Neustadt anniversary: ​​builders of the checkerboard pattern

Hanau celebrates big, and with good reason.

It is now 425 years since Philipp Ludwig II of the County of Hanau- Münzenberg made a groundbreaking decision, without which Hanau would certainly not be what it is today: a city that will soon officially become a big city and the one economic stronghold in the east of the Rhine-Main area.

In the summer of 1597, the sovereign at the time signed a contract with Calvinist religious refugees that allowed them to settle outside the gates of today's old town.

The agreement was called “Capitulation”, but it was anything but that. Today one would say that the result was a win-win situation.

Luise Glaser-Lotz

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for the Main-Kinzig district.

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Philipp Ludwig did not dare to take the step out of philanthropy or religious ties to the refugees from the Spanish-occupied Netherlands, northern France and the French-influenced part of Belgium.

Rather, he had recognized the potential of these educated and successful traders and hoped for an economic boom for the financially troubled county.

In the long term, this worked out, because the new citizens brought culture, crafts and trade to the city, which had had city and market rights since the beginning of the fourteenth century, but apparently did not really know how to use them.

Even reprisals brought nothing

The resettlement was not without difficulties.

There were, for example, the strict Lutheran councilors in Frankfurt.

The refugees settled there first and quickly established themselves.

Because they brought prosperity to the city, people didn't want to let them go so easily.

However, the councilors did not think much of the free exercise of religion, which the religious refugees had counted on.

So it came about that they celebrated their services elsewhere, including in the more liberal city of Hanau.

That was a first important point of contact.

The people of Frankfurt thought up reprisals against the renegade new citizens, but the threats of fines and even imprisonment could not prevent people from accepting Philipp Ludwig's offer.

The Hanau council defended itself with a boycott of food deliveries to the imperial city.

At first there were around 200 families who relocated to Frankfurt's neighboring city.

The Catholic Archbishop of Mainz also opposed the action.

He wanted to deny the residents of the new Hanau settlement forest rights via the Reichskammergericht and also stopped the operation of the market ship operating between Hanau and Frankfurt.

But without success.

Many Hanau residents were also not enthusiastic, after all some of them had to give up the land in front of the city walls, which they used to graze animals or to grow grain.

You didn't get along well with the different lifestyles either.

None of this could stop the new settlers.

In the years that followed, they created a city laid out in a chessboard pattern, separated from the old town with its winding and unstructured lanes by a moat.

The square structure of the new city was surrounded by five points of a star set in stone walls.

One square joined the other, in the center a market square, enormous for those times, with a new town hall.

This structure has been preserved to this day, even after Hanau was destroyed in World War II.

Another central element of the Neustadt fell victim to the bombs: the Walloon-Dutch church near the market square.

Half of it was deliberately rebuilt in the post-war period.

The Dutch part was reconstructed, the Walloon part designed as a ruin as a reminder against war and terror.

Today it is the seat of the family academy of the Kathinka-Platzhoff-Foundation, in the inner courtyard there is a central memorial for the war victims.

The city recently had the area around the church prepared as a small park.

The 15 by 17 meter walk-in granite sculpture by the artist Claus Bury is a real eye-catcher.

Legacy Drawing Academy

The surge in development for architecture, urban planning, trade, culture and the economy is still having an impact today.

An important legacy of the Hanau Dutch and Walloons is the State Drawing Academy.

She is also celebrating her anniversary this year.

In the 250 years of its existence, the important training center for gold and silversmiths, today combined with a vocational academy, has produced many important artists.

For the Neustadt anniversary, the city issued a souvenir coin "425 years Neustadt Hanau and Walloon-Dutch Church Hanau".

The coin depicts an eighteenth-century view of the city from above.

The coin is available in the Hanau shop on Freiheitsplatz and at the ticket office of the Historical Museum in Hanau Schloss Philippsruhe for three euros.

The anniversary will be celebrated for several weeks with many lectures, concerts and church services. The dates can be found at

.

During the citizens' festival in September there is an exhibition on the subject.

One of the highlights will be the reopening of the eighteenth-century New Town Hall on the market square.

The historic building with the city council meeting room was not open to the public for years due to structural damage and a lack of accessibility.

The multi-million dollar renovation is now coming to an end.

The reopening is to take place on a citizens' weekend from September 9th to 11th.