Discover history: Town hall
Old and new town hall
The first town hall was built next to the High Tower, whose date of origin is disputed (12th or 14th century). It serves as a bell tower for St James' Church and was occupied by the town's tower keeper until 1913. The 64 metre high structure received its present appearance with a baroque dome after a fire in 1746 and was reconstructed in 1986 after being completely destroyed in 1945.
The second tower, called the "Seigerturm" after the town clock located here, was built in 1486, but the early Baroque dome was not added until 1618. It forms the core of the new town hall, which was built in 1496-1498 in late Gothic style, but was remodelled again and again over the following centuries. It owes its present form to the reconstruction completed in 1950.
The Judith Lucretia portal (1559) was moved here in 1910 from a town house opposite. Depictions of two women from the Old Testament and Roman antiquity, which gave the portal its name, can be seen above the seating niches. The sculptures of the figurative carillon installed in 2002 appear several times a day in the window opening above.
The new town hall
Between 1907 and 1911, the New Town Hall was built to the east of the Old Town Hall, which had become too small.
An entire neighbourhood had to be demolished for this purpose. However, the architect Richard Möbius endeavoured to incorporate echoes of the medieval townscape, such as the pointed arch openings on the ground floor or the honeycomb gable above the council chamber.
A larger-than-life statue of Roland was placed on the corner facing Neumarkt. The tower rising above it has carried a 48-voice carillon since 1978. Thanks to its reinforced concrete construction, the New Town Hall was the only building on the square to be saved from destruction in 1945.
The representative rooms inside (vestibule, council chamber, council chamber) as well as the council cellar with its valuable Art Nouveau decoration can therefore still be viewed today largely in their original state. Max Klinger's monumental painting "Labour-Prosperity-Beauty", completed in 1918, is considered an outstanding work of art. It describes the self-image of the industrial city in the 20th century.