The large district town of Plauen is a regional center in the
southwest of the Free State of Saxony and the district town of the
Vogtlandkreis. The largest city in the Saxon Vogtland and fifth
largest city in the Free State is architecturally attractive. It
became known for the embroidery known as Plauen lace.
Plauen
is first mentioned in a document in 1122. In the Middle Ages, the
city became a trading center, and from the 18th century an important
location for the Saxon fabric and textile industry, which was
accompanied by a considerable increase in population. From the 1920s
onwards, the industrial structure of the city was more strongly
shaped by manufacturing in mechanical engineering. Plauen was
severely hit by bombing raids in 1945, but mostly rebuilt. Much of
the Plauen center is characterized by urban, metropolitan
development from the 19th century. The town's landmarks are the old
town hall with its Renaissance gable and the art clock, as well as
the Johanniskirche. The Friedensbrücke is one of the largest stone
arches in the world in Plauen and the Elstertalbrücke is the second
largest brick bridge in the world on the northeastern outskirts.
There are also numerous other architectural and cultural monuments
in the city.
The Theater Plauen-Zwickau offers music theater, drama, orchestra,
ballet and puppet theater.
The Plauen Singing Academy V. is a
mixed adult choir closely linked to the theater orchestra. The singing
community was founded in 1948 and later renamed the concert choir before
the present association was founded in 1972 by music director Eckehard
Rösler. The Singakademie supports the music theater e.g. B. as an
additional opera choir, but also brings motets, folk songs and choral
symphonies to the hearing.
The Parktheater Plauen was opened in
1964. It is located in the middle of the Plauen city park. There,
performances by the Plauen-Zwickau theater and concerts by artists of
various musical genres take place. Comedians are also an integral part
of the programme. In the past, the main events of the Plauen Lace
Festival also took place on the grounds of the Park Theater.
The Vogtland Museum Plauen is located in three listed former
residential and commercial buildings on Nobelstraße. The museum has
collections on the history of the Vogtland and the city of Plauen. There
are exhibits on prehistory and early history as well as on art and
cultural history. The semi-detached house at numbers 9 and 11 was built
between 1787 and 1789 by the cotton goods merchant Johann Gottfried
Baumgärtel in Louis XVI and Empire style. The ballroom is particularly
noteworthy. It takes up the entire width of the building on the first
floor. The twelve months are depicted in naturalistic stucco reliefs in
twelve high rectangles along the wall. The cotton goods dealer Johann
Christian Kanz had house number 13 built in the Empire style between
1797 and 1799. In 1920 the city acquired the houses and set up a city
and regional history museum. In July 1923, the Vogtland district museum
was opened in houses number 9 and 11. During the Second World War, a
garden wing was destroyed by a bomb. On November 17, 1946, after
extensive repair work, the museum was reopened with an exhibition in
honor of Erich Knauf. After the war, house number 13 was added to the
museum. The Vogtland Museum Plauen runs two branch offices, one in the
Jewish cemetery on Pausaer Straße with an exhibition on the history of
the Jews in Plauen in the former ceremonial hall and an exhibition on
the life and work of the draftsman and illustrator Hermann Vogel in the
Hermann Vogel House in Krebes , his former home.
The history of
Plauen lace has been presented in the Plauen Lace Museum in the Old Town
Hall since 1884. Both old machines for lace production and exhibits made
of lace (dresses, blankets and accessories) are on display. The lace
museum is unique in this form in Germany.
The development of the
lace industry is shown in the show embroidery Plauen in the district of
Reusa. For this purpose, historical machines were installed in a
manufacturer's house with an adjoining one-storey factory building.
Demonstrations take place on large and small embroidery machines. A
studio can also be visited. Annually changing special exhibitions
complete the offer.
The Ewiges Leben alum mine is run by the
Vogtländisches Bergknappenverein zu Plauen e. V. operated. Over a
walkable length of about 650 meters, you can explore the corridors of
the alum mine under a competent guide. Various exhibitions can be
visited. The association also runs the Plauen Air Raid Protection Museum
on Schlossberg and the Zollkeller on Neundorfer Straße.
Other
museums are the Plauener Druckstube and the Sparkasse Museum. Changing
exhibitions take place in the city archive in the town hall.
The municipal gallery e.o.plauen was opened on October 1, 1993. In a
partnership, the city of Plauen, its twin city of Siegen, the state of
North Rhine-Westphalia and the company Salamander renovated the house at
Bahnhofstraße 36. The city of Plauen was given the first two floors
rent-free for 25 years in order to set up a municipal gallery. Since
June 11, 2004, part of the estate of e.o.plauen has been located there,
which was shown in a permanent exhibition. At the end of September 2010,
the Municipal Gallery e.o.plauen, the Erich Ohser - e.o.plauen
Foundation and the e.o.plauen Society moved together to the Erich Ohser
House at Nobelstraße 7, next to the Vogtland Museum.
The gallery
in the Malzhaus is run by the Kunstverein Plauen-Vogtland e. V.
operated. It was opened in September 1995 and offers space for
exhibitions of various kinds as well as for readings, concerts and other
events. The art association Plauen-Vogtland e. V. was founded in 1990
and thus resumed the tradition of the art association founded in 1897,
which was interrupted by the Nazi era and the GDR.
The Forum K
gallery is located on Bahnhofstrasse and is managed by Forum
Kunst/Plauen e. V. operated. Founded in 2004, the association also
organizes the art Afrika exhibition series, which showcases contemporary
African art.
The Festhalle Plauen is located on the site that has been used as the
city's fairground for over 120 years. There were essentially two
previous buildings, some of which were on the site at the same time. On
the one hand, the Centralhalle was completed in 1888. This wooden
building was expanded in 1896 and implemented in 1911/12. Until 1945 it
was used as a venue. After the war, the hall was demolished and the wood
burned. The first festival hall was built next to the Centralhalle in
1925 and continued to be used after the war. In 1983 it had to be closed
due to serious construction defects. In 1985 it was demolished. On May
30, 1986, construction of the new festival hall began. It was completed
in September 1989 and inaugurated on Republic Day on October 7, 1989.
Shortly after reunification, use fell sharply, but increased again as
early as 1992. From 2005, the conversion and extensive renovation of the
building took place. On August 30, 2007, the festival hall was reopened
as an event center. The hall offers up to 3500 seats in various halls
for concerts, trade fairs and conferences.
The Vogtland Stadium
in the northern district of Haselbrunn is above all the home ground of
the VFC Plauen upper division football team. It is also used as an
athletics stadium. Other events will be held on the grounds belonging to
the stadium.
The Parktheater Plauen has been located in the city
park, not far from the city center, since 1964. With around 5,000
standing and 2,000 seats, it is an event site that is unique in the
region. There are sales stands and various other supply facilities on
the directly adjacent site.
The Old Town Hall was first mentioned in a document in 1382, but since mayors and sworn citizens are already documented in 1329, it was probably built earlier. The town hall has been rebuilt several times. A late Gothic building with curtain arched windows was erected between 1503 and 1508. The town hall was also severely damaged in the town fire of 1548. The north wing with the town hall was preserved, but the south gable burned down. Reconstruction began in the same year, with the still existing Renaissance gable being placed on top of the late Gothic substructure. The art clock in the gable was also installed in 1548 by the Hof master Georg Puhkaw. “Two lions strike the quarter hours, two men move at the hour strike. One raises his right arm with each punch, his hand holding a staff. The other calls out the hour, which is indicated by the fact that his large beard moves up and down as if he were opening his mouth. The clock has two dials, the larger one for the hour and minute hands and the smaller one for the quarter hour hand. Between the lions rotates a ball showing the phase of the moon. Below the dials is a sundial. The coat of arms below the sundial with the electoral shield and the ducal-Saxon coat of arms in the left field, the Electoral Saxon coat of arms in the middle and Gothic tracery in the right field was originally inserted in the part of the former stairwell that was demolished in 1825.” (Ernst Pietsch). During another renovation in 1825, the upper part of the bay window above the staircase was removed. In 1912, as part of the construction of the new town hall, the old town hall was also rebuilt again, with the current double flight of stairs being built in the Renaissance style, which leads to the ballroom of the registry office. This extension and the changes to the south gable were the subject of controversy due to Cornelius Gurlitt's strong opposition to the conversion plans initiated by the city building officer Goette. The clock is a replica of the art clock from 1548. The original gear train can be viewed in the Vogtland Museum. The roof of the Old Town Hall was severely damaged in an air raid in 1945 and the masonry was partially torn open. In 1950 the restoration took place with renewal of the painted ceiling beams, in 1970 the renewal of the south gable and the art clock. In December 2008 the art clock was dismantled and a tarpaulin with a picture of the clock was attached in front of the gable. In the years that followed, the clock was restored based on a template from 1922. The clock was completed at the end of October 2010 and was put back in its original place. In the spring of 2011, the facade was finally restored within a few weeks. The original coloring was restored, the coat of arms of Chursaxon on the gable was worked up and the lighting for the Christmas market was renewed.
Until the middle of the 19th century, the old market was only called a market, it was given its current name to distinguish it from the newly created monastery market. On the Altmarkt there used to be two pipe boxes for the municipal water line made from hollowed-out tree trunks. The weekly and annual markets took place there. There was also an occasional execution there. In recent years, the adjacent houses have been renovated or rebuilt. The market square itself has also been renewed and since November 13, 2007 the King Albert Fountain by the artist Norbert Marten has been on the market square. It was built to replace an equestrian statue of King Albert that was removed after the war. In addition to the weekly market, various themed markets also take place on the Altmarkt. It is also used for various events, such as the Plauen lace festival or the Christmas market.
