Altes Rathaus Görlitz: Seat of Municipal Administration and Jurisdiction
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Bohemia
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Town Hall
On this page19 sections
History
Altes Rathaus Görlitz is a medieval municipal complex in Görlitz, Germany, whose principal administrative role was established around 1350. Its buildings preserve successive Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, nineteenth-century, and Neo-Renaissance phases. The complex has served as the seat of municipal administration, civic authority, and jurisdiction since the town acquired a permanent site on the southwest side of the Lower Market Square.
Foundation and municipal administration
Görlitz received Magdeburg town law in 1303, a medieval legal system defining civic rights, administration, jurisdiction, and commercial privileges. The town then began planning an administrative building, while officials continued to work from a wooden predecessor. Because there was not enough space for an entirely new structure, the town purchased an existing building or Bohemian courtyard in 1350. This acquisition formed the basis of the Rathaus complex.
The town hall was first mentioned in 1369, when the Görlitz council reported a craftsmen’s revolt of 1 November to Charles IV, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia. As municipal responsibilities increased, the Rathaus expanded through the incorporation of adjoining buildings. Its eventual form therefore reflects not one building campaign but the gradual growth of civic administration around the Lower Market Square.
Coin production and civic finance
Görlitz had produced coins as a tenant from 1220 and received permission from King John of Bohemia in 1330 to mint independently. In 1429, Emperor Sigismund authorized the town to issue silver coins independently. Production began in 1449, and the town purchased the building at Lower Market Square 7 beside the Rathaus for this purpose.
Coin production reached a value of 540,000 Bohemian groschen in 1468, equivalent to at least 3,780,000 Görlitz pfennigs. Between 1510 and 1515, the town produced approximately 42,000,000 pfennigs. Declining quality encouraged other towns to make Görlitz coins and contributed to their loss of value. Coins continued to be found concealed in historic buildings until 1880, preserving a material trace of this period of monetary activity.
Gothic and Renaissance transformation
The tower was first recorded in 1378 and was raised to approximately 60 metres between 1511 and 1516. The enlargement added octagonal upper stories and a balcony with a parapet around the highest level. City works master Albrecht Stieglitzer explained the change as a way to obtain a better view and improve protection for the town.
A clock was installed in 1524. In 1584, Bartholomaeus Scultetus, a Görlitz scholar, astronomer, and civic official, created the mechanism that survives in the present clock arrangement. It combined the daytime clock with an upper display showing the phases of the Moon. The council also added a stone figure of Lady Justice to the proclamation pulpit in 1591, expressing the town’s high jurisdiction.
The curved staircase and proclamation pulpit were built in 1537 and 1538, probably by Wendel Roskopf the Elder, a Renaissance architect and builder active in Görlitz. Andreas Walther I supplied figurative relief decoration. These works gave the exterior of the Rathaus a strongly Renaissance character while maintaining its role as a place where civic decisions and official announcements were made.
Fire, reconstruction, and later alterations
Lightning struck the tower on 9 July 1742 and destroyed its upper parts. Reconstruction followed soon afterward, with two upper clocks and two bells supplied by Friedrich Koerner of Sorau. The bells were melted down for war production in 1917, although a plaster cast of the larger bell remains in a Rathaus bay window.
The complex underwent repeated changes from the Gothic period through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An entrance building with swallowtail crenellations was removed during Baroque remodeling, and its remaining section was demolished in 1842. The municipal wine cellar in that part of the complex then became publicly accessible, although entry was restricted to more privileged citizens.
A unified Neo-Renaissance facade was begun around 1870. The surviving window surrounds belong to this work, while the smooth plaster was replaced by sprayed render in 1900. The final major expansion was completed in 1903 by the architect Juergen Kroeger. It provided additional administrative space, accommodated the Stadtsparkasse, and later formed part of a complex that also included a Ratskeller, a town hall cellar used for food, drink, or civic hospitality, and a prison.
Twentieth-century use and preservation
The savings bank moved to new premises between Berliner Strasse and Postplatz in 1913. The former counter hall was later converted into offices, with new walls installed in the 1960s. A paternoster lift, a continuously circulating lift with open cabins passing between floors, was installed in 1977 and connected five floors. It was taken out of service in 2010 after a malfunction.
The original statue of Lady Justice was evacuated across the Lusatian Neisse during the Second World War and did not return. Werner Hempel made the present figure in 1952. The original relief panels from the Rathaus staircase were also replaced with copies in 1950 and moved indoors to protect them from weathering. The Rathaus is used by several municipal offices, continuing the administrative function that shaped the complex from the fourteenth century onward.
Remains
The Rathaus occupies several connected buildings at Lower Market Square 6 to 8, with the courthouse wing extending eastward along Bruederstrasse 7. Their fabric brings together pre-Gothic, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, nineteenth-century, and Neo-Renaissance construction. Different floor levels inside the complex reveal the transitions between the buildings that were joined over time.
