Musikviertel


Musikviertel is a neighbourhood in Leipzig, Germany. The Musikviertel is part of the locality Zentrum-Süd in the borough of Leipzig-Mitte.The name goes back to the first music institutions built in the neighbourhood, the second Gewandhaus and the new building of the [University of Music and Theatre Leipzig|Royal Conservatory of Music]. Several streets in the neighbourhood are named after composers, which is why the term musicians' quarter is used – incorrectly. Characteristic of the Musikviertel is the large number of buildings of historicism; numerous buildings are listed as Kulturdenkmal. Since 1991, an ensemble monument and preservation statute has been in force for the entire neigbourhood. It has an area of around and about 5,000 inhabitants.

Location and location typology

The Musikviertel adjoins the city centre of Leipzig in a south-westerly direction. It is bordered to the east and southeast by the Pleißemühlgraben, and to the southwest, west and north by the Karl-Tauchnitz-Strasse, which runs in an arc. To the west and north of the neighbourhood are the Clara-Zetkin-Park and the Johannapark; to the east is the Innere Südvorstadt. According to the municipal structure of Leipzig, which has been in force since 1992, the Musikviertel is the western part of the Zentrum-Süd locality.
The northern part of the Musikviertel is characterised by representative public buildings: the Federal Administrative Court building, the University Library, the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig, the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig as well as a branch of the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, the German Institute for Literature, the Humanities Centre of the Leipzig University and the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig. The neighbourhood has many magnificent villas and bourgeois residences, which made the Musikviertel one of the most elegant neighbourhoods in the city. The gaps torn during the Second World War were partly filled with prefabricated buildings. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a number of new villas, residential and office buildings were added from the mid-1990s onwards. Nevertheless, some gaps in the original building fabric have not been closed to this day. The Musikviertel is crossed by the Pleißemühlgraben, which has been partially restored since 1990 after being covered in the 1950s; a complete opening of the ditch is planned.

History

Until 1880

Until the first half of the 19th century, Leipzig's southwestern vorstadt area was a barely developed floodplain and garden landscape. Marshy meadows, ponds, alluvial forest and gardens characterised the terrain.
In the Middle Ages, the Cistercian nuns of the Georgenkloster had settled in the southwest in front of the city wall near the Pleissenburg until 1543 and built, among other things, a mill on the Pleißemühlgraben, the Nonnenmühle, which existed until 1890. They also ran a brickyard, for which they used the clay of the floodplain. The remaining holes of the clay pits remained as ponds. At the beginning of the 19th century, there were gardens and ponds west of the Pleißemühlgraben, first Schwägrichen's Garden followed by the Trier Garden with two large ponds, which served the university as a botanical garden from 1806.
It was joined by the Schimmelsche Gut, which bordered on the raft site, on which the timber rafted to Leipzig from the Vogtland and the Altenburger Land was stacked. The Schimmel estate had three ponds, the largest of which had an island. The farmer Johann Friedrich Schimmel had acquired the estate in 1823 and set up a restaurant on the island, which was very popular with the people of Leipzig, which could be reached via a wooden footbridge or by boat. He called the island "Buen Retiro".
In 1861, the Johannapark was completed on the former meadow site by Peter Joseph Lenné on behalf of Wilhelm Theodor Seyfferth. The efficiency of the railway made it possible to discontinue raft operations in 1864, so that the raft site could be transformed into a decorative place. A year later, the regulation of the Pleiße and Elster was started and new building land was gained by draining the area and backfilling the Alte Pleiße. In 1876, the botanical garden was relocated to today's Linnéstrasse.