Today's Bärenstein Tower was inaugurated on July 6, 1997, on Saxon Day. The tower is named after the Bärenstein on which it stands and which, at 432 metres, is the second highest mountain in Plauen. There used to be a tower at this point. In February 1906, the non-profit association decided to build an observation tower there. The association had laid footpaths on the mountain and planted trees since 1884. The stone tower was inaugurated on June 17, 1906. On January 16, 1945 it was badly damaged in a bomb attack, so in March of the same year it was decided to blow up the remains. In 1995, the Plauen Rotary Club started an initiative to build a new tower and launched an architectural competition in which 15 architects and engineering firms took part. The foundation stone was laid on October 2, 1996 and the topping-out ceremony was celebrated on June 17, 1997. The new tower consists of a steel structure made up of prefabricated segments. It has a height of 35 meters; at 24.3 meters there is an accessible platform. The tower was largely financed by donations. The names of the donors are recorded on a plaque inside the tower and on the individual steps.
At 507 meters, the Kemmler is the second highest point in Plauen. The Kemmler Tower, a lookout tower built as a Bismarck column, is located on the extinct volcano. On March 5, 1899, the Pan-German Association placed an advertisement in the newspaper in which it suggested the construction of a Bismarck column. On May 25 of the same year, a Bismarck Tower Committee was formed. After inspecting several hilltops, a vote was taken on the construction site. With 41 to 35 votes, the election on May 13, 1900 fell on the Kemmler. The building site was made available free of charge by the city of Plauen. As early as 1883, a lookout tower had been erected on the Kemmler by the Bergschlossgesellschaft, which had to make way for the new building. Some of the material from the old tower was reused for the new building. The foundation stone was laid on April 1, 1902 and the inauguration was celebrated on August 31 of the same year. The type design called Götterdämmerung came from the architect Wilhelm Kreis and emerged from an architectural competition. The outer material is granite from a quarry in Schreiersgrün, the inner masonry consists of fruit slate from Theuma and Tirpersdorf. The tower is 18.25 meters high; At a height of 13 meters there is a viewing platform that can be reached via 65 stone and 13 iron steps. The total cost was 31,000 marks and was raised exclusively through donations. A fire bowl was added later, which was replaced by a canopy with an antenna mast between 1972 and 1973. The basic renovation of the tower failed twice (1994 and 2002) due to the high costs. During an emergency renovation in 1995, the antenna system was removed again. On March 26, 1910, a lodging house was built next to the tower, which was demolished again after 1945. Extensive renovation work took place between 2015 and 2022.
On the site of today's malt house, the Counts of Everstein built a castle around 1200 as the south-east corner of the city fortifications. As successors to the Eversteins, the Weida bailiffs moved into the new castle on the Hradschin in 1238. The old castle, as the Everstein complex has been called since then, lost its importance. In 1430 it burned down during a Hussite attack. After ownership had changed several times, the city magistrate acquired the site in 1590 and used it as a building and storage yard. After a devastating town fire in 1635, the house that burned down was not rebuilt. Only in 1720 did the citizens of Plauen start planning a new malt house on the foundations of the old castle. Between 1727 and 1730, the four-storey malt house was built and leased to frequently changing maltsters. In 1844, a brewery was built next to the malt house as a replacement for the men's brewery that burned down in the town fire of the same year and was located on the site of today's town hall tower. In 1897 the brewery and malt house were closed and the malt house was converted into a warehouse and residential building. In 1899 the city wanted to demolish the malt house, which was prevented by local heritage associations and Plauen citizens. Between 1906 and 1907 the old brewery was demolished and the workshop and residential building was erected, which stands out with its half-timbered gable. During the Second World War, the basement rooms were used as an air raid shelter; at the end of the war the attics were damaged by bomb hits. In 1960, the malt house was provisionally repaired after it had been taken over by VEB building management. It was then used as a storage room for various GDR companies. In October 1989, a citizens' initiative was founded to renovate the malt house. Between 1990 and 1998, the brewery and malt house were extensively reconstructed by the city of Plauen. During this time, a modern connecting wing with an elevator was installed between the two houses. Since 1994 the Malzhaus e. V. leaseholder of the property, who expanded it into a cultural center with a gallery, nostalgic cinema and open-air stage. The annual Plauener Folkherbst takes place in the Malzhaus, where the Iron Eversteiner is awarded.
The New Town Hall was built between 1912 and 1922. Due to the rapid growth of the city since the 1880s, a new administration building was needed. In the year that construction began, Plauen reached its peak population of 128,014. Since the new building was to be spacious, between 1889 and 1906 several buildings in what was then Schustergasse (which no longer exists parallel to Unterer Graben), Marktstrasse, Herrenstrasse and what was then Bahnstrasse were bought and demolished. After an architectural competition in 1908 failed to produce a satisfactory solution, the city building authority was commissioned to draw up a plan in 1910. Finally, Wilhelm Goette, city planning officer, presented a design that also took into account ideas from the competition. After the council and city councilors had given their approval, excavation work for the new building began in October 1912. The foundation stone was laid a year later and by the summer of 1914 the shell of the first section had been completed. In the autumn of 1916, despite the war, the external work was completed. In 1921 the eight shops on Marktstraße were occupied and in the same year the city councilors met in the new meeting rooms for the first time. In 1922 the New Town Hall was finally completed. On the Altmarkt side, an outside staircase was installed on the east side of the old building. At the upper end is a statue of Heinrich the Elder von Plauen, which was executed in shell limestone in 1923 according to a design by the Dresden sculptor Selmar Werner. During the Second World War, the town hall was badly damaged. The front (to the Unteren Graben) was rebuilt in modern forms using steel and glass and inaugurated in 1976. The glass facade had to be renovated due to its dilapidated condition. There were three basic options. Either the conversion of the existing facade, whereby the existing steel construction would have been preserved and reinforced and all facade parts would have had to be renewed. The second variant was a replica of the old facade destroyed in the war and the third option was a new facade. The costs for the three variants were between the low single-digit and high single-digit to low double-digit million range. On May 8, 2012, the city council decided that an architectural competition for a new building should be advertised. 65 architectural firms applied, 30 of which were accepted. On December 7, 2012, the jury awarded three second prizes. After reviewing the proposals, the expert jury decided in favor of the design by RKW Architektur + Städtebau Leipzig on February 26 and recommended the city to carry it out. The award committee will probably make a final decision in May 2013. Construction could start at the beginning of 2015, after the employees of the district authorities, who are still based in the town hall, have moved to the new district office.
The Nonnenturm was probably built around 1200 and first mentioned in 1382 as a tower in Nonnengasse. The name Nonnenturm, which first appeared in a document in 1563, derives from a convent of the Sisters of the Third Rule of Penitence of St. Dominic, which was nearby until the Reformation, although strictly speaking the members of this order were not nuns acted. The tower is the only surviving corner tower of the old town fortification. It formed the northern border of the old town and used to be much more powerful, since its bastion reached down to the Syra valley and was about 30 meters high. Today's road is about ten meters above the creek bed. The tower was heavily damaged in the air raids of 1945 and was rebuilt in the 1950s. In 1962 the bastion was demolished as part of the road expansion. After reunification, the area around the tower, which now houses a café, was redeveloped.
The Weisbachsche Haus was named after the Weisbach family of entrepreneurs, who owned the building for many years. It was built in the years 1777 to 1778 by the calico printer Johann August Neumeister as a residential and factory building in the late Baroque style. Neumeister had been recruited by Plauen cotton merchants in 1754. In the years that followed, he set up a calico print factory in Plauen. In 1794, Neumeister went to Zwickau and the merchant Ernst Wilhelm Conrad Gössel took over the calico printing manufactory. In 1808 he expanded the calico printing works to include a mechanical cotton spinning mill. In 1814 he is said to have set up twenty weaving machines that were operated "by mechanical art". In 1834 the Chemnitz manufacturer Carl Wilhelm Weisbach leased the cotton mill. Around 1840 he had a steam engine installed at Bleichstraße 12, which drove the spinning machines and later also the twisting machines. In the years 1850 to 1900 the entire complex at Bleichstraße 1-13 passed to the Weisbach family of entrepreneurs. The Weisbachsche house was moderately damaged by bombs in 1945. There is a discussion about whether the building should be used for a planned lace center.
With the rapid increase in the city's population towards the end of
the 19th century, the need for housing also increased enormously, so
that numerous residential buildings were built around the turn of the
century. The elaborate facade design facing the street is
characteristic, while the interior rooms and the rear sides were
designed more functionally in order to meet the demand for affordable
but representative living space.
The houses at Lessingstrasse 9
and 11 are a small architectural feature. The two houses were built in
1906/1907 by the building contractors Knüpfer and Gärtner. B. the girl's
head in the gable. The facades represent a particularly successful
symbiosis of both directions of Art Nouveau: There are floral, curved
elements, e.g. B. in the gable, below the window sills on the 1st floor
and in the cartouches in the side risalit, as well as geometric,
abstract forms, e.g. B. the pilaster strips on the side risalit and the
stylized scrollwork on the gable. The individual facade areas are
clearly structured and separated from each other. However, they are
linked to one another by the multiple use or variation of ornaments,
e.g. B. the same motifs below the lower window sills on the 1st floor
both in the area of the risalit and in the area of the clinker facade.
Other sights are the ruins of Plauen Castle, which was used as a prison until 2007 and which is now to be expanded into an educational center, as well as the castle in the village of Jößnitz, the approximately 18-hectare city park, the Pfortengässchen next to the Johanniskirche and the Weaver houses on the Elster.
