrounded by hedges. From 1887, the eastern image of the square changed once again, as the post office was given a more representative new building. It was intended to emphasize the world status of the Wilhelmine Empire. The magnificent clinker brick building, decorated with numerous figurative ornaments, now created a fitting counterpart to the courthouse. The semicircular walled rear courtyard in the direction of Schützenstraße largely followed the previous building.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the park of the old hospital from 1844 was still located at the southwest corner of the square. It was not until the new hospital building on Girbigsdorfer Strasse was completed in 1905 that the building in the city center became superfluous. In 1911, the city approved the construction of a new city savings bank, which until then had been housed in the city hall. The Art Nouveau building was completed as early as 1913. The building appears very massive due to the large natural stone ashlars on the facade and the stair tower with the wide portal. The corner tower ends in a metal-clad dome and a golden flagpole with the lion from the city coat of arms. The lion has since been replaced by the Sparkasse sign.

Weimar Republic
The square followed almost all the post-war turmoil after World War I, such as the stream of revolutionaries passing by on November 9, 1918, the garrison troops returning home from the war a little later, the first Labour Day permitted by authorities on May 1, 1919, and finally the Freikorps under Wilhelm Fraupel, which took part in the Kapp Putsch in 1920.

The situation calmed down in the early 1920s and the motorization of the citizens slowly increased. The consequence of this increasing motorization, even if only a few Görlitz residents could afford a motorcycle or even a car, was that one of the first gas stations opened in the city center north of the post office. Numerous cafés lined the square, one of the most famous was probably the "Cafè Reichspost", later "Cafè Posteck" with its glass gallery on the corner with the Frauenkirche. The Cafè Vienna in the left wing of the group of buildings on the north side built by Eduard Schultze became a Casino. In 1926, the theatre passage was opened and has since been a popular shortcut for pedestrians between Demianiplatz and Postplatz.

National Socialism and World War II
Many highly respected citizens lived and worked on the square, among them the photographer Alfred Jäschke, famous for his photos of Gerhart Hauptmann, the lawyers Dr. Glätzner and Albert Nathan with his son Dr. Hans Nathan and the socially committed dentist Dr. Fritz Warschawski. The names of the dentist and Albert Nathan disappeared from the doorbells of the houses on Postplatz in 1933. Fritz Warschawski had left Germany overnight with his family, the lawyer Hans Nathan moved with his family to Prague and his father to a retirement home in Berlin. Warschawski and Nathan were Jews. The square was now called Hindenburgplatz, named after Paul von Hindenburg. Swastika flags flew from the post office and the court. The well-known Jewish lawyer Paul Mühsam, who crossed Postplatz every day on his way to work, noted his experiences of Görlitz under the National Socialists in his memoirs under the title Ich bin ein Mensch gewesen. He was the first Görlitz Jew to emigrate to Palestine in 1933.

The young carpenter Hans-Georg Otto gathered in his apartment at Hindenburgplatz 11 with some apprentices and young workers. They talked about the political situation, received foreign radio stations and distributed leaflets from here warning of the impending war. The young men were arrested as early as 1934 and convicted of "preparation for high treason." Hans-Georg Otto was imprisoned in Wohlau and Luckau prisons until 1942, after which he was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he died during the evacuation march in 1945.

Professor K. Olbricht, a National Socialist cultural politician published in 1936 in the booklet Unser schönes Görlitz his opinion that he did not like the Hindenburgplatz in its former form. He complained about the visual axis to the Frauenkirche destroyed by Eduard Schultzes house. He said the building was too high and, according to his sketches in the notebook, should simply be shortened by one to three stories on the eastern wing. The base of the fountain was also to be simplified and the clinker facades of the post office and the courthouse were to be plastered. The war prevented the implementation of these plans. In 1937/38, however, a fundamental redesign of the square took place, and the star-shaped paved paths leading to the fountain were removed and planted. The fountain was now surrounded by a lawn oval and a path at each end of which benches were placed.

A wooden scaffold was erected around the base of the Muschelminna in July 1942, and the bronze figure was dismantled and taken to the freight yard as armaments scrap. With the front approaching in the last days of the war in 1945, numerous bodies of deserters and looters were dumped on the southwest side of the square as a deterrent. The square was largely spared artillery hits, bombing and low-level bombardment.