1880–1945

In 1880, the city acquired, among other things, the area of the Schimmelsche Gut, and extensive land development and redesign began, including housing subdivision. The remaining holes of the drained ponds were filled in and the entire building site of the neighbourhood was leveled in an elaborate way, whereby the earth fills had immense dimensions. For flood protection, the ground level of the built-up terrain was raised by about compared to the meadows of the later King Albert Park. In 1882, the foundation stone was laid for the construction of the New Concert House, marking the beginning of the development of the Musikviertel. In 1884, this building – soon to be called the New Gewandhaus – was inaugurated. In 1887, the Royal Conservatory of Music was inaugurated. From 1888 to 1895, the Imperial Court building was built. In 1890 the Royal Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Trade was completed and in 1891 the university library Bibliotheca Albertina. In 1891, the new building of the Municipal Trade School was also handed over to its purpose, but its west wing was not completed until 1903. With the completion of the Imperial Court in 1895, the construction of the large public buildings in the Musikviertel was almost complete. From 1896, the electric tram ran through the Musikviertel. In 1897, the Saxon-Thuringian Industrial and Commercial Exhibition took place on the edge of the new neighbourhood.
From the mid-1880s, housing construction also began in the Musikviertel. Villas and multi-storey apartment buildings were built in closed and open building styles. Most of the buildings built first can be assigned to one of the so-called neo-styles of historicism in terms of architectural history. The stylistic model for the private builders was the large public buildings in the neighbourhood. An example of this is the striking Roßbach corner house in the Renaissance Revival style, which was designed by the architect of the Bibliotheca Albertina and completed in 1893. After 1900, echoes of Art Nouveau can be found on some buildings, which can be seen in particular in the ornamentation and decoration of the façade design of some houses.
For the development of the area, there were detailed regulations such as building height, building distances, number of storeys and degree of development of the plots. The approval of the façade view was also reserved for the city council. Thus, with the Musikviertel, Leipzig received a particularly valuable area in terms of urban development, clearly structured by closed urban structures, which is now a listed ensemble as a cultural property ensemble.
The sides facing or close to the park were decorated with a ring of villas. The villa plots were quite generously sized and ranged from, so that there was enough space for outbuildings, meter-high fenced front gardens and elaborately designed gardens. This was especially true of the villas on Karl-Tauchnitz-Strasse, of which a good third are still preserved. Of the total of 71 villas in the district, 21 alone were designed by Max Pommer. He is followed by Peter Dybwad and Arwed Roßbach.
Around 1900, the development of the Musikviertel could in principle be considered complete. For decades, the new neighbourhood became the preferred address of Leipzig's Bildungsbürgertum. On 20 February 1944, an air raid was carried out on Leipzig and its southern district. In the Musikviertel, more than 50 percent of the buildings, including the Gewandhaus, the hall of the Conservatory, the Imperial Court, the University Library, many villas and residential buildings, were completely destroyed or severely damaged. Further attacks hit the Musikviertel on 27 February and 6 April 1945. In the latter, the central wing and the eastern part of the building of the Bibliotheca Albertina were destroyed.

1945–1990

The rubble clearance, which had already begun in 1945/46, was intensified from 1947 onwards by the operation of a light railway across the Musikviertel, which transported the rubble along Karl-Tauchnitz-, Ferdinand-Rhode- and Wundtstrasse to the Bauernwiesen, where the Fockeberg was built.
On 1 October 1946, the former conservatory was reopened as the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik – Mendelssohn Akademie and on 26 April 1947 the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, short: HGB. The Georgi Dimitroff Museum was opened in the former Imperial Court on 18 June 1952, and the Museum der bildenden Künste also found a new home in the former Imperial Court. In 1953, the Theaterhochschule Leipzig was founded after the relocation of the German Theatre Institute, which had been founded in Weimar in 1947, to the Leipzig Musikviertel.
In 1955, the vaulting of the Pleißemühlgraben, which had begun in 1951, was completed. In 1968, the ruins of the second Gewandhaus, which could be rebuilt, were demolished, as were some partly well-preserved residential buildings in Ferdinand-Rhode-Strasse. By 1969, a guest house of the Council of Ministers of East Germany had been built in Schwägrichenstrasse, which was used especially during Leipzig Trade Fairs and where the billion-euro loan for East Germany was negotiated between Franz Josef Strauss and Erich Honecker in 1983.
From 1969 onwards, five 11-storey apartment blocks were built in prefabricated construction in the middle of the Musikviertel, which contradicted its former character. In each of these cases, 4 to 5 of the original plots from the time of origin were built over with monotonous large-panel-system buildings by the architect Wolfgang Scheibe. In order to make room for this, some of the old buildings that were still relatively well preserved and partly inhabited were demolished. In Pestalozzistrasse, a Polytechnic Secondary School named Polytechnische Oberschule Clara Zetkin was built in 1972 and an Extended Secondary School in 1973, which were also attended by the St. Thomas students.
In 1978, three 16-storey high-rise buildings of the PH 16 type, popularly known as "the three equals", were erected in the north-west corner of the Musikviertel on Karl-Tauchnitz-Strasse and Wächterstrasse. Regardless of the typical location, a total of six large plots of war-damaged villas were built over. Originally, the urban planning in the 1960s under the direction of Leipzig's chief architect Horst Siegel for the entire neighbourhood was even more profound. Four 28-storey high-rise buildings and a "socialist" Musikviertel with large-panel and high-rise buildings were to be built on this site. A drawing of this development concept by Hans-Dietrich Wellner from 1969 has been preserved.