In addition to the town hall tower and the 507 meter high Kemmler as
a scenic reference point, the Johanniskirche, which is raised above the
town, is one of the landmarks of the town of Plauen.
The
Johanniskirche (dedicated to John the Baptist) was consecrated in 1122
by order of Emperor Heinrich V by Naumburg Bishop Dietrich. The deed of
consecration is also the first documented mention of the city. The
construction goes back to Count Adalbert von Everstein, who had the
church built not far from his castle (today's malt house). Around 1230,
the originally Romanesque basilica was expanded into a three-nave
basilica with a transept. After a devastating city fire in 1548, the
nave had to be rebuilt. Therefore it was converted into a late Gothic
hall church. The two tower domes were added around 1644. After the
Second World War, in which the south tower, the roof truss and the
interior were damaged by an air raid on April 10, 1945, reconstruction
took place between 1951 and 1959. After reunification, a comprehensive
renovation took place. In October 2012, it was discovered that the
church's bells were damaged and must be shut down immediately. Next to
the St. John's Church is the Commander's Courtyard of the Teutonic
Order, which - destroyed in the bombing raids - was rebuilt from 2004 to
2008 to such an extent that it could be used in the summer. In October
2008, a support association was founded that is committed to the further
expansion of the building.
The Luther Church is the second oldest
church in Plauen and one of the oldest baroque central churches in
Saxony. The foundation stone was laid on August 24, 1693. The
consecration took place on December 10, 1722. Right next to the church
was the cemetery (Gottesacker), which was laid out in 1548, which is why
it was called Gottesackerkirche for a long time. In 1883, on the 400th
birthday of the reformer Martin Luther, the church was given the name
Lutherkirche. The church was used as a cemetery church before becoming a
parish church on April 8, 1893, when the Luther congregation was
founded. The church was damaged on the roof during the bombing raids in
1945 and repaired immediately after the war. Inside is a late Gothic
winged altar by an Erfurt master (created around 1495), which stood for
a long time in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. In the autumn of 1989
countless candles were burning in front of the side portal of the
church. These were parked there by the demonstrators of the Saturday
demonstrations, as the door is opposite the main portal of the town
hall. The church was renovated from 2009 to 2011. Among other things,
the roof was renewed and the bells replaced.
The St. Mark's
Church in the district of Haselbrunn was built in the neo-Byzantine
style. The cornerstone was laid on April 22, 1911. The church was built
on the Morgenberg, which was partially demolished for this purpose. The
topping-out ceremony was celebrated on March 18, 1912, and the church
was consecrated on December 7, 1912. The church survived the Second
World War almost undamaged. Due to the declining number of parishioners,
an intermediate ceiling was installed between 1963 and 1975, creating an
upper church hall and a winter church on the ground floor. In the spring
of 1989, the working group Rethinking through Reflection was founded in
the church, the members of which can be seen as pioneers of the peaceful
turnaround in Plauen in the autumn of that year. In recent years, the
upper church hall has been extensively renovated, with the old painting
being uncovered again in accordance with monument protection
requirements.
The cornerstone of the Pauluskirche was laid on
June 17, 1895. It was built as the third church in the fast-growing town
of Plauen. The topping-out ceremony was celebrated on August 26, 1896
and the church was consecrated on November 29, 1897. After the church in
the station suburb had survived the Second World War almost unscathed,
it was severely damaged in the penultimate (the thirteenth) air raid on
April 10, 1945. The spire and roof structure of the nave were destroyed,
as were all the windows and the organ. Reconstruction began in 1946 and
in 1957 the church was consecrated for the second time.
The
Catholic Herz-Jesu-Kirche was built in 1901/1902 as a three-aisled
basilica in the neo-Romanesque style made of light stone and red brick
according to plans by the Leipzig architect Julius Zeißig. It was
consecrated in 1905. The tower is 48 meters high. The once elaborate
interior painting and stained glass windows were destroyed in World War
II. After the war, the church was renovated several times. The last
extensive renovation took place in 2008. In 2003 a photovoltaic system
was installed on the southern roof of the nave.
After a long
struggle, the cornerstone for the Church of Reconciliation in the
Chrieschwitzer Hang district was laid in 1993. On March 20, 1994 the
church was consecrated. A stone slab from the Mount of Olives in
Jerusalem was embedded in the large window of the church room. The
church consists of two independent, contrasting structures. It is mainly
built of solid reinforced concrete and clad with cast stone. The church
belongs to the Michaelis congregation, which still has a community
center in Reusa.
In the urban area of Plauen there are still the
Evangelical Methodist Church of the Redeemer and the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of St. Stephen Oberlosa and in the villages the village
church Jößnitz, the village church Steinsdorf and the chapel Kauschwitz.
The most recent church building is the St. Matthew's Church of the
Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church (SELK) in the district of
Haselbrunn. The community previously had its community rooms on
Schumannstraße. The church was consecrated for the Reformation Festival
in 1999, and the bell tower in 2011.
When it comes to bridges, Plauen has a few superlatives to offer.
There is the largest stone arch bridge in the world and the oldest
bridge in Saxony. On the Jocketa border is the second largest brick
bridge in the world.
The Old Elster Bridge was first mentioned in
a document in 1244 as Pons lapideus (stone bridge). This makes it the
oldest bridge in Saxony. Two of the oldest trade routes from Nuremberg
(Frankenstraße as part of the B 173) and Augsburg met here and crossed
the Weiße Elster together. The bridge was part of Plauen's old town
fortifications and crosses the Elster and Mühlgraben with a length of 75
and a width of seven metres. It consists of six stone arches and used to
have two towers at the ends. Around 1860, these bridge towers were
demolished along with the postal miles column in front of the bridge
gate. In 1888 the bridge was reconsecrated after being reinforced with
steel struts and given the name König Albert Bridge. On November 15,
1894, the tram line, which initially ran over the bridge as a single
track, was opened. From November 28, 1903, the tram ran on two tracks.
In the final weeks of World War II, the south side of the bridge was
severely damaged by a bomb. After the war it was rebuilt and renamed Dr.
Wilhelm Kültz Bridge. After tram traffic had increased drastically, a
new bridge was built over the Elster just a few meters upstream in the
1970s, which was opened to traffic in November 1973 under the name Neue
Elsterbrücke. After the reconstruction in 1984, it was only released as
a pedestrian bridge. In 1986, a replica of the Saxon post distance
column, not true to the original made of Rochlitz porphyry and without
distance information, was erected at the southern end of the bridge,
which is intended to remind of the importance of the bridge for trade.
Extensive renovation work took place between 2006 and 2007, which was
completed with the consecration on August 15, 2007. The postal miles
column, which was destroyed in an accident at the end of 2010, was
rebuilt using the part of the coat of arms - now with reconstructed
distance information - and erected in October 2011.
The
Elstertalbrücke is the second largest brick bridge in the world after
the Göltzschtalbrücke. It is located on the city limits of Plauen
between the districts of Jößnitz and Jocketa. Like its big sister, the
bridge was built in the course of railway construction for the
Saxon-Bavarian Railway. The foundation stone for the 279 meter long and
68 meter high bridge was laid on November 7, 1846. Several hundred
workers were employed during the construction work, during which over
twelve million bricks were used before the bridge opened on July 15,
1851. In the last days of World War II, on April 16, 1945, the central
pillar was blown up by German Wehrmacht soldiers. After the war, a
temporary steel pillar was installed and the line was open again on
February 4, 1946. By October 1950, the bridge was completely restored.
The Elstertalbrücke crosses the Elstertal, in which the Elstertalbahn
runs in addition to the Weißen Elster, and has two floors. The lower
floor consists of five pillars and two large arches, the upper one of
nine pillars and six large arches. Four pillars are connected to form
two double pillars. While the train service between Reichenbach and
Plauen rolls on the upper floor, there is a pedestrian crossing on the
first floor, which is integrated into the network of hiking trails. At
the foot of the bridge is the Barthmühle train station.
With a
span of 90 meters, the Friedensbrücke (also known as the Syratal
Viaduct) is the largest quarry stone arch bridge in the world. The
bridge is 133 meters long, 18 meters wide and 18 meters high. It spans
the Syra and a municipal road; The federal highway 92 runs over it.
After there had been plans for the construction of a bridge over the
Syratal since the 1870s, an architectural competition was announced in
1901, in which 23 designs were received. The company Liebold & Co.
prevailed with a stone arch bridge, which initially provided for three
arches. In order not to affect traffic in the valley, the design was
revised again so that only one arch was planned. On March 26, 1903,
shaft work for the abutment began. Between August 1st and September
28th, 1903, the falsework for the main arch was erected and on October
15th of the same year the walling up of the arch began. This work was
completed on November 26th. In 1904 the construction of the side arch
began, as did the front and wing walls and the staircase. In 1905 the
railings were installed; the scaffolding was removed. On August 24,
1905, the bridge was opened in the presence of King Friedrich August
III. consecrated in his name. At the same time, the tram route across
the bridge was opened. In the years between 1907 and 1938 maintenance
work was carried out several times. In the final weeks of World War II,
the bridge was badly damaged in a bombing raid. The repairs from 1946
were severely hampered by the lack of building materials, but the
construction work on the bridge was completed in 1949. During the
reconstruction, the tram tracks were dismantled. In 1984 and between
2001 and 2004 the bridge was renovated. After the bridge was renamed
Friedrich-Ebert-Bridge on November 7, 1945, it has been called
Friedensbrücke since November 29, 1973.
