The New Town Hall (German : Neues Rathaus) is the seat of the Leipzig city administration since 1905. It stands in Leipzig's district Mitte within the Leipzig's "ring road" on the southwest corner opposite the newly built Propsteikirche. The main tower is, at 114.8 meters or 377 feet, the tallest city hall tower in Germany, "trumping Hamburg's previous record by a whole eight feet". [1]
At the end of the 19th century, the Old Town Hall located at the Markt square finally proved too small for the booming city. In 1895 the city of Leipzig was granted the site of the Pleissenburg by the Kingdom of Saxony to build a new town hall. A competition was held for architectural designs with the specification that the Rapunzel tower silhouette of the Pleißenburg be retained. In 1897 the architect and city building director of Leipzig Hugo Licht was awarded the job of designing it. The motto of his design was: "Arx nova surgit - a new castle emerges." [2] The sculptor Georg Wrba was commissioned with the sculptural design of the building.
The foundation stone of the New Town Hall was laid on 19 October 1899.
The hall is notable as the location of numerous mass suicides during the final days of the Third Reich. [3]
The building complex, designed in the style of historicism [4] and made of light-grey, Main-Franconian shelly limestone, forms an irregular pentagon over an area of more than 10,000 m2 (107,600 sq.ft.). The tower stands on the base of the old Pleissenburg tower. From the fourth floor, 250 steps lead to the upper tower passage with the possibility of viewing. On the southwest facade are the five statues "Crafts", "Justice", "Book Art", "Science" and "Music" by the artists Arthur Trebst, Johannes Hartmann, Adolf Lehnert, Josef Mágr and Hans Zeissig. The clock at the town hall, which is illuminated blue at night, contains the Latin inscription MORS CERTA, HORA INCERTA (Death is certain, its hour uncertain), in the vernacular "The clock is sure to be wrong". The female gable figure above the clock symbolizes Truth. The west gable, on the other hand, has as its subject the personification "The official secret" by Johannes Hartmann.
At the southwestern tip of the New Town Hall, in the green belt of the so called Promenadenring , there is a memorial to Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, one of the leading forces in the bourgeois resistance against Nazism and Leipzig's Mayor (Oberbürgermeister) from 1930 until 1937. He was sentenced to death and executed. 55 years later, the memorial, conceptualized by the New York artists Jenny Holzer and Mike Glier, [5] was unveiled on 8 September 1999. It consists of a five meter (16.4 ft.) deep bell shaft with a diameter of 2.75 meters (9 ft.). A bronze bell hangs in it. Quotations from letters, newspapers and writings by Carl Friedrich Goerdeler can be found in chronological order around the shaft.
The Israeli author Yosef Agnon (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1966) describes in the second chapter of his novel "In Mr. Lublin's Store", how the nameless first-person narrator, a young Jewish man from Galicia, haunted in 1915 the authoritative new town hall for obtaining a residence permit in Leipzig.
The town hall features as a backdrop in the Alfred Hitchcock film Torn Curtain .
The Rotes Rathaus is the town hall of Berlin, Germany, located in the Mitte district on Rathausstraße near Alexanderplatz. It is the home to the governing mayor and the government of the state of Berlin. The name of the landmark building dates from the façade design with red clinker bricks.
Pegau is a town in the Leipzig district in Saxony, Germany, situated in a fertile plain, on the White Elster, 18 m. S.W. from Leipzig by the railway to Zeitz.
Vienna City Hall is the seat of local government of Vienna, located on the Rathausplatz in the Innere Stadt district. Constructed from 1872 to 1883 in a neo-Gothic style according to plans designed by Friedrich von Schmidt, it houses the office of the Mayor of Vienna, as well as the chambers of the city council and Vienna Landtag diet.
The New Town Hall is a town hall in Hanover, Germany. It opened on 20 June 1913 after construction lasting 12 years. A magnificent, castle-like building of the era of Wilhelm II in eclectic style at the southern edge of the inner city just outside the historic city centre of Hanover, the building is embedded within the 10-hectare (25-acre) Maschpark.