After 1990

As early as 1990, the first efforts to open the Pleißemühlgraben began with the "Pleiße ans Licht" campaign. In 1998, the first completely completed opening section between Mahlmannstrasse and Braustrasse was handed over; In 2002, the section in front of the Imperial Court building, which was followed by the area behind the prefabricated building on Grassistrasse and finally in 2008 the Mendelssohn-Embankment between Mozartstrasse and Beethovenstrasse. In 2000, the light steles, which glow blue at night along the open section of the body of water in front of the Imperial Court building, were erected and the Fritz von Harck green space, which had been redesigned in wave form, was handed over.
In 1992, the "Hans Otto" Theatre Academy merged with the "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" University of Music and Theatre, and the US Consulate General in the Amerika Haus in Wilhelm-Seyfferth-Strasse was reopened. In 1995, the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig moved to a villa in Karl-Tauchnitz-Strasse and the former "Johannes R. Becher" Literature Institute was re-formed as the German Institute for Literature with an affiliation to the university.
In 1998, the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig opened in the Herfurthsche Villa in Karl-Tauchnitz-Strasse, which was supplemented by an exhibition pavilion in 2004. From 2000 to 2002, Leipzig University built the new building for the humanities and social sciences on the site of the former second Gewandhaus. At the time of its completion, the completely rebuilt and expanded university library was also handed over. In the same year, the Federal Administrative Court began its work in the Reich Court building, which had previously been extensively renovated over several years.
Throughout the Musikviertel, numerous villas and town houses were extensively renovated after 1990. A highlight and certain conclusion was the restoration of the residential palace built by Arwed Roßbach at Beethovenstrasse 8 in 2004/2005. But the prefabricated buildings were also modernized. Due to their favourable location to the city and park, they have an occupancy rate far above average for prefabricated buildings. In recent years, numerous new residential and commercial buildings have also been built in the Musikviertel, some of which have a very individual style. While the former guest house of the Council of Ministers, a prime example of GDR modernist architecture, stood vacant and fell into disrepair for more than 20 years, a high-quality new residential complex was built on neighboring land.
The guest house by the architects Wolfgang Scheibe and Frieder Gebhardt has been empty for decades. Finally, in 2020/21, the renovation in line with the preservation of historical monuments began and was completed in 2023.
After the Thomasschule zu Leipzig moved out of the prefabricated building on Telemannstrasse in 2000 and was vacant for a few years, the buildings were demolished. A new school complex was built, which went into operation in the 2017/2018 school year under the name Gymnasium Telemannstrasse. In 2018, the school was given the name Gerda-Taro-Schule – Gymnasium der Stadt Leipzig.