As the last remnant of
the Vogtland machine factory VOMAG, which was destroyed at the end of
the Second World War, there is an armored bridge made of solid steel in
the south-western outskirts. The building is a listed building and is
open to pedestrians. A special feature of the bridge are the bullet
holes that can still be seen.
Other bridges over the Weiße
Elster, some of which are historic, are the Dürerbrücke, near the lower
station, the Gösselbrücke, over which the federal highway 92 leads, the
Black Bridge, which is only open to pedestrians, the Stresemannbrücke,
over which the four-lane federal highway 173 runs, and the Friesian
Bridge in Altchrieschwitz.
The district heating plant in Hammerstraße has a 171.7 meter high chimney, which is the tallest building in Plauen.
82 clubs with 9395 members are organized in the city sports
association of Plauen (as of 2007). The most well-known are AC Atlas
Plauen, which is successful in the 1st Bundesliga for weightlifters, VFC
Plauen, which plays in the football Oberliga Nordost, SVV Plauen, which
plays in the German water polo league, and in the basketball Oberliga
Saxony playing Basketball Club Vogtland e. V., the Vogtland Cycling Club
(VRV) with several state championship titles and the Athletics and
Triathlon Club (LATV) Plauen.
The association Plauener
Spitzenfest e. V. organizes the annual city festival. The branch
association Plauener lace and embroidery e. V. works in various areas to
promote Plauen lace. Other well-known associations are the NaturFreunde
Plauen e. V. the art association Plauen-Vogtland e. V. the diaconal work
- city mission Plauen, the children's island Vogtland e. V. the
Literature Association Goethekreis e. V. and the German Child Protection
Association Plauen e. V
The biggest city festival is the Plauen Lace Festival. It was first
celebrated in 1955. It was originally initiated to give new impetus to
the national reconstruction work. In addition, it was to be used as an
advertisement for the Plauen lace. The festival was held annually until
1959. Since the 2nd Workers' Festival took place in the Karl-Marx-Stadt
district and thus also in Plauen in 1960 and the Park Theater was built
from 1961 to 1963, the event was suspended in these years. From 1964 to
1968 a lace festival was celebrated annually. In 1969 there was another
interruption due to the workers' festival. The lace festival has been
held once a year since 1970. In 2009 the 50th anniversary was celebrated
with a festival week.
Two other city festivals take place in
spring and autumn. A mixture of stage programs and market activities is
offered at Plauen Spring and Plauen Autumn. The Vogtlandradmarathon is
an annual cycling event that has been held in summer since 2000. In late
summer, the Sternquell brewery organizes a brewery festival on the
brewery site in Neuensalz. During the Advent season, the Plauen
Christmas market takes place on the old and monastery market and the
adjacent streets.
Together with the e.o.plauen society, the city
of Plauen has been awarding the e.o.plauen prize since 1995.
Above the crematorium in the main cemetery are graves (B and C) for
soldiers who died in Plauen during World War I and World War II. Between
relatively few preserved tombstones there are free spaces. A stele bears
the inscription: "To the victims of both wars".
In the main cemetery,
in the middle above the crematorium, lies the very inconspicuous mass
grave with victims of the air raids on Plauen (grave field D according
to the cemetery site plan). There are no individual tombstones and no
names of the dead. The memorial at the top of the grave field bears the
inscription: "OUR DEAD MORNING. BANNT THE WAR. 1944-1945". From this it
is only indirectly clear that the bomb victims are meant and are lying
here.
A "grave and memorial for the (292) victims of the explosion on
July 19, 1918" (Grabfeld A) in a cartridge factory in Plauen is located
to the left above the crematorium.
Despite extensive removals
after the end of the Second World War, there are still many war
memorials in Plauen and the districts that belong to the city today,
some of which have experienced an expansion in their dedication.
Memorial stone next to the Lutheran Church in the district of Dobenau in
honor of 930 Russian soldiers who died in the Battle of Leipzig or later
succumbed to their injuries.
War memorial in honor of the soldiers
who died in World War I on Cemetery I in the Reißiger suburb.
War
memorial in honor of the soldiers who died in World War I on the main
street in the Straßberg district.
Monument ensemble for the soldiers
who died in the First and Second World Wars Am Anger in the district of
Neundorf.
War memorial in honor of the soldiers who died in World War
I. At the ponds in the district of Zwoschwitz.
War memorial in honor
of the soldiers who died in the First and Second World Wars on
Zwoschwitzer Straße in the district of Kauschwitz.
War memorial in
honor of the soldiers who died in World War I and the victims of war and
violence in the years 1939-1945 on Windberg in the district of
Großfriesen.
War memorial in honor of the soldiers who died in World
War I on Taltitzer Straße in the Messbach district.
War memorial in
honor of the soldiers who died in World War I on the street around the
ponds in the district of Thiergarten.
War memorial in honor of the
soldiers who died in World War I on Möschwitzer Straße in the
Chrieschwitz district.
War memorial in honor of the soldiers who died
in World War I and II on Bahnhofstrasse in the district of Jößnitz.
There are also several memorials in Plauen to commemorate the Jewish
community and the victims of fascism. In the ceremonial hall of the
Jewish cemetery on Oberjößnitzer Weg, which was set up in 1987 to
document the history of the city's Jews, there are commemorative plaques
on the history of the Jewish community and the victims of the Shoah,
which were installed in 1948. In 1988, a bronze plaque was placed at the
Seventh-day Adventist church on the corner of Senefelder Strasse and
Engelstrasse to commemorate the community center and synagogue built on
this spot in 1930, which was destroyed in the November pogrom of 1938.
The artists Petra Pfeuffer and Dietmar Ohme designed the memorial stone
inaugurated in 1993 at the United Methodist Church of the Redeemer on
the corner of Straße der Deutschen Unity and Gottschaldstraße to
commemorate the Jewish families who were crammed together in the “Jewish
houses” in the district before they were deported to the extermination
camps. In 1996, a commemorative plaque was placed on his last house at
Krausenstraße 2 in memory of the last head of the Jewish religious
community, Isidor Goldberg, who was murdered in the Auschwitz
concentration camp. Some of the city's street names also commemorate him
and other Jewish citizens. Since 1988 there has been another memorial
stone on Cemetery I on Jößnitzer Straße to commemorate Jewish life in
Plauen.
A memorial to all victims of fascism was erected in 1950 at
the Plauen main cemetery on Kleinfriesener Straße. Victims of different
origins and different countries are buried there.
On the staircase to
the upper station there is a commemorative plaque to the Reichsbahner
and resistance fighter Paul Dittmann, who died in 1942 as a result of
being imprisoned in a penitentiary. At the Gutsheinrichteich pond in the
Thiergarten district there is a memorial stone for the worker Willy
Thoß, who was murdered by SA men in 1932. A similar plaque for the
worker athletes Martin Groh and Kurt Hommel who were shot in 1931 at the
Komthurhof/corner of Hofwiesenstraße was confiscated by the cultural
office in 1996 due to construction work.
The e.o.plauen Society and a
street name commemorate the draftsman e.o.plauen, who committed suicide
in 1944 to escape imminent execution, and his friend, the editor Erich
Knauf. In contrast, the memory of the communist Rudolf Hallmeyer was
removed from public space after 1990. The memorial in the cells of the
former police prison in the basement of the town hall on Herrenstrasse
also no longer exists.
Two commemorative plaques on the Schlossberg
commemorate the victims of political justice in SBZ/GDR and the young
people who had to make their way to Soviet special camps from here in
1945 (and afterwards) and some of them never came back.
The Plauen
turning memorial, a "citizen memorial to the peaceful revolution of
1989", was inaugurated in 2010. It is located diagonally across from the
New Town Hall and is flanked by five steles that symbolize dates of
particular importance in the GDR (1953, 1961, 1968, 1989,1990).
A
"Path of the Peaceful Revolution 1989" leads along places that are
important for this event in Plauen.
By plane
The nearest international airports are Leipzig Halle
Airport (IATA: LEJ) and Nuremberg Airport (IATA: NUE) .
The
commercial airfield Hof/Plauen is located southwest of Hof.
By
train
Plauen has two important railway stations: Oberen Bahnhof and
Mitte station. Both are linked to the tram.
The Obere Bahnhof,
Rathenauplatz, 08525 Plauen is undoubtedly the more important one for
national traffic. Here, RE trains on the Hof–Dresden route and various
regional trains with the starting points in Zwickau, Falkenstein, Adorf
and Cheb (Czech Republic) stop. Regional transport is mainly operated by
the Vogtlandbahn, but the Mitteldeutsche Regiobahn also runs RE trains
between Dresden and Hof.
Central train station, Reichenbacher
Str. 34, 08527 Plauen. is located on the Elstertalbahn from Gera to
Weischnitz (changeover point to Adorf) and is served every two hours.
The tour ticket is available for this route. For €10 (up to 3 children
between the ages of 6 and 14 can be taken on a tour ticket free of
charge) you can ride the route as often as you like throughout the day.
In the west of the city are the stations Plauen West, Am Westbahnhof
2, 08523 Plauen. edit info and Plauen-Strassberg, Alte Straßberger
Straße, 08523 Plauen. edit info The lower station and the stations
Plauen-Chrieschwitz and Plauen Zellwolle (all on the Elstertal route)
are out of service.
By bus
All regional bus lines operating in
Plauen end/start at the bus station (public transport junction Oberer
Bahnhof).
The long-distance bus stop (Postbus) is on the eastern
outskirts of the city, on the B 173 near the Waldfrieden tram stop.
