User:Elmbrigs/HausLichtenstein

Architecture

General

The architectural details of Lichtenstein House, in particular the interior, have only survived in the form of an extremely short monograph from the end of the 19th century. Nearly all of the documents that could have provided information about the house's structural changes over the past centuries, along with files of the city building authority, were destroyed during the Second World War. In this regard, knowledge of the house's past architectural features has to be constructed through a number of negligible photographs as well as old non-photographic images. A lot can therefore be only conjecture, which, like many historical details, is more or less supported mostly by analogies to comparable buildings.

Nevertheless, the local artistic and historical significance of the Lichtenstein House should not be underestimated, as it was one of the few surviving examples of a large, artistically ambitious baroque reconstruction of a Frankfurt old town house until 1944. In those times, renovations rarely went beyond adding stucco ceilings or changing roofs. Much more common was that completely new houses were built, but only within the framework of classic craft tradition and certainly not with the help of a non-local architect such as Louis Remy de la Fosse. After all, the Lichtenstein House was already considered a rarity for its building type, as there were only about 20 comparable stone buildings in medieval Frankfurt, of which only the Stone House (German: Steinerne Haus) and the Canvas House (German: Leinwandhaus) survived after the most severe war destruction and reconstruction.

Exterior

The Medieval Building (1326 until 1725)

The large building, which was built from quarrystone, covered an almost quadrilateral plot. This was certainly built through the merging of two smaller plots of land, especially if one considers the size of the former surrounding plots on older land registered plans. Since Lichtenstein House was located between the Schrothaus and Alt-Strahlberg buildings (house address: Römerberg 9) it only had two architecturally designed sides other than the roof.

One of the most architecturally accurate pictures of the front of the medieval Lichtenstein house before the baroque renovation came from Leopold I's coronation diary, which was engraved by Caspar Merian (see picture), who was the son of the famous Matthäus Merian. Based on this view, the well-known Frankfurt painter Carl Theodor Reiffenstein produced a detailed sketch (see picture) in the middle of the 19th century, which from today's academic perspective reproduces the building in its former state very precisely.

It shows the 5-meter-high ground floor from south to north, or left to right, with a small round-arched entrance, followed by a large round-arched entrance, which is then followed by two smaller pointed-arched entrances. The large, round-arched entrance was 4.50 meters high and led through to a closed corridor inside at the back of the house through to a door of the same size into the back garden. The other entrances opened into the interior. Above the portals were canopies called Schoppen, which were quite common in medieval Frankfurt (see, for example, the depictions by Caspar Merian, in which almost all houses have these canopies).

While the number of windows on the unadorned west-side of the medieval Lichtenstein House, which faces the courtyard, has not been recorded, the east side and the visible sides of the Römerberg (lit, "Roman Mountain") had four large cross-windows on each of the high upper floors, each floor being 4 meters high. This type of window, which was very large and expensive by medieval standards, can today only be seen in Frankfurt's stone houses.

The high gable roof, bordered by the staggered firewalls at the southern and northern ends of the facade, was the only one that was oriented towards the eaves in this area of the Römerberg. It had four small dormers on each side of the roof on all of the illustrations (and therefore probably always had these dormers), two of which were always built in a row. In addition, semicircular windows were fitted on the top of the walls on each side, allowing light to come through the top of the three attics.

Already on the roof of the medieval Lichtenstein on the level of the first attic there were dormers, three of which were small towers with pointed spires. They were probably the best references to sacred architecture and may not have been shown until a roof truss was built. This area was previously occupied by dormer windows in the early 16th century (see historical section). This form of roof tower can still be seen at Haus zum Engel on Samstagsberg (lit, "Saturday Mountain"), on the east side of the Römerberg.

Apart from a stair tower, the back garden had no additional rear houses built directly on Lichtenstein House until 1725. The stair tower had certainly existed since the house was first built, since the beam ceilings in the main house had no openings for a staircase that had been built internally. Additionally, this would probably have required a wooden support structure, which Lichtenstein House, unlike most other Gothic stone houses, also did not have. Due to the still relatively small lot of land, the beam ceilings did not require any additional support. Sometime in the 16th century, there was a late Gothic style building opposite the back courtyard which faced west to the Kerbengasse. The fact that the building had a round arch on the front and the back, which led directly into the courtyard, suggests that from the beginning it was part of Lichtenstein House as a rear house. The birds-eye view by Matthäus Merian from 1628 shows it as a simple, two-story house with a gable roof.

The Baroque Building (1725 until 1944)

Roof construction and real buildings birds-eye view, Jörg Ott's virtual old town model

Hinterhaus an der Kerbengasse, Virtuelles Altstadtmodell Jörg Ott

During the Baroque renovation, the ground floor was only slightly changed in order to harmonise the appearance of the overall house. For example, the pointed-arched doors were converted into round-arched doors and the passages' large door was made slightly smaller. Above every door, the Schoppen were replaced in favour of round skylights (called ox-eye windows), which at the time were more popular.