Architects of the neighbourhood


  • Max Bösenberg
  • Otto Brückwald
  • Fritz Drechsler
  • Peter Dybwad
  • Bruno Eelbo, architectural firm Weichardt & Eelbo
  • Max Fricke
  • Gustav Adolf Geyer
  • Emil Franz Hänsel
  • Max Hasak
  • Arthur Johlige, architectural firm Schmidt & Johlige
  • Max Pommer
  • Ernst Riedel
  • Arwed Roßbach
  • Wolfgang Scheibe
  • August Hermann Schmidt, architectural firm Schmidt & Johlige
  • Emanuel von Seidl
  • Clemens Thieme
  • Richard Tschammer, Weidenbach & Tschammer Architects
  • Georg Weidenbach, Architects Weidenbach & Tschammer
  • Karl Weichardt, architectural firm Weichardt & Eelbo
  • Julius Zeissig

On the history of music in the district

Since the opening of the New Gewandhaus and the Conservatory, music history has been written in the Musikviertel for decades. Around 1830, cities in northern and central Germany emerged as centres of a new style in music. Until then, the First Viennese School had been predominant in contemporary musical life. In Leipzig, Robert Schumann and Clara Schumann prepared the ground for Romanticism and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy shaped it into the so-called "Leipzig School" in music. From a music-historical point of view, the time of construction of the buildings falls almost exactly in the middle of the Romantic era in music – in the heyday of High Romanticism. The Leipzig musical tradition established by Mendelssohn in the predecessor buildings in the city centre has been continued since the mid-1880s in the new buildings in the Musikviertel. The two music institutions in the immediate vicinity of each other – as before at the old location – enabled a mutually beneficial combination of professional training and musical practice, as Mendelssohn had specified as a maxim.
Since 1892, Mendelssohn's monument has stood in front of the main entrance to the Gewandhaus in recognition of his services to music, which the National Socialists had removed in a cloak-and-dagger operation on 9/10 November 1936. It bore the inscription on the front of the granite pedestal: "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy". On the side facing the entrance to the Gewandhaus : "Noble only announces the language of music". A few metres away from the site of the first monument, a portrait stele by the sculptor Walter Arnold now stands on the Mendelssohn-Embankment. In 1947, the second Mendelssohn monument was unveiled at the front of the ruins of the Gewandhaus on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the composer's death. This has been moved several times over the years and returned to its old place in 2006. Today, the gaze of the Mendelssohn bust goes to the former temple of the Muses, which no longer exists. In 2008, a replica of the first monument by Werner Stein was made and erected opposite the main portal of Leipzig's St. Thomas Church. The monument faces south to the old site in the Musikviertel, which is about away.
From the Old Gewandhaus, the motto above the gallery from the time of the Great Concert was adopted, which now adorned the triangular gable of the new house:
The first Gewandhaus Kapellmeister at the Neues Concerthaus was Carl Reinecke, a friend of Felix Mendelssohn. He had already worked in this function at the old house since 1860 and remained in this office until 1895. Since 1930, a monument to the Gewandhaus Kapellmeister Arthur Nikisch by Hugo Lederer has stood at the rear entrance of the building. It was Nikisch who led the orchestra to world fame in his 26-year era as conductor and Gewandhaus Kapellmeister. In 1918, Arthur Nikisch also founded the tradition of New Year's Eve concerts at the second Gewandhaus with the performance of Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven) – a tradition that would later spread worldwide. Arthur Nikisch earned great merits in establishing Eastern European composers in Germany by introducing the people of Leipzig to their music as Kapellmeister at the Neues Theater and at the same time Gewandhaus Kapellmeister. His successor, Wilhelm Furtwängler, was, like Arthur Nikisch, Gewandhaus Kapellmeister and chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Furtwängler's era at the Gewandhaus, however, only lasted from 1922 to 1928: Bruno Walter, who succeeded Furtwängler until 1933, was expelled from the office of Gewandhaus Kapellmeister as a Jew and emigrated to the USA, where he later became chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Hermann Abendroth was the last Gewandhaus conductor at the second Gewandhaus from 1934 until its destruction in 1944.
Until 1944, the Musikviertel was home to the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Some of the most famous conductors of the period between the end of the 19th century and the 1940s also worked at the Gewandhaus as orchestra conductors. A number of works of world music culture were premiered here. The composers Johannes Brahms, Peter Tchaikovsky, Edvard Grieg, Richard Strauss, Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky and Hans Pfitzner themselves stood at the conductor's podium to perform one of their works. Often these were the premieres in Leipzig or in Germany. From the many musical highlights over the years, some stand out. Arturo Toscanini gave a guest performance with the New York Philharmonic. The London Philharmonic Orchestra gave a concert with Thomas Beecham at the conductor's stand. What is remarkable about the two guest performances of the foreign orchestras is that they remained the only exceptions. During the six decades from 1884 to 1944, the house was virtually performed solely by the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Guest conductors at the second Gewandhaus, on the other hand, appeared more frequently. Among them were such important ones as Karl Böhm, Fritz Busch, Eugen Jochum, Erich Kleiber, Otto Klemperer and others.
In 1930, the 14-year-old Yehudi Menuhin entered the Leipzig concert stage for the first time here. The list of famous soloists who performed at the second Gewandhaus cannot be approximated due to lack of space. Representative of the many musicians are just a few of the best-known names:
Numerous instrumental musicians, soloists and virtuosos, composers and conductors, singers and choirs worked at the second Gewandhaus or had their apprenticeship years as students at the local conservatory. Due to the abundance of names and events, the music history in the neighbourhood can only be sketched. An event of great significance was the blowing up and clearing of the ruins of the Gewandhaus in 1968. For a long time, there had been the prospect of either resurrecting the war-damaged building from the ruins as a concert hall or giving it a new function as a hall of the conservatory, which was completely destroyed. In the mid-1960s, the city council decided on a demolition solution and the construction of the third Gewandhaus on today's Augustusplatz opposite the opera house. This meant that a former supporting pillar for musical life in the Musikviertel was finally removed. Karl Zumpe, the then Gewandhaus director, summed up his impressions in the following words:
With the construction of the new concert hall in 2001 at the University of Music and Theatre "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy", there is a venue for larger audiences in the Musikviertel for the first time in decades. For comparison, the seating capacity of the second Gewandhaus: the Great Hall had 1,700 seats for concerts and the Small Hall held 650 listeners for all forms of chamber music. In 2003, a memorial plaque was unveiled for the ruins of the Gewandhaus on the east side of the Leipzig University Humanities centre. On the plaque is the relief of the second Gewandhaus and some information about the master builders, the Gewandhaus Kapellmeisters who worked here and the destruction of the house.
;Well-known musicians
In addition to the names listed below as well-known residents, a limited selection of personalities of rank in music history whose place of work was at least temporarily in the Musikviertel:
; Notable residents