The New Town Hall is a town hall that forms the northern part of Marienplatz in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It hosts the city government including the city council, offices of the mayors and a small portion of the administration. In 1874 the municipality had left the Old Town Hall for its new domicile.
Goerdelerring is a street and major tram interchange station in Leipzig, Germany. It is named after Carl Friedrich Goerdeler.
The Pleissenburg was a historical building in the city of Leipzig in Saxony which is in modern-day Germany. It was built in the 13th century by the Margrave Dietrick and named after the river Pleisse which runs nearby. Martin Luther gave the first evangelical sermon in the castle chapel on Pentecost Sunday in 1539.
Essen City Hall is a 23-storey, 106 m (348 ft) skyscraper in Essen, Germany. When completed on 1 July 1979, it was one of the tallest city halls in Europe and is currently after New Town Hall (Leipzig) and Hamburg City Hall the third tallest city hall in Germany.
Friedrich von Schmidt was an architect who worked in late 19th century Vienna.
The Słupsk Town Hall is the chief administrative building of Słupsk, a town in northwestern Poland. The town hall was completed in 1901 in the Gothic Revival style and is a listed heritage monument protected by Polish law. The building continues to serve as the official residence of the town council.
Gottlob Friedrich Thormeyer was a German representative of neoclassical architecture.
Hugo Georg Licht was a German architect.
Berlin's history has left the city with an eclectic assortment of architecture. The city's appearance in the 21st century has been shaped by the key role the city played in Germany's 20th-century history. Each of the governments based in Berlin—the Kingdom of Prussia, the 1871 German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, East Germany and the reunified Federal Republic of Germany—initiated ambitious construction programs, with each adding its distinct flavour to the city's architecture.
The New Town Hall has stood on the Domshof in the centre of Bremen, Germany since 1913. Located behind the Unser-Lieben-Frauen-Kirchhof cemetery, it is adjacent to the older section of the Town Hall with which it forms a harmonious ensemble. Among its sumptuous rooms decorated with local artefacts, the New Town Hall houses the Senate Chamber used by the Senate for its regular meetings and the Great Hall, a venue for official receptions. In 2004, Bremen Town Hall was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, together with the Roland of Bremen, because of its outstanding architecture and testimony to the development of civic autonomy during the Holy Roman Empire.
The Bern Town Hall is the building in Bern, Switzerland that houses the Grand Council of Bern, the Executive Council of Bern and the Grand Council of the City of Bern. The building is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Old City of Berne and is a Swiss heritage site of national significance.
The Town Hall of Görlitz has been the place of the city's administration and jurisdictions since 1350. It was first mentioned in a document by the Görlitz council in 1369. Its interior dates back partly to the Renaissance period and baroque period. Over the centuries the administration grew, so did the town hall. It utilises several buildings of different epoches on the Lower Market Square 6–8.
The Old Town Hall, which dominates the east side of the Markt square in Leipzig's district Mitte, is considered one of Germany's most important secular Renaissance buildings. At the rear is the Naschmarkt. The mayor and the municipal administration have been housed in the New Town Hall since 1905.
Leipzig-Mitte is one of ten boroughs (Stadtbezirke) of Leipzig, located in the center of the city. It includes numerous architectural monuments. Most of them are located in the subdivision "Zentrum", which is sited inside the Inner City Ring Road and the Promenadenring:
The Promenadenring Leipzig is the oldest municipal landscape park in Germany and one of the most important garden and cultural monuments in the city. The term is also used as a synonym for Leipzig's inner city ring road, a traffic facility that is connected to the green spaces of the Promenadenring. Like the inner city ring road, the promenade ring is about 3.6 kilometers long (2.24 mi.).
The New Town Hall in Dresden is the seat of Dresden's city administration. It is located south-east of the Altmarkt on Dr.-Külz-Ring. The town hall tower is 100.3 meters high or 329 feet, a viewing platform, which is currently not open to the public, is 68 meters above the ground. The town hall clock has a diameter of four meters. The Golden Town Hall Man on the tower is 5.05 meters high from the base to the crown.
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