On the street
The A72 motorway runs south-east of the city from
Hof (Bayerian Vogtland triangle, A9) to Chemnitz (Chemnitz junction,
A4). Northeast of Hof, the A93 autobahn also joins from the direction of
Regensburg. Departures relevant for Plauen are symbol: AS 5 Pirk (B
173), symbol: AS 6 Plauen-Süd (B 92) and symbol: AS 7 Plauen-Ost (B
173).
There are also two main roads that run through Plauen:
B 92 Gera - Plauen - Bad Brambach
B 173 Zwickau - Plauen - Hof
By bicycle
The Bayreuth-Chemnitz cycle path and the Elster cycle
path lead through the city.
Plauen has six tram lines and two city bus lines. Line 6 replaces
lines 4 and 5 at certain times.
1 Neundorf → Dittrichplatz →
Tunnel → Am Albertplatz → Preißelpöhl 4.8km 18-20 minutes
2
Preißelpöhl → Am Albertplatz → tunnel → Mitte train station →
Vogtlandklinikum → Waldfrieden 5.9km 21-23 minutes
3 Waldfrieden →
Vogtlandklinikum → Mitte train station → Tunnel → Dittrichplatz →
Neundorf 6.4km 22-24 minutes
4 Oberer Bahnhof - Am Albertplatz -
Tunnel - Mitte station - Vogtlandklinikum - Reusa 5.2 km 19-21 minutes
5 Südvorstadt - Tunnel - Am Albertplatz - Plamag 5.9 km 19-21 minutes
6 Plamag - Am Albertplatz - tunnel - central station - Vogtlandklinikum
- Reusa 7.6km 26-27 minutes
A Ostvorstadt - Central Station - Tunnel
(- Stadtpark) - Am Albertplatz - Wartberg 25/24 minutes
Ax
Ostvorstadt → Mammenstraße → Tunnel → Am Albertplatz → Wartberg 25
minutes
Stadtgalerie, Postplatz 1. Plauen's largest shopping center is a three-storey mall with 80 specialist shops.
Cheap
Ursuppe, Windmühlenstrasse 4, 08523 Plauen. Every week 5
dishes in two portion sizes. Open: Mon to Fri 10.30 a.m. - 2.30 p.m.
Price: Soup from €3.50.
Medium
Heinrichs restaurant, Altmarkt
1A, 08523 Plauen. Tel.: +49 3741 149299. In the vaulted cellars of the
old town hall and beer garden on the Altmarkt. Home cooking with
homemade bread. Open: daily from 11:00 a.m., closed on Wednesdays.
Price: Main courses from €11.
Upscale
Restaurant Am
Strassberger Tor, Strassberger Strasse 37.
Club Zooma
Medium
1 Parkhotel Plauen, Rädelstrasse 18, 08523 Plauen. Phone:
+49 3741 20060, fax: +49 3741 2006-60, e-mail: Info@Parkhotel-Plauen.de.
In an exclusive city villa from 1868 with 17 rooms, including 5 single
rooms with shower, toilet (some with bathtub), satellite TV (LED),
radio, telephone, WiFi, minibar, tablet PC and a small desk. Restaurant
Frisian Embassy has fish fondue and steaks. Price: Single room from €79,
double room from €102, breakfast €8. Accepted payment methods: Visa,
EC-Card, MasterCard/ EuroCard, American Express.
2 Matsch - Plauen's
oldest inn & hotel, Nobelstraße 1-5, 08523 Plauen. Tel.: +49 3741
204807. The mud was first mentioned in 1503. The hotel has mostly
antique-style guest rooms with bath/shower/toilet/TV and WiFi. The inn
offers rustic guest rooms, a beer garden in the courtyard, local and
international cuisine. Price: Single room from €54, double room from
€68, breakfast €10, main courses from €10.
3 Old trading house,
Straßberger Str. 17, 08527 Plauen. Rooms with shower, toilet, TV and
W-LAN. Restaurant with the specialty Bambes (potato pancakes). Open:
Restaurant Wed to Sat 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. - 10 p.m., Sun 11 a.m.
- 3 p.m. Price: Single room from €54, double room from €79, breakfast
€13, main courses from €10.
Upscale
4 Best Western Hotel Am
Strassberger Tor, Strassberger Strasse 37-41. Tel.: +49 3741 28700, fax:
+49 3741 2870-100, e-mail: info@strassberger-tor.bestwestern.de. 60
rooms, including 19 single rooms and 1 suite. Check-in: 3:00 p.m.
Check-out: 12:00 p.m. Accepted payment methods: AmericanExpress,
Discover, Visa, CarteBlanche, JapanCreditBureau, DinersClub,
MasterCard/EuroCard.
State Academy Plauen (dual study), Schloßberg 1.
Post office 490 (Wernis and Kathrins Bastelecke), Stresemannstr. 8th.
Archaeological finds indicate that there were
settlements on the Plauen territory as early as the Bronze Age. The
barrows of Plauen-Chrieschwitz, in the Reissiger Forest and in the
area of Reinsdorf testify to a population that buried their dead
in burial mounds. These finds come from a local group of the Lausitz
culture with close connections to Bohemia, the Main region and
Thuringia. The settlement can be traced back to the middle of the
last millennium BC. Prove. With the discovery of a grave from the
Latène period (around 420 BC) in the area of Ruppertsgrün-Liebau,
the evidence of settlement in the Plauen-Oelsnitz area suddenly
breaks off. No evidence of a Germanic settlement in the Vogtland has
yet been found.
Finds of Roman coins from the second century
AD show that the Plauen area was important as a transit area. A
Slavic settlement can only be proven by some finds for the period
shortly before 1000, although the settlement of the Slavs is
suspected to have been around 800. Late Slavic sherds were
discovered in Plauen-Kleinfriesen, which, due to encrustation,
suggest that there was a Pechsiederei there. The Slavic names of
places, fields and waters in the region are regarded as further
evidence of Slavic settlement. The floor plan based on the block
floor principle is also typical for Slavic settlement areas. The
name of the city Plauen is also of Slavic origin. It comes from
plavna, which means something like floodplain, raft place and is
probably derived from the location in the floodplain of the
Elsteraue.
The city was first
mentioned in 1122 as Vicus Plawe in the consecration certificate of
the Johanniskirche. In the document, Bishop Dietrich I von Naumburg
confirmed the church, which was built by Count Adalbert von
Everstein (in other sources also Eberstein) and equipped with a hoof
of land in the village of Chrieschwitz, a piece of forest and half
the yield from the Elstermühle. The bishop installed the priest
Thomas as pastor and transferred to the church the tithe of the
approximately 20 square miles large Dobnagau, to which he was
entitled until then. The city belonged to the diocese of
Naumburg-Zeitz and was the seat of an archdeaconate.
In 1214
the Teutonic Order founded a branch in Plauen, the German House, to
which in 1224 Vogt Heinrich the Middle of Weida donated the St.
John's Church. In this deed of donation, “de Plawe: Conradus
urbanus” (urbanus = city dweller) is named as a witness, the
earliest evidence that Plauen had received city rights. A special
certificate for the granting of town charter has not been received.
On May 29, 1244, a personal Vogt von Plauen is first attested,
Heinrich II. Von Plauen, who presumably also began building Plauen
Castle. This document mentions both the stone bridge and some
courtyards on the left bank of the Syra (beginnings of the new
town). In 1263 the new town was first mentioned. The oldest original
document kept in the city archives is dated May 25, 1278. With her,
Conrad von Everstein Kunigunde, the wife of Bailiff Heinrich von
Plauen, owned the village and half of the forest in Straßberg and
gave her the right to do so after death to dispose of her husband at
will. On June 25, 1279 the mint of the bailiffs was established,
which bailiff Heinrich the Elder sold on March 11, 1306 to the rural
people and the merchants of Plauen for 600 marks of silver. In 1328
Count Hermann von Everstein renounced all fiefdoms in the Dobe area.
This ended the story of the Eversteiner in Vogtland.
On August 9, 1329, a mayor and sworn citizens were recorded in Plauen for the first time. The oldest seal of the citizens (sigillum civium in Plawe) also dates from the same year. Emperor Karl IV declared the rule of Plauen a hereditary fiefdom of the Bohemian crown in 1356. In 1430 the Hussites besieged the city under the leadership of Andreas Prokop. They took the castle, destroyed it and killed 170 people. They then burned the city down, killing another 500 to 900 people. When the city was rebuilt, the old city and the new city were united. In 1438, Elector Friedrich the Meek occupied the city. However, on imperial orders it was returned to Burgrave Heinrich I, who moved in again in 1439. The successor Burgrave Heinrich II went down in history as a tyrant. In 1466 he was given an imperial ban by King Georg Podiebrad. On February 10 of the same year, Duke Albrecht, the king's son-in-law, who was entrusted with the enforcement of the Eight, took the town and rule of Plauen, which was the first time Plauen came under Saxon rule. In 1482 Burgrave Heinrich III renounced. through the contracts of Brüx finally to his claims on Plauen in favor of the Wettiner Ernst and Albrecht.