Streets

In the Musikviertel, the streets running north-south are mainly named after Leipzig donors and those running east-west are mainly named after composers. Some of the namesakes of the streets are also honorary citizens of Leipzig. The naming of the streets, which were marked with letters and numbers at the time of planning and development, took place from 1885 onwards.

North-south direction

  • Karl-Tauchnitz-Strasse, after Karl Tauchnitz, publisher and benefactor; the street has its beginning at the northeastern border of the neighbourhood opposite the New Town Hall and runs first straight east-west and then mostly in an arc in a north-south direction.
  • Schwägrichenstrasse, after Christian Friedrich Schwägrichen, botanist and university teacher
  • Ferdinand-Rhode-Strasse, after Ferdinand Rhode, merchant and benefactor
  • Grassistrasse, after Franz Dominic Grassi, merchant and benefactor
  • Wilhelm-Seyfferth-Strasse, after Wilhelm Theodor Seyfferth, banker, railway pioneer and benefactor
  • Simsonstrasse ; before and after Martin Eduard von Simson, jurist and first president of the Imperial Court
  • Lampestrasse, parallel street to Simsonstrasse, both separated by the Pleißemühlgraben, which is still filled in at this point, after Carl Lampe, entrepreneur, patron of the arts and railway pioneer
  • Simsonplatz, forecourt of the Federal Administrative Court, 1900–1947 Reichsgerichtsplatz, 1947–1949 Präsident-Friedrichs-Platz, after the Saxon politician Rudolf Friedrichs, 1949–1997 Georgi-Dimitroff-Platz, after Georgi Dimitroff, Bulgarian communist and defendant in the Reichstag fire trial
  • Wundtstrasse, after Wilhelm Wundt, philosopher, physiologist and psychologist

East-west direction