Discover history: Johannistor / Beckerplatz
St John's Gate
In 1264, the Old St John's Church on today's Zschopauer Straße is described as being "extra muros", i.e. outside the walls. However, it is unclear whether this was already a stone fortification or just a rampart with palisades. Building activity from the first half of the 15th century led to the expansion of the city wall and the city gates with their representative gate towers. The names were derived from the respective suburbs or their churches.
St John's Gate Tower
The accounts for 1597/98 provide detailed information about the construction of St John's Tower at the eastern exit of the town. The carpenter Gregor Spindler, the stonemason Hans Müller and the clockmaker Caspar Libitzschen, who had the tower's bell made in Leipzig, were involved in its construction. In the 17th century, the tower was crowned with a baroque dome.
When you entered the city, you first passed the Johannistor Bridge, which led over the so-called Johannisgraben. After the bridge, the constable and gatekeeper had their flats. They kept the city gate closed overnight at certain times and carefully administered the customs duties collected.
From Johannistor to Johannisplatz
At the end of the 18th century, the Anger in front of the Johannistor began to be developed into a suburb. By 1805, 37 new houses had been built, while the wall and gate were continually left to decay. St John's Gate Tower was demolished in the same year due to dilapidation. By 1830, the gate along with the gatekeeper's and constable's flats and the bridge were also demolished. The marshy moat was filled in and turned into an open square. The merchant Winter, Friedrich August Struwe and Johann Karl Hanewald soon built the first prestigious residential buildings here.
In the first half of the 20th century, Johannisplatz developed into one of the four busiest squares in Germany.
Beckerplatz
If you followed the city wall southwards from Johannistor, you would reach the Bretturm, a former powder tower that was integrated into the city fortifications alongside four other defence towers. In 1814, the master mason Bretschneider acquired the Bretturm together with the adjoining parts of the Zwinger wall in order to have it converted into a residential building. Dr Becker then took over the tower house until the property was bought by the town in 1855. Dr Becker had already had the moat filled in there in 1847 so that the first secondary and higher secondary school could be built on it.
The town hall on Beckerplatz
In 1879, the town council was finally relocated from the cramped conditions of the old town hall to the building of the citizens' school. However, this also soon proved to be too small in the rapidly growing town. As a result, the Bretturm was demolished in 1889 and a representative town hall extension in neoclassical style was built on its site. The green area of Beckerplatz with the Becker monument also gave the town hall a special decorative touch. However, this is not named after the former owner of the property, but after Christian Gottfried Becker (1771 - 1820), who became a major industrialist with his calico printing and spinning mill and was regarded as a helper to the poor population of Chemnitz.
The Dresdner Bank
In 1867, the Chemnitz Stock Exchange Association opened an institute on Beckerplatz for trading on the most important European and American commodity and money markets and on the Liverpool cotton market. A branch of Dresdner Bank, designed by Chemnitz architect Prof Heinrich Straumer, was built on this site in 1924. It is the only building on Beckerplatz to survive the Second World War unscathed and has survived to this day. The square was cleared in the 1960s. Today, the Chemnitz central railway station stands on the site.