When the Wettin lands were
divided, Plauen fell to the Ernestine side. As a result, the
Reformation gained a foothold in the Vogtland relatively early. From
1521 the last commander of the German House, Georg Eulner, worked in
the Reformation spirit. Together with the Dominican Georg Raute, he
preached in St. John's Church according to the teachings of Martin
Luther. The Reformation was introduced by Raute and Eulner in Plauen
in 1524 and in the entire Saxon Vogtland by 1529. After that, Plauen
was a predominantly Protestant city for many centuries and became
the seat of a superintendent, which was retained even after the
later transfer to the Lords of Plauen and Albertine Saxony. Two
church visits in 1529 and 1533 regulated the final introduction of
the Reformation. Georg Eulner became the first superintendent in
Plauen. In 1540 Plauen was persecuted by witches. Jacob Schultes got
into a witch trial. In the summer of 1546, after the outbreak of the
Schmalkaldic War, the city was fortified and occupied by loyal
followers of the elector. The city council turned to Duke Moritz von
Sachsen with a request for protection, which was granted on
condition of homage.
In 1547, King Ferdinand of Bohemia
enfeoffed the grandson of the once expelled tyrant Heinrich II again
with the town and rule of Plauen. He was allowed to call himself
Burgrave Heinrich IV. In 1548 he was appointed imperial prince at
the Augsburg Reichstag. On May 15 of the same year, the city burned
down almost completely. It was triggered by a shot that a drunk
citizen had fired in the middle of the city. The town hall, the
church, the castle counts and the parish and school buildings burned
down. In 1550 the town hall was rebuilt and in 1556 the
reconstruction of the Johanniskirche was completed. After the death
of Henry IV, his sons Henry V and Henry VI pledged. ownership to
Elector August von Sachsen, who finally acquired the area in 1563.
In 1600 the city council issued the first veil regulation. The
veil lords were recognized as a guild. This should strengthen the
new industry of cotton knitting. Veils are fine cotton fabrics that
are used as headscarves, neck scarves, ruffles and turbans. In 1602
Plauen rose to become the district town of the Voigtlaendischen
Creisses. It was the 13th district town of the electorate. The new
district comprised the offices of Plauen, Pausa and Voigtsberg with
the cities of Adorf, Elsterberg, Gefell, Mühltroff, Neukirchen,
Oelsnitz, Pausa and Schöneck.
On August 13, 1632, Field
Marshal Holk took Plauen in the Thirty Years' War. Although the city
surrendered, it was sacked. On September 12th General Gallas
followed and on October 12th of the same year Wallenstein arrived
with the main army in Plauen, after whose departure the city was set
on fire. In 1634 about half of the population in Plauen died of the
plague. In a town fire in 1635, most of the upper town with the
church and the parish and school buildings burned down. 1656, after
the death of Elector Johann Georg I, his fourth son, Duke Moritz von
Sachsen-Zeitz, received Plauen and the Vogtland. He handed over the
German House to the city in 1667 and had the castle rebuilt from
1670 to 1675, which had been destroyed in 1548. In 1681 Georg Samuel
Dörffel published his work on comet orbits, and in 1697 the first
Fahrpost from Dresden and Zwickau to Nuremberg began its service.
In 1702, as the founder of the Plauen white goods industry,
Johann Friedrich Schildt built a factory in which cotton weaving
could be carried out on a larger scale. This was followed by a
calico factory in 1753. When Charles XII. occupied Saxony during the
Great Northern War, Swedish troops were billeted in Plauen from 1706
to 1707. In 1718 Duke Moritz Wilhelm died and Plauen fell back to
Electoral Saxony, that is to say to August the Strong. Therefore, in
1725, a Saxon postal mileage column was made for the bridge gate.
During the Seven Years' War the various warring parties took turns
occupying Plauen. In 1758 the city council was forced at gunpoint to
take the oath of allegiance to the Prussian King Friedrich II. In
1786, the city wall between the Straßberger Tor and the Nonnenturm
was removed to make room for houses in the growing city.
The
Bavarian Army, the Württemberg Army, the Prussian Army, the Grande
Armée, the Saxon Army and the Imperial Russian Army moved through
Plauen between 1806 and 1815. They were fed or plundered by the
townspeople. In 1812 Napoleon Bonaparte camped in Plauen on the
Russian campaign. In 1813 refugees from the “great army” came to the
city. After the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig, many wounded
were taken care of in the Gottesackerkirche, where a hospital had
been set up. Many soldiers and many city dwellers died of typhus.
Just a few days after the Battle of Nations, the Kingdom of Saxony,
together with the Reussian principalities and the Duchy of
Altenburg, became the Russian General Government of Saxony for about
a year. Plauen received a garrison of 500–600 Cossacks and Bashkirs
at this time.
The factories built in 1702 and 1753 were
followed by more. In 1829 master weaver Schönherr set up a loom for
bobbinet (a kind of tulle), followed in 1834 by a jacquard loom and
a Swiss finish. On February 2, 1832, a new city ordinance came into
force, with which the newly elected members of the city council and
the city court were introduced on November 4. At the same time, the
mayor Ernst Gottschald, the city council and the larger citizens'
committee took up their offices. In 1833, when gymnastics was
banned, Otto Leonhard Heubner founded the first gymnastics garden on
the Schlossberg in Plauen and in 1840 the general municipal
gymnastics facility. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn's gymnastics movement
spread rapidly from Plauen to all of Saxony. In 1834 a main tax
office was opened in Plauen. In 1835, the Vogtland District and the
Erzgebirge District were merged to form the Zwickau District
Directorate. With this, Plauen lost its status as a district town
and was only the seat of the administrative authority of Vogtland.
To expand the city, the Straßberger and Neundorfer Tor were
demolished in 1837. On the night of September 9-10, 1844, a city
fire destroyed a large part of the city center (107 residential
buildings and 199 side and back buildings). In the course of the
rebuilding, the remains of the Dominican monastery were torn down.
Only the name Klostermarkt still reminds of it. In November 1848,
the Saxon-Bavarian Railway opened the Plauen – Hof line. On April
16, 1851, after completion of the Göltzsch and Elstertal bridges,
the route to Reichenbach (Vogtl) and on via Werdau to Dresden
followed. In 1857 the first embroidery machines were installed in
Plauen. The Aktien-Brauverein was founded on October 23 of the same
year. On August 31, 1860 the city hospital was inaugurated and in
1863 the first mechanical cotton goods weaving mill started
operations.
The production of English tulle curtains began between 1871 and
1874. On November 30, 1874, the Plauen – Eger railway line was
opened and the upper station was rebuilt and expanded. The Elstertal
Railway opened on September 8, 1875. In 1880, a joint venture led by
the businessman Theodor Bickel succeeded in producing
machine-embroidered tulle lace without an underlay for the first
time. The product, initially known as Saxon lace, was first launched
on the market in Paris. The lace, now known as Plauen lace
(Plauen-laces in English, dentelles de Plauen in French), soon
gained a worldwide reputation. In the following three years as many
embroidery machines (2258) were installed as in the 24 years before
(since the first installation in 1857). The machine industry also
experienced an upswing. Gottlieb Hornbogen's machine factory
delivered its 100th embroidery machine in 1881, followed by the
200th in 1882. Hermann Dietrich's (later VOMAG) factory also
produced the 100th machine in 1882. The first shuttle embroidery or
steam embroidery machine went into operation in 1883, increasing
production by six to seven times compared to the previous machines.
The export could be increased significantly, so that on August 17th,
1887 the USA opened its own consulate in Plauen.
On December
5, 1889, the new hospital was opened at its current location in
Reichenbacher Strasse. In 1894 the Plauen tram went into operation.
In 1899 rotary machine construction began in what was then Vogtland
Machine Factory AG. The etched tip, introduced in 1883, only saw
increased sales from around 1888. In 1900, the top manufacturers in
Plauen received the Grand Prix at the Paris World Exhibition. This
boosted exports and the city of Plauen continued to grow very
quickly (see population development).
In 1893 the only
Protestant congregation in the city, the St. Johannis congregation,
was divided into five independent congregations. Catholics returned
to the city in the 19th century. This led to the foundation of the
parish Herz Jesu, which built its church in 1901. Initially, the
city's Catholics, like all Catholics in what was then the Kingdom of
Saxony, belonged to the Apostolic Vicariate based in Dresden, which
had been the responsible administrative district since 1743,
succeeding the diocese of Meissen, which was dissolved during the
Reformation. From this administrative district, the Diocese of
Meißen emerged again in 1921, since 1980 Diocese of Dresden-Meißen,
which today belongs to the Church Province of Berlin (Archdiocese of
Berlin). Plauen became the seat of a deanery, to which parishes
outside Plauen also belonged.
In 1904, Plauen
had more than 100,000 inhabitants and, after doubling the number of
inhabitants, had become a major city within ten years. In 1907
Plauen received the status of an exempt (district-free) city.
After the population peaked at 128,014 in 1912, it declined due
to the crisis in the textile industry that left many of the city's
residents unemployed and emigrated. With the outbreak of World War
I, lace production continued to decline. The industry could only be
converted to war production to a limited extent, so that there was
no improvement either.
Around 3,000 soldiers from Plauen were
killed in the First World War, and around 1,700 were taken prisoners
of war.
were made, an explosion that killed 292 people. In
the factory, which was an AEG incandescent lamp factory before the
outbreak of war, a fire broke out in the lower room shortly before
4.30 p.m., in which the powder was weighed and sewn into bags. The
fire spread so quickly that the explosion could not be prevented. A
cause was never determined. Almost all women worked in the factory,
163 of whom died. 177 injured were rescued; 129 of them died a
little later. Most of the victims were buried on July 24, 1918 in a
mass grave in the main cemetery. The mass grave and a memorial still
exist.
After the
First World War, the population increased again, but the pre-war
level was never reached again.