Postwar years and GDR
At the beginning of 1945, the Soviet occupation zone moved into Görlitz. They set up their military command with the city commander Gardeoberst Iljitsch Nesterow at the head in the court and the neighboring city savings bank. The facades of the buildings were covered with numerous political slogans and oversized portraits of Joseph Stalin. The base of the artificial fountain was covered with a structure made of wood and cardboard and decorated with red stars. It served as a kind of victory temple. On the lawn there were also illuminated portraits of Lenin, Molotov, Shukov and Stalin at night, and the Moscow radio station broadcast news and music over the square for 24 hours. Postplatz now regained its old name for a short time.

With the new border demarcation on the Oder-Neisse line, the city was separated into the Polish eastern part Zgorzelec and the part remaining with Germany. In 1944, there were already about 99,000 people living in both parts of the city. In 1945 there were over 100,000 people, among them many refugees from the eastern territories. They now crowded into the western part of the city. This led to an extreme housing shortage. Even the houses on Postplatz were densely populated up to the roofs. Never before had so many people lived under the residential address Postplatz; this can be verified by address books from the transitional period to the 1950s. Even in the courthouse, a wide variety of tenants rented rooms, e.g., the Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime and the Democratic Women's League of Germany.

In 1951 the square was renamed again to Platz der Befreiung (Square of Liberation). From now on the address of the prison behind the court - Platz der Befreiung 18 - possed a certain pun. The new name of the square did not catch on with the population as it did with other renamed squares and roads in Görlitz.

During the uprising on June 17, 1953, the prison behind the court was also occupied. During this action, all prisoners were liberated, although only the liberation of political prisoners was planned. The lawyer Dr. Carl-Albert Brüll and the teacher Günter Assman were later sentenced to long prison terms for this prisoner liberation. Postplatz was also one of the centers of the popular uprising on June 17, with several thousand demonstrators. Today, a memorial plaque commemorates the victims of the uprising.

Only hesitantly, due to shortage of materials, labor and money, the buildings on the square began to be renovated in the 1970s. More attention was paid to the green areas. The empty base of the art fountain received a small fountain, and in 1967 even a new marble fountain bowl.

From the 1960s until the Revolutions_of_1989, the Postplatz was always the grandstand for the municipal political functionaries for the Labour Day parade. They were applauded by the passing schoolchildren, brigades and company employees. From the 1980s onward, one could also observe a stronger presence of Stasi people, who made sure that no applicants for emigration used this event as a platform.

Reunification to present
In the fall of 1989, the peaceful demonstration marches also moved from Berliner Straße across Postplatz to City Hall. Monday prayers and discussions took place in the adjacent Frauenkirche. Finally, in the last half of the GDR, on May 1, 1990, the square officially regained its old name Postplatz. The first years of the market economy greatly changed the image of the square, numerous stores and restaurants closed, or found new tenants. The ceremonial return of the Muschelminna on May 1, 1994 was a highlight of the square after reunification.

In 1996, a fashion chain took over two houses on the northeast side of the Postplatz and had a new building erected. The Wilhelm theather had to make way for the modern shopping center City-Center Frauentor and a parking garage in 2004. In March 2011, a three-year construction phase began, during which the crossroads around the fountain were repaved according to historical models; the streetcar tracks, media and all pipes were replaced; asphalt surfaces were renewed. In a second construction phase, the square around the Frauenkirche was redesigned. Finally, part of the traffic areas was designated as a pedestrian zone.

The design of the investor Winfried Stöcker to demolish two unrenovated classicist mansions at Postplatz in order to expand the existing parking garage caused discussions in the urban society. Stöcker's plans envisage renovating the Görlitz department store, building an extension to its rear and connecting it via a glass gallery with the existing City-Center Frauentor, which Stöcker has also acquired. According to the investor, only a larger parking garage could ensure that the department store and the City-Center could be operated economically. The city, as the lower monument protection authority, decided in favor of the demolition; the Saxony State Office for the Preservation of Monuments decided against it. The State of Saxony determined that the buildings were monuments but approved the demolition of both mansions subject to conditions. These state that all building permits and listed building permits for the redevelopment of the department store must be available within three years. Otherwise, both mansions may not be demolished.