This page contains automatically translated content.

03/20/2019 | Porträts und Geschichten

Artist, princes, entrepreneur

Street names help us to orient ourselves in a place. Only for this purpose we pay attention to the signs. Not for anything else. Why actually?

Image: University of Kassel

If you follow the people and places on the signs, a panorama unfolds before your eyes - the history of a place. Here is Part II of the series "Street Names at the University of Kassel".

Moritzstraße

Blue blood flows through this arterial road. It takes its name from an aristocrat from the House of Hesse-Kassel: Landgrave Moritz. The street runs across the Holländischer Platz campus and connects Holländische Straße with Mönchebergstraße. The landgrave would have liked it that a street of his name crosses the campus of Kassel University, as he was known as "the scholar". Not only was he regent of the Landgraviate from 1592 to 1627, Moritz was also an alchemist and musician, is said to have been fluent in several languages, and had Germany's first independent theater building constructed: the Ottoneum, now Kassel's natural history museum. Initially a Lutheran, Moritz converted to Calvinism in 1605. He consistently enforced the Calvinist confession in his Lutheran-influenced landgraviate. Moritz died in Eschwege in 1632. The street is to be rebuilt starting in summer 2019. Moritzstrasse, with its busy car traffic, will become a pedestrian-friendly traffic-calmed area.

Burckhardtplatz

Ever heard of "promenadology," the science of walking? According to an article in a well-known weekly newspaper, this is a course of study or a chair at the University of Kassel. But it is not true. Promenadology is a scientific method of urban planning. Its developer was Lucius Burckhardt, professor of socio-economic foundations of urban planning. The square named after him is located on the north side of the intersection between Gottschalkstraße and Moritzstraße. The Swiss Burckhardt was born in 1925, studied in Basel and came to the Kassel University of Applied Sciences via several stations in 1973. He died in Basel in 2003. His work is extensive - whether as a scientist  or political activist. His achievements in the fields of aesthetics and urbanism criticism were groundbreaking. His most important companion was his colleague and wife Annemarie Burckhardt. Spaziergangswissenschaft was one of his achievements: Behind it was the idea of opening up landscapes directly through one's own perception.  Even today, you can walk the "Urspaziergang" in Riede near Kassel: Burckhardt's first promenadological walk. However, the chair for promenadology has never existed. As the saying goes: If something walks, sounds and looks like a duck, then it is a duck.

Wilhelmshöhe Avenue

Wilhelmshöher Allee runs for four and a half kilometers in a straight line from Brüder-Grimm-Platz to Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. From Brüder-Grimm-Platz, the campus of Department 16 Electrical Engineering/Computer Science is reached after one kilometer. The street is named after the Bad Wilhelmshöhe district. This in turn takes its  name from Elector Wilhelm I of Hesse-Kassel. The first elector of Kassel had the street built to give himself and his guests access to the lush parkland we know today as Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. Wilhelm had style: next to the park he had the magnificent neoclassical Wilhelmshöhe Palace built. If you walk along "Willi-Allee" towards the west, you will have an impressive view of Kassel's landmarks: the Hercules and Wilhelmshöhe Castle.

Arnold-Bode-Strasse

This name is not foreign to any art connoisseur. The street, which begins at the central cafeteria on the HoPla and leads into Moritzstraße, is named after Arnold Bode, the  "father of the documenta." The artist Bode was born in Kassel in 1900 and studied at the then Kassel Art Academy from 1919. He grew up in the Nordstadt district near the present-day campus. He moved to Berlin in 1930, where he worked at the Städtisches Werklehrer-Seminar. As a Social Democrat, he lost his  employment during the Nazi era. He was drafted by the Wehrmacht and became an American prisoner of war. After the Second World War he had the idea for an international art exhibition. Germany was to rejoin the world in terms of modern art after the lost years of the Nazi regime. The idea of the documenta was born . Together with fellow artists, he organized the first exhibition in 1955. Bode was organizer, director and artist. "I had to make something out of Kassel so as not to go under," he said later. Until documenta 5 in 1972, Bode always remained involved in the world's largest exhibition of modern art. He received the Federal Cross of Merit for his  life's work. He was also a professor at Kassel's Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, the predecessor of today's Kunsthochschule. Bode died in his hometown in 1977.

Menzelstrasse

At the Kunsthochschule Kassel, even the address sounds like art. The street in the southern part of the city bears the name of an artist. Adolph von Menzel was a painter and draftsman, born in Breslau in 1815. He himself only briefly attended an art academy and taught himself to draw. In 1839, he illustrated Franz Theodor Kugler's "History  Frederick the Great" - his career springboard. Specializing in the Frederician period, Menzel painted and drew primarily motifs related to Frederick II. Today he is considered a pioneer of realism in German painting. Known as a loner, Menzel was disciplined. His motto: "Nulla dies sine linea" - No day without drawing a line.

Henschel and Gottschalk Streets

Cafés and copy stores, bars and bookstores: Both streets are student-oriented and exude a certain lightness. Some brick buildings recall their industrial past. Henschelstrasse and Gottschalkstrasse mark the western border of the HoPla campus and are named after two important companies that used to be located here. The name Henschel has a long tradition in Kassel. 1810 is considered the founding year of the company. It was in this year that Carl Henschel, a foundryman from Kassel, began working as a foundry entrepreneur. The family business grew throughout the 19th century and built the legendary "Drache" locomotive. At this time, Henschel stood not only for technical progress, but also for social progress: an in-house health insurance fund was established. 1894 was a decisive year for Henschel. Company director Carl Anton Oskar Henschel died and the company passed to his wife Sophie. As a woman at the helm of a major company, Sophie Henschel was an outstanding figure of her time. Until her death in 1912, she led the Kassel-based company to the top of European locomotive manufacturing.

Today, the Sophie Henschel House on the HoPla campus commemorates the former factory owner. The company's history is not only marked by progress and success. During the Nazi era, the company was involved in the crimes of the regime. Henschel manufactured armaments and employed forced laborers. The memorial "The Ramp" on the Holländischer Platz campus is a reminder of this. The company Gottschalk & Co ceased operations 20 years ago. Younger people from Kassel therefore hardly know it, although it had been here since 1884. The company produced sailcloth. Under the Nazi regime, it was incorporated into the Henschel company. Only after the Second World War did it revert to the Gottschalk family. The company stood in the immediate vicinity of the HaFeKa slaughterhouse. 100 years ago, the place reeked of coal and slaughterhouse waste. Today it smells more like fresh coffee and shisha tobacco. A long way from the industrial area to the university campus.

Along the Ahna

Self-explanatory: The road runs along the Ahna stream.

University Square

University Square covers most of the northern campus HoPla and it's called that because, well, the university is located here.

Mönchebergstraße

If you walk from Campus HoPla along Moritzstraße in the direction of Weserspitze, you'll quickly break a sweat. It's all uphill here. The campus is bordered to the east by Mönchebergstraße, which leads over the Möncheberg. The mountain is named after its former owners, the Carmelite monks. In 1261, the pious brothers first settled in Kassel.

 

 

By David Wüstehube