Westend (Frankfurt am Main)

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Location of Westend

The Westend area of Frankfurt contains the two districts of Westend-Nord und Westend-Süd. The Westend with its Wilhelminian style buildings is a beloved residential quarter. Many old villas serve as offices for law firms and companies of the financial community.

Along with the Bahnhofsviertel, Nordend and Ostend, both Stadtteile are part of Frankfurt dense inner city districts. Together with Bockenheim, the Westend is part of the Ortsbezirk Innenstadt II.

1 History
2 Sites

[edit] History

[edit] Western Boundaries

Like the other districts constructed in the Wilhelminian period the Westend has been within the town walls of Frankfurt since the building of the Frankfurter Landwehr. Largely consisting of fields and heathland, it was area made up of isolated farming estates. Streets in the area still carry the names of these estates which were called Hellerhof, Hynsperghof and Kettenhof.

[edit] Classicism and the Wilhelminian period

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the old Frankfurt fortifications were razed. Soon numerous classic suburban villas with generous gardens sprang up along the Bockenheimer Landstraße, the arterial road in the neighbouring town of Bockenheim. Among them were the Gontardsche garden house and the Villa Leonhardi designed by the architect Nicolas Alexandre Salins de Montfort, as well as the Rothschildpalais of Friedrich Rumpf. Around the middle of the nineteenth century the area through the town was divided up and the streets and Squares were laid out. The narrow, built-up Frankfurter Neustadt was bursting at the seams and so people were continuously moving to the outer western town. Paris became an archetype for street construction, therefore wide boulevards as well as Squares with radial streets leading outwards began to appear.

In 1858 the first Frankfurter Zoo was laid out on the Bockenheimer Landstraße, which was later moved to the Ostend. The Westend was then became a residential quarter for the affluent, as in other towns and cities with a Westend. Many villas and grand residential houses sprouted, of which many still stand today. At the end of the nineteenth century nearly the whole southern part of the Westend was built-up. In the northern part was the newly laid Palmengarten, the Grüneburgweg with its emerging Grüneburgpark as well as the Irrenanstalt (the so-called Irrenschloß) founded by Heinrich Hoffmann on the Affenstein. Around the well contained development Mayor Franz Adickes had the Alleenring built at the beginning of the twentieth century, which at the same time bound all the new boroughs of the city together.

The northern borough was less densely built-up because of the generously laid borders of the Grüneburgpark. In 1930 Hans Pelzig errected the Verwaltungsgebäude of the I.G. Farben. Until the second world war nothing else changed much. In the Third Reich the borough was abolished and the Westend became part of Frankfurt-Nord. Police station nine in Lindenstraße 27 was the center of the Frankfurt Gestapo. The Westend was spared from carpet bombing during the airraids of the second world war. Initially, after the war almost the whole Westend-Nord (from Wolfgangstraße) was declared a restricted zone. The american military set up their headquarters in the I.G. Farben building. Surrounding boroughs were converted into housing estates for GIs. In 1948 barbed wire was removed from the restricted zones.

[edit] Skyscrapers and street riots

In the 1950s the Westend was still a clean reseidential area for around 40,000 people. The houses had only four floors as a general rule.

[edit] The first skyscraper

In 1938 Frankfurt came upon the chance to purchase a 58 hectare area between Bockenheimer Landstraße, Unterlindau. Staufenstraße and Reuterweg at a very reasonable price, which had previously belonged to the well-established Jewish Rothschild family. Although the 1950 selling price was later improved, the return of a third of this area was demanded to be returned as part of the Rothschild inheritance. After this, approval of the construction of a multi-storey development on the Rothschild's returned land was received (they sold it to Schweizer Zürich-Versicherung and Berliner Handelsgesellschaft) and office towers were established directly opposite the Opernhaus.

The Zurich building built in 1960, and demolished again soon after was the first multi-storied building in Frankfurt Westend. The city transformed the remaining part of the area into the Rothschildpark, which is accessible to everyone.

[edit] The abolition of housing space

After the abolishment of control of living space in 1960, Hans Kampffmeyer, the head of the social democratic planning department developed the concept of decentralising the inner city. The adjacent boroughs were to become an extension of the Westend. The so-called Fünf-Fingerplan of 1967 designated that through the Westend five leading axles - Mainzer Landstraße, Bockenheimer Landstraße, Reuterweg, Grüneburgweg and Eschersheimer Landstraße - should be developed under an intensive construction plan. From thicame a wave of property speculation, numerous nineteenth century building were demolished in the following years, their long established tenants driven out by rough methods. Several hundred houses stood empty in the Westend of 1970, often in completely shabby condition.

The development soon encountered resistance by the population. The middle classes reacted with the creation of the first Bürgerinitiativen (Citizen's initiative), the Aktionsgemeinschaft Westend (AGW). The AGW put together a land register of monuments and buildings worthy of preservation and by 1970 obtained a modification ban for Westend. Henceforward, the city wanted to turn around the development plans for any newly introduced developments. 1972 saw the region of Hessen issue a regulation against dwelling misuse.

At the same time the Frankfurter Häuserkampf (house squatting) developed, which was mainly driven by students at the University situated in the Westend. Many houses were occupied, which received constant supplies to demonstrate on the streets with the police. Joschka Fischer was also involved in this. The high point of the Häuserkampf was between 1970 and 1974.

In 1972 an attack on the american headquarters in the I.G Farben building was carried out by the Rote Armee Fraktion, in which a soldier died.

In the 1970s yet another row of multi-storey buildings were built in Westend such as the AFE-Turm on the university grounds. The City-Hochhaus at Platz der Republik, in those days the highest skyscraper in Germany (and burned down in 1973 to the jubilation of several students) was however finished later.

Although in 1976 a construction plan was decreed that no more skyscrapers would be planned, exceptions were approved in the southern part of Westend along Mainzer Landstraße and the Alleenring. Today the southern part of Westend has grown together extensively with the Bankenviertel (banking quarter). On the edge of Westend the second highest skyscraper in Germany, the Messeturm, rose up to 257 metres.

[edit] Sites

Trade Fair Tower

* America House (Amerikahaus) - The building, dedicated in 1958, located on the street corner of Reuterweg/Staufenstraße was intended to improve Frankfurt and American cultural relations by presenting books, films, and music.

Westendsynagoge -- The only of the four largest Frankfurt synagogues to surive the Holocaust, the Westsynagoge lies in the Altkönigstraße. It has a unusual Assyrian archictecture with elements of Art Nouveau (Jugendstil).