The Deutschhaus or Deutschordenskommende (German for "Commandry of the Teutonic Knights") is a historical building in Mainz, western Germany, which is the seat of the Rhineland-Palatinate Landtag.
The Deutschhaus or Deutschordenskommende (German for "Commandry of the Teutonic Knights") is a historical building in Mainz, western Germany, which is the seat of the Rhineland-Palatinate Landtag.
The Baroque palace was built from 1729 to 1740 for Francis Louis of Neuburg, Prince-elector and Archbishop of Mainz from 1729 to 1732. Since he was at the same time Hochmeister of the Teutonic Knights, he built the Deutschhaus as his second residence for representative purposes in his duties as Hochmeister in the immediate neighborhood of the Electoral Palace, his other residence.
The building was constructed by Anselm Franz Freiherr von Ritter zu Groenesteyn in a style influenced by French Baroque architecture. It consists of a main building and two pavilions around a central court. One of the pavilions contained a chapel with frescoes by Christoph Thomas Scheffler. Due to the Hochmeister's death in 1732, the building was never used for its intended function as Hochmeister's residence.
In the times of French occupation leading to the establishment of the Republic of Mainz, it became the seat of the Rhenish-German National Convention. This earliest democratically elected parliament in Germany first met on March 17, 1793 in the Deutschhaus. On the next day, the Convention declared Mainz and all of the territory between Landau and Bingen to be an independent state based on the principles of liberty and egality, and the Convention's president Andreas Joseph Hofmann proclaimed the Rhenish-German Free State (Rheinisch-Deutscher Freistaat) from the balcony of the Deutschhaus. After this period had ended with the French capitulation after the Siege of Mainz on July 23, 1793, the building was used by Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen until the territory was ceded to France again in the Treaty of Campo Formio, and the Deutschhaus became the administrative seat of the French département Mont-Tonnerre. It was used as a palace by Napoleon during all of his 9 stays in Mainz, who planned to double the size of the building and use it as an imperial residence, as Mayence was intended to become one of the bonnes villes de l'Empire, the 36 most important cities of France. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, the building was used by the Dukes of Hesse-Darmstadt, who obtained the territory of Mainz after the Congress of Vienna. In 1870, the building served as the headquarters of the Prussian army in the early stages of the Franco-Prussian War.
During World War II, the building was heavily damaged, especially in the air raid of February 27, 1945, which destroyed most of the city. Of the Deutschhaus, only the exterior walls remained.
Reconstruction started after the Rhineland-Palatinate Landtag decided to move from Koblenz to Mainz on May 28, 1950. It was completed in 1951, and the new building was used for the first time for the constituting session of the newly elected Landtag on May 18, 1951. It has been used as plenary building of the Landtag ever since. As the Deutschhaus has only very limited office space for the members of parliament, a new office building for them was constructed in 1999.
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Mainz is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in the Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region—Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after Rhine-Ruhr—which also encompasses the cities of Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, Offenbach am Main, and Hanau.
Rhineland-Palatinate is a western state of Germany. It covers 19,846 km2 (7,663 sq mi) and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Koblenz, Trier, Kaiserslautern, Worms, and Neuwied. It is bordered by North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Baden-Württemberg and Hesse and by France, Luxembourg and Belgium.
The Palatinate, or the Rhenish Palatinate (Rheinpfalz), is a historical region of Germany. The Palatinate occupies most of the southern quarter of the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz), covering an area of 2,105 square miles (5,450 km2) with about 1.4 million inhabitants. Its residents are known as Palatines (Pfälzer).
The Rhineland is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section.
Koblenz is a German city on the banks of the Rhine and the Moselle, a multinational tributary.
The Rhineland-Palatinate Landtag is the state diet of the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
The Prince-Bishopric of Speyer, formerly known as Spires in English, was an ecclesiastical principality in what are today the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg. It was secularized in 1803. The prince-bishop resided in Speyer, a Free Imperial City, until the 14th century, when he moved his residence to Uddenheim (Philippsburg), then in 1723 to Bruchsal. There was a tense relationship between successive prince-bishops, who were Roman Catholic, and the civic authorities of the Free City, officially Protestant since the Reformation. The prince-provostry of Wissemburg in Alsace was ruled by the prince-bishop of Speyer in a personal union.
The Republic of Mainz was the first democratic state in the current German territory and was centered in Mainz. A product of the French Revolutionary Wars, it lasted from March to July 1793.
The People's State of Hesse was one of the constituent states of Germany from 1918 to 1945, as the successor to the Grand Duchy of Hesse after the defeat of the German Empire in World War I, on the territory of the current German states of Hesse and the Rhineland-Palatinate. The State was established after Grand Duke Ernest Louis was deposed on 9 November 1918. The term "People's State" referred to the fact that the new state was a Republic and was used in the same manner as the term Free State, which was employed by most of the other German States in this period.
Francis Louis of Palatinate-Neuburg was bishop and archbishop of several dioceses, prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, and Hochmeister of the Teutonic Order.
In the siege of Mainz, from 14 April to 23 July 1793, a coalition of Prussia, Austria, and other German states led by the Holy Roman Empire besieged and captured Mainz from revolutionary French forces. The allies, especially the Prussians, first tried negotiations, but this failed, and the bombardment of the city began on the night of 17 June.
The Rhenish Republic was proclaimed at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) in October 1923 during the occupation of the Ruhr by troops from France and Belgium and subjected itself to French protectorate. It comprised three territories, named North, South and Ruhr. Their regional capitals were, respectively, Aachen, Koblenz and Essen.
Ober-Flörsheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Sulzheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Martinstein is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Bad Sobernheim, whose seat is in the like-named town. Martinstein is a state-recognized tourism resort, and with an area of 39 ha is Germany's smallest municipality by land area.
Horrweiler is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Welgesheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
The Old Arsenal, also referred to as Zum Sautanz, was the central arsenal of the fortress of Mainz during the 17th and 18th century. In his function it was succeeded by the new arsenal. Currently the renaissance building is used by the Rhineland-Palatinate state chancellery and the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate.
Schloss Kirchheimbolanden is located in the town of Kirchheimbolanden in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. As a castle the site was first mentioned in a document as early as 1390.
Schloss Oggersheim was a rococo Schloss in Oggersheim, part of the city of Ludwigshafen in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It served as a summer palace for the Electress Palatine, Elisabeth Auguste. It was destroyed by French revolutionary troops in 1794. Today, almost nothing remembers anymore of Schloss Oggersheim.