Oldest buildings and tower
Lower Market Square 6
Lower Market Square 6 is the oldest part of the complex. It includes the lower section of the present tower and the building immediately to its north. The structure began as the residence of a Bohemian retainer and reaches back to the pre-Gothic period. Its earlier facade was largely unplastered, exposing carefully worked joints in the brickwork. Two large pointed-arch openings on the second floor belong to the Gothic period and are preserved in historic drawings.
The King’s Room
The room behind the pointed-arch openings was the King’s Room, an official room and reception hall for the mayor. It occupies the first floor of Lower Market Square 6 and is one of the oldest rooms in the complex. Its elevated position made the mayor’s office recognizable from outside, while the two floors above it have notably lower wall heights. The building was raised in Gothic style at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The blind niche in the northern gable dates from that rebuilding, and nineteenth-century alterations aligned the window heights of the upper floors.
The clock tower
The tower rises to approximately 60 metres and has octagonal upper stories added between 1511 and 1516. Its highest level is surrounded by a balcony with a parapet. Two clock faces occupy the tower. The upper face has an outer 24-hour ring and an inner ring showing 30 days and the phases of the Moon. Its longer hand indicates the hours, while the shorter hand indicates the lunar phases.
The lower clock has a 12-hour ring marked with Roman numerals, an inner minute scale, and quarter-hour markings. Here the shorter hand shows the hours and the longer hand shows the minutes. Above its hands is the head of a town guard. According to legend, he was walled alive into the tower after sleeping through the fire of 30 April 1556, which affected 40 houses on Nikolaistrasse and its surroundings. The head opens its eyes once a minute, glowing orange like the fire, before opening its mouth in astonishment.
A Bohemian lion occupies a Gothic opening above the clocks. First mentioned in 1564, it was intended to frighten thieves at midnight by roaring through an organ mechanism. The mechanism was later deactivated because, according to the historian Richard Jecht, it frightened pregnant women.
Late Gothic portal and heraldic relief
The tower entrance to the King’s Room is formed by an elaborate Late Gothic portal. Above it is the coat of arms of Matthias Corvinus, the fifteenth-century King of Hungary and Bohemia and territorial lord of Görlitz. A heraldic relief dated 1488 refers to the town’s affiliation with Upper Lusatia. Its arms represent the territories associated with Corvinus, including Hungary, Bohemia, Lower Lusatia, and Moravia. Finely worked flank figures in dancing poses distinguish the relief.
Renaissance staircase and proclamation pulpit
Curved staircase
The curved Rathaus staircase was built in 1537 and 1538 along the south side of the clock tower. It rises to the portal at the narrow end of the courthouse wing and is regarded as a masterpiece of the early Renaissance. Andreas Walther I decorated its balustrade with reliefs showing the Fall of Adam and Eve, mythological sirens, and putti using the outer surface as a slide. The original panels are now inside the building, while exterior copies protect the sculpture from weathering.
Proclamation pulpit
The proclamation pulpit was built alongside the staircase. It rests on a pair of columns with constricted shafts, and Wendel Roskopf created its portal frame, which contains varied medallions, putto heads, and other Renaissance ornament. The stone figure of Lady Justice was added in 1591. The present copy, made by Werner Hempel in 1952, lacks the blindfold normally associated with the sword and scales. This was intended to convey an unobscured view and impartial judgment.
Decorative panels with fish-siren imagery are associated with the staircase. The motif also appears in the arms of the Görlitz patrician Emmerich family, which held council seats for a long period and supplied several mayors.
Courthouse wing and Neo-Renaissance extension
Courthouse wing
The courthouse wing is one of the oldest parts of the Rathaus. Construction began at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and roughly two centuries passed before it reached its historically established form. Late-eighteenth-century drawings preserve its Gothic appearance. Nineteenth-century rebuilding greatly simplified the building and contributed to its present Neo-Renaissance appearance and sprayed render.
1903 extension
The new Rathaus extension was completed in 1903 in the Neo-Renaissance style. Its design recalls Görlitz town houses of the seventeenth century, with an imposing front dominated by richly decorated pilasters. The facade facing Lower Market Square displays the coats of arms of the six towns in the Upper Lusatian Six-City League, an alliance that coordinated the political and economic interests of six Upper Lusatian towns. Each emblem is presented by a warrior supporting the column above it.
The side and rear facades are comparatively plain and covered with white tiles. Several Baroque portals from the two town houses demolished for the extension were incorporated into its base. The main entrance at Lower Market Square 8 passes through a columned portal and staircase to the first floor. It leads toward the Bürgerbüro and, through a vestibule belonging to the earlier Lower Market Square 8 complex, to the wedding hall in Lower Market Square 7.
Wedding hall and former savings bank
The vestibule contains a Renaissance-style column between the windows. The wedding hall has a three-bay Baroque groin vault, a ceiling formed by the intersection of two barrel vaults. Partially preserved Art Nouveau waiting benches survive in the office corridors.
The former Stadtsparkasse counter hall once occupied the full width of the new Rathaus. After the hall was converted into offices, the northwestern vault room survived. The wedding hall, preserved vault, varying floor levels, and reused portals together express the complex’s long development from joined medieval buildings into an expanded municipal headquarters.