The number of windows on the front of the house facing the Römerberg also stayed the same and the windows were only slightly narrowed. The new windows were also provided with finer sash bars, keystones, crossettes and an enhanced profile. Filigree, artistically forged lattices were also added to the windows on the second floor. In the area of the roof, three late-Gothic towers were replaced by a dormer, on which a large dutch gable was superimposed. This brought the baroque renovation to a more muted conclusion, as the building was not made to stand out against its surrounding, which consisted mostly of medieval houses. The two volutes as well as the upper end of the gables boasted antique vases. Between the two baroque windows in the gable (which were also richly framed but in contrast to the floors below did not have a keystone)) there was a corbel with the initials of the house owner Johann Georg Leerse on it. Like the oval window above it, it was richly framed with baroque curvature work (German: Scheifwerk).

As the out-of-fashion gable was not removed on this occasion, it can be considered certain that the entire roof construction was only changed, but not completely rebuilt. The fact that the four dormers windows were only moved and the lower two were kept in a slightly more detailed version, suggests that nothing was changed of the basic interior layout of the roof.

In contrast, the changes that were made on the courtyard side appear more prominently. The old stair tower were demolished and two elongated half-timbered houses, north and south to the rear building on Kerbengasse, were built on stone ground floors:

The south of the two extensions only reached the first third of the house's length under the roof of the main house, as it accommodated a stair case to replace the tower. The remaining two thirds were only designed as an upper floor resting on pillars and built on the rear building. The northern longitudinal structure rested on the ground floor with circular arches. The two floors above were supported by cantilever stones which were decorated with baroque foliage. It was completed by a two-story mansard roof with a dormer. The hatchway provides proof that at least the roof, and perhaps also the entire building, was used primarily for storage purposes.

In 1777, the rear building to the Kerbengasse was torn down with only the preservation of the late Gothic ground floor with its large cellar vault. The upper floors were rebuilt in the simple style of the era (which already ended in the Louis XVI style), with two floors and a mansard roof (see picture). In the courtyard, a free-standing staircase, decorated with art-forged lattices, which lead into the newly renovated house was built. The house only had two dormer windows on this side due to the interlacing with the other rear buildings on the first floor. It had four windows on both the floor above and on the mansard roof, and three more dormer windows on the roof.

On the Kerbengasse side, the division with the four windows per floor and on the mansard roof was more uniform. It remains unclear whether the round arched passage was bricked up on both sides at this time or only during the 19th century in order to make the whole ground floor usable. On the Kerbengasse side, the passage was transformed into a large central one as the doors to the right and left of it were converted into two smaller windows, the rounded arches of which were still reminiscent of the original use. An ordinary door was built in to the middle of the brick arch on the courtyard side, which was surrounded on the left, right and above by an additional inbuilt window.

• Inner courtyard views of Lichtenstein House, virtual old town model by Jörg Ott
• 
  Looking West
• 
  Looking East

Ground Floor

As with almost all medieval stone buildings in Frankfurt's Altstadt, the floors, partitions and ceilings in Lichtenstein House were not large, but were structures borrowed from the half-timbered building. The ground floor's ceiling might even have had a vault that fell victim to later conversions. The original existence of a mezzanine for goods storage, which was common in old Frankfurt and is called Bobbelage in German, was more secure. There is however no information on either of these features.

The original interior layout of the ground floor remains unclear due to the lack of tradition in this area. However, a comparison of the only existing floor plan from the end of the 19th century (see picture) with the floor plan of the stone house, in which the original interior has been shown to have been preserved, suggests that the floor plan reflects a medieval style.

Accordingly, behind the two right doors seen from the Rőmerberg was a large room that led to the stair tower, which was attached to the back of the house in the Middle Ages. In more recent times, a door to the courtyard was built into the western wall. In the Middle Ages, the room was primarily used for trading and measuring purposes. Behind the second door on the left, as seen from the Römerberg, there was probably a passage separated on the left and right by half-timbered walls, which led through a round arched door at the back of the house through to the back courtyard. The door on the far left of the house led into the south-western courtyard extension after 1725. This accommodated an elaborately winding staircase from the 18th century, made of fine wood and replacing the original tower extension, which opened up to the two floors above.

During the renovation of the house in the early 20th century, the entire room made contiguous. This was probably contrary to the original floor plan and in favour of more usable space. This is as far as can be seen from the photos of the renovation received by the Institute for City History (German: Institut für Stadtgeschichte) in Frankfurt. The door, which led through to the back of the courtyard, was bricked up and provided with windows in order to brighten the room, which was otherwise only illuminated by the skylights facing the Römerberg.

Dimensions of the stucco ceiling on the first floor, around 1900

Upper Floors and the Roof

The upper floors were reachable via the aforementioned stairs of the south-western extension. The interior layout of these floors had hardly changed when compared to the ground floor. Each floor was divided into two large, connected rooms with two windows facing the Römerberg. It remains unclear whether this division was preserved from the Middle Ages, or whether the baroque building divided one room per floor. On the other hand, it is clear that the 1725 renovation added magnificent stucco ceilings to the two rooms on the first floor. The plasterer is unknown, but it could have been the Mainz artist Hennicke, who was known only by his surname, who in this time was active in the electoral office of the nearby Rőmer (Frankfurt's city hall). The execution of the Stucco ceilings is certainly reminiscent of an artist who also had courtly qualities.

Nothing is known about the three floors of the roof structure. Apart from the lower floor, which has always been illuminated by larger windows (whether by the late Gothic turrets or the baroque gable), it would have been so dark in this area that it could be used for little more than just storage purposes. In addition, the dormers, however, offered an excellent view over the roofs of the entire Altstadt, since the Lichtenstein House towered above almost all of the surrounding buildings.