In October 1921, one of the
first local groups of the National Socialist German Workers' Party
(NSDAP) outside Bavaria was established in Plauen. The Hitler Youth
(HJ) also quickly organized itself in Plauen. Kurt Gruber from
Plauen was their first Reichsführer. According to the entry in the
district office, Plauen was founded on January 1, 1929, the Hitler
Youth Movement. V. With that the leadership of the Hitler Youth
passed to Plauen. With the subordination of the HJ to the SA, the
headquarters were moved from Plauen to Munich in 1931. Plauen's
importance was thus downgraded to a Großgau.
The world
economic crisis of 1929 hit the export-oriented Plauen economy
particularly hard. This was particularly noticeable in the
unemployment rate, at times the highest in Germany. As a result, the
NSDAP, which promised radical changes to the people, gained great
popularity in Plauen. Between 1924 and 1933 the headquarters of the
NSDAP Gauleitung was in Plauen. Plauen was also one of the first
German cities to give honorary citizenship to Adolf Hitler and Paul
von Hindenburg. Alfons Hitzler was NSDAP district leader in Plauen
for 20 years.
The city's synagogue, inaugurated in 1930 and
built in the Bauhaus style, was opened during the Reichspogromnacht
on 9/10. Destroyed by an arson attack in November 1938 and never
rebuilt afterwards. Most of the Jewish citizens left the city; the
rest were later deported and murdered. Some residents are remembered
with stumbling blocks that have been laid in Plauen since 2009.
Three subcamps of the Flossenbürg concentration camp were
located in Plauen between 1944 and 1945: Plauen subcamp (cotton
spinning mill), Plauen subcamp (industrial plants), Plauen subcamp
(Dr. Th. Horn).
During the Second World War, Plauen was
spared from attacks for a long time, but was badly destroyed towards
the end of the war. The first major air raid by the US Air Force
(USAAF) took place on September 12, 1944, followed by several USAAF
and RAF bombings from January to April 1945. The city experienced
the most momentous and last of a total of 14 air raids on April 10.
That night alone, around 900 people were killed in attacks by
British bombers. 1965 tons of explosives destroyed 164 hectares of
the urban area. After examining British documents that were secret
until 2009, earlier information (table) for the night attack of
April 10, 1945 was corrected: 304 Lancaster bombers, 6 Mosquito
high-speed bombers, 1,168 tons of bombs on April 10 and a total of
4,925 tons dropped on Plauen. Overall, the air raids in Plauen
claimed at least 2,340 lives (this number is too low: after the main
attack on April 10, 1945, only reported Plauen citizens were counted
as fatalities). The stated targets of the air raids were the Obere
Bahnhof, whereby the entire suburb of the station, the
infrastructure and the industrial facilities of VOMAG were
destroyed. However, there were sometimes large deviations between
the intended drop targets and the areas actually hit. This finding
is mainly based on the fact that the degree of destruction of
cultural sites was 80%, of living space 78%, of commercial buildings
70%, of administrative facilities 55% and of the transport network
48%. 91% of the gas network (150 km of pipelines) and around 200
kilometers of the water network were taken out of service. Urban
supply networks and urban traffic came to a complete standstill as a
result of the attacks. Repair costs of 4.5 million Reichsmarks were
incurred. Due to the destruction of important infrastructure such as
the station building and the Syratal Viaduct, rail traffic
collapsed. Automobile traffic was also severely hindered until the
partly buried roads were cleared. The Plauen tram was able to resume
operation after an eight-month break and the restoration of the
track system, while rail traffic was only possible on a single track
for the next few years. About 75% of the city was destroyed by the
attacks. There were 12,600 bomb craters in the city center. With a
bomb load of 185.4 t / km² Plauen was one of the most heavily
damaged cities in Germany (more than e.g. Dresden with about 60%).
On April 16, 1945 Plauen was occupied without a fight by the 347th US Infantry Regiment advancing from the west. During the American occupation, dismantling took place, mainly of cutting-edge technology (e.g. VOMAG precision boring mills), construction documents were confiscated. The most capable skilled workers and engineers were brought into the American zone of occupation. The Americans tried to rebuild a functioning civil administration as quickly as possible, resorting to experts dismissed after 1933. According to the agreements of the Yalta Conference, the Americans withdrew from West Saxony on June 30, 1945, and from July 1 the Soviets took possession of the rest of the zone of occupation assigned to them.
During the Soviet
occupation, many industrial plants were dismantled as reparations
and brought to the Soviet Union. From 1946 the expropriation and
nationalization of the large companies began. State-owned companies
were founded and land reform was carried out.
1950 began to
counteract the housing shortage caused by the severe destruction. In
order to create new living space quickly and in a cost-saving
manner, the new residential buildings were built from the 1960s
onwards in the panel construction, which was considered unsightly
but popular due to the central heating. The Chrieschwitz district,
the Mammen area and the area around the upper station are
particularly characterized by this type of construction.
After the war, the first Plauen lace festival took place in 1955,
which is one of the city's cultural highlights every year. In 1974
the city of Plauen celebrated 750 years of existence. There is no
longer any document about the granting of city rights, but another
document documents that Plauen was designated a city as early as
1224. Accordingly, the appointment to the city must have been made
before 1224. In this way, the city anniversary could be combined
with 25 years of the GDR, which the government of the time attached
great importance to.
The location around 25 kilometers north
of the inner-German border was one of the reasons that Plauen's
development continued to stagnate after 1945. The number of
residents decreased continuously. Plauen housed a strong garrison of
the Soviet Army on the Cold War front line, as well as facilities of
the GDR border troops such as the officers' college. In Plauen there
were a few large companies like Plamag that were also successful
abroad. However, the city was unable to regain its former economic
importance during the GDR era.
In the local elections on May 7, 1989, more election observers took part, mainly from those around the church. Obvious election frauds were documented and submissions made. However, this did not change anything in the conduct of the leadership. When, on the night of October 4th to 5th, 1989, trains carrying embassy refugees from Prague drove through Plauen towards Hof for the second time, several people tried to jump up. However, the station and the adjacent tracks were cordoned off on a large scale.
On October 5th, the Plauen New Forum was supposed to be founded
in the Markuskirche, which was still forbidden at that time.
However, since word of this had got around and a large crowd
appeared in which one suspected Stasi employees as well, a peace
prayer was spontaneously scheduled, which had to be repeated because
of the crowd. To mark the 40th anniversary of the republic on
October 7, 1989, typewritten notes and word of mouth were used to
call for a demonstration in the city center. The Stasi knew about
it, but completely underestimated the situation. Around 3 p.m.,
thousands of people gathered on the Theaterplatz and
Otto-Grotewohl-Platz (tunnel) without actually knowing what would
happen. The police tried to use water cannons (due to the lack of
their own vehicles, those of the volunteer fire brigade were used)
and a helicopter to break up the crowd and to clear the place; which
she did not succeed. At around 4:15 p.m., a demonstration march
formed, which initially moved in the direction of Bahnhofstrasse and
then returned to the town hall at around 5:30 p.m. Banners with
slogans such as “We need reforms”, “For reforms and freedom of
travel against mass exodus - especially peace” or “Freedom of travel
- freedom of expression - freedom of the press” were carried along.
There were shouts in front of the town hall demanding that the mayor
Norbert Martin come out to talk to him. Thanks to the level-headed
commitment of Superintendent Thomas Küttler, who mediated between
the town hall / police and the demonstrators, the demonstration
remained peaceful and slowly broke up with the cry “We'll be back”
around 6 p.m. after it had been decided to demonstrate again the
following Saturday , and there should also be talks between Plauen's
citizens and the mayor. From this point on, demonstrations took
place in Plauen every Saturday until the first free elections on
March 18, 1990. The Saturday demonstrations, which mostly took the
same route past the Stasi headquarters and the SED district office,
also included people from the surrounding area and some delegations
from the twin town of Hof. "It was the first time that the citizens
of the GDR came together without" instructions from above "and
expressed their united will against the system in the GDR". (Rolf
Schwanitz) “Plauen was the first East German city to express a
united will to turn around; it was the only one in which the
upheaval in East Germany was a matter of the masses from the start.
On October 12, 1989, the first scheduled talks between the mayor of
the city and 25 Plauen citizens took place. The citizen council led
by Superintendent Küttler was later also referred to as the Group of
20 - based on the Dresden Group of 20.
On December 15, 1989,
10,000 employees in Plauen stopped working for two hours to stand up
for German unity. That was the biggest strike in this development
phase in the GDR.
In view of the pioneering role that Plauen
played during the fall of the Berlin Wall, October 7th as a communal
day of remembrance became Democracy Day. explained. In addition, on
October 7, 2010, the so-called Wende monument, designed by Peter
Luban, was inaugurated diagonally across from the New Town Hall. The
construction costs of 60,000 euros were financed entirely through
donations.
After the municipal gallery e.o.plauen was opened on October 1, 1993 with an Erich-Ohser exhibition, the e.o.-Plauen-Gesellschaft e. V. founded. Willi Daume was elected as its first president. From September 5 to 7, 1997, the Day of the Saxons took place in Plauen with 380,000 visitors. After a referendum in 1999, a shopping center, the Stadt-Galerie, was built in the city center in 2001. The Lohmühlenanlage, a green area, was built on. In the course of this construction work, the central tram stop tunnel was completely renewed and partially relocated. Critics complain that the building of the city gallery devalued the previous shopping street, Bahnhofstrasse, and that since then many shops on Bahnhofstrasse have either moved to the city gallery or have had to close. In 2002 the city received a first prize for the "integrated urban development program" (InSEK) from the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing. In 2003 and 2008 the city was named municipality of the year.
Plauen fought intensely against plans by the Saxon Ministry of
the Interior to take the city away from the city as part of the
district reform, which it had had since 1907. On April 22, 2008, the
Saxon Constitutional Court rejected the preliminary injunction
requested by the City of Plauen to suspend the district reform.
Plauen was reintegrated into the Vogtlandkreis as a district town on
August 1st, 2008.
On March 1, 2010 Plauen joined the Mayors
for Peace initiative, an international non-governmental organization
that is mainly committed to nuclear disarmament. The city
representatives also want to promote this initiative to the partner
cities. At the city council meeting on May 27, 2010, it was decided
to join the Council of European Municipalities and Regions. As part
of the celebrations for the Day of German Unity, Mayor Oberdorfer
received the Unity Prize (special prize from the jury) from the
Federal Agency for Civic Education on October 3, 2011 on behalf of
the city of Plauen. The reason given was: "With the special prize of
the jury for the city of Plauen, the jury wants to remember the
civil courage of the local population, who did not let the Stasi,
the people's police and water cannons prevent them from doing so on
October 7, 1989, the national holiday of the GDR. to demonstrate for
an end to the SED dictatorship. In the public eye, the people of
Plauen were overshadowed by Leipzig and Berlin, but they marked the
turning point in the dramatic autumn of the revolution of 1989. “On
November 7, 2011, the city received the European Energy Award.
Plauen lies in the hill country of the Central Vogtland. The
urban area is therefore characterized by the typical, mostly wooded
hilltops, also called Pöhle. It extends over around 102 km² (as of
December 2002). In the north-south direction, the simplified
diamond-shaped floor plan extends to around 16 km and in the
east-west direction to around 12 km.
The mean height of 412 m
above sea level. NN is a very theoretical value in Plauen, because
the lowest point is the Elstersohle at 305 meters (located in the
district of Röttis), the highest mountain is the wooded Culmberg at
525 meters (in the southern district of Oberlosa). Plauen's local
mountain is the 507 meter high Kemmler with a Bismarck tower.
Plauen is located in the valley and on the banks of the White
Elster. In the area of the confluence of the Syra the valley
widens to a basin with the city center. The White Elster flows from
the southwest through the village of Straßberg into the original
Plauen city area. Around the city center, it swings north, flows
through the Chrieschwitz district and then forms the eastern border
of the city area. She divides it into two roughly equal areas.
While the original urban area, i.e. the inner city, is a dense
urban residential or mixed area, the localities that were
incorporated from 1994 to 1999 are particularly characterized by the
high proportion (55%) of agricultural land. This is the highest
value in comparison with the four next largest cities in Saxony.
Plauen is the only one of these cities to have a purely rural
outskirts. Plauen is criss-crossed by many green spaces; especially
in the north and south there are extensive forest areas. The forest
share is 18%, after Dresden with 21%, the second largest of the
large Saxon cities.
The hilly surrounding area is covered in
roughly equal proportions by fields, meadows and forests. The two
large reservoirs Pöhl (northeast) and Pirk (south), which are also
used as recreational areas, are located a short distance from the
city.
Geologically, Plauen lies in the Vogtland Mulde (Vogtland
Synklinorium). Most of the city is in the main hollow, the
Kauschwitz district in a foothill of the Mehltheuerer Kulmmulde. The
main hollow is strongly structured by numerous diabase tops, the
Kulm hollow appears rather even.
The urban area is
geologically extremely complex. The many different rocks are
assigned to several formations of the Paleozoic Era. The structure
was influenced mainly in the time of the Variski mountain formation.
Different rock layers are shifted against each other, discarded and
eroded.
The wide Kerbsohlental of the Elster divides the city
into a north and a south part. The northern part rises relatively
steeply in the city center, starting from the Elster sole. A diabase
ridge lifts out there, which can be seen as a steep slope at the
level of the former castle. The area then changes into rather
flatter formations, which mainly consist of various clay and alum
schists from the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian. Due to a broad
fault, these shale sequences are demarcated from the diabase rocks
adjoining to the west and north-west. The disturbance extends from
the Friedensbrücke over the Bärenstein-Osthang, the Rähnisberg to
the Karolastraße and then runs northeast to the Pietzschebach. It
appears as a zone of strongly decomposed diabase and slate, while
the areas to the west of the fault (Haselbrunn, Neundorf, Straßberg)
are characterized by various diabase rocks such as tuffs, breccias
and conglomerates.
The southern part of the city is
characterized by slate of the Ordovician and Devonian, which stretch
as a wide strip from Reusa to Thiergarten. In the far south is the
diabase area of the Kemmler and the Black Wood. In the east and
south suburbs there are still some gravel deposits that are
considered to be young river deposits of the White Elster.
The Vogtland and thus Plauen are located in one of the most
seismically active areas in Germany. The epicentres of the swarm
quake are mostly located in the vicinity of geological faults. In
most cases, however, the intensity is below three on the Richter
scale, which means that the tremors are barely noticeable.
In Plauen and Vogtland, the climate of the warm, temperate, humid west wind zone of Central Europe with changeable weather prevails. Compared to regions further west of Germany, continental influences (warmer summers, colder winters) can be observed. Due to the influence of the surrounding low mountain ranges, the weather in the Vogtland is less wind and less precipitation than in other regions of Germany with a comparable altitude. The average air temperature in Plauen is 7.5 ° C, with the warmest months being July and August with average temperatures of around 16 ° C. In the Plauen area there are an average of 26 to 30 summer days (≥ 25 ° C) per year with an average sunshine duration of 1450 to 1500 hours per year. The average annual rainfall in Plauen is 582 millimeters. This represents a minimum in the Vogtland, due to the fact that the city lies in the lee of the upstream low mountain range, the air accumulates in the Western Ore Mountains and the clouds there rain down. Snowfalls are normal from November to April, although a blanket of snow does not always form. It rarely snows in October or even in May. In Plauen, south-westerly to southerly wind directions are predominant, whereby so-called "Bohemian winds", i.e. cold air outflows from the Bohemian Basin, can occur in the cold season. The average wind speed is around 3 to 4 m / s.
With over 102 square kilometers, the city has an urban area similar to Paris with around 105 square kilometers. Plauen consists of 39 districts in 23 districts, which are divided into the five urban areas center, north, east, south and west. Each urban area consists of up to eleven districts. The districts that were incorporated into Plauen in 1996 and 1999 are also localities according to the Saxon municipal code. The localities were introduced by the main statute of the city of Plauen and each have a local council elected by the population, which has between five and nine members depending on the number of inhabitants. The mayor is the chairman of the local council. Some of the localities also have their own local administration.
The vast majority of Plauen residents are non-denominational; about
twelve to thirteen percent of the inhabitants belong to the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of Saxony. The five congregations (Johannis, Luther,
Paulus, Markus and Michaelis congregations) belong to the church
district of Plauen in the Zwickau region. The seat of the superintendent
Matthias Bartsch is also located in Plauen.
There has been a
Roman Catholic community in Plauen since 1892. It belongs to the diocese
of Dresden-Meissen and is now looked after by a parish team led by Dean
Heinz-Claus Bahmann. Of the 2,500 believers who belong to the parish of
Plauen, a large number are newcomers from other regions of Germany or,
for example, from Eastern Europe.
In Plauen, in addition to the
Evangelical Church and the Roman Catholic Church, there are other
churches, communities and religions of different types and orientations:
Followers of the United Methodist Church met for the first time in
Plauen in 1869, at that time still illegal. The church, built at the end
of the 19th century, was destroyed in a bomb attack in 1945. Today's
Church of the Redeemer was built between 1952 and 1954. It is considered
the first new building in Plauen after the Second World War. The
congregation has about 450 members.
The Evangelical-Lutheran St.
Matthew Congregation of the old-denominational Independent Evangelical
Lutheran Church (SELK) was founded in Lengenfeld between 1880 and 1890.
At that time it still belonged to the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church
(ELFK). From 1922 to 1999 the community hall was located in the district
of Preißelpöhl. In 1999 the church and community center in the district
of Haselbrunn were inaugurated. In 2004, this Lutheran church
congregation left the ELFK and joined the SELK almost as a whole by
resolution of the congregational assembly. With its conversion, it
belongs to the church district of Saxony-Thuringia of the Independent
Evangelical Lutheran Church. In the summer of 2011, a bell tower was
inaugurated, which holds the smallest bell from the former chimes of the
Lutheran Church.
The Adventist Church was founded in 1902 and in
1949 acquired the property on which the Plauen synagogue stood before
the Second World War. In 1972 a new building was inaugurated.
The
community center of the New Apostolic Church (NAC), which was
inaugurated in 1996, is located opposite the main cemetery in the Reusa
district. The congregation has about 470 members. In 1921, today's
Apostolic Community split off from the NAK. The members of the Plauen
community do not have their own church and use the rooms of the
Adventist community for their services.
The community center of
the Evangelical Free Church community has been located on Lindenstraße
since 1997. It was first mentioned in 1890 and, as is usual in Brethren
congregations, is not led by a pastor but by community elders. In the
Federation of Evangelical Free Churches, the Brethren movement is united
with the Baptists. They have a community center on
Eugen-Fritzsch-Straße, which was inaugurated in 1974. The church is
currently being looked after by Pastor Daniel Papp. The community is
involved in various social projects, such as the Blue Cross.
The
Pentecostal church in Plauen has only existed since 1996 and now meets
on Jößnitzer Straße. The services are led by Pastor Martin Breite. The
founding of the church goes back to the churches in Zobes and Hof and to
the Swedish missionary Christer Birgersson.
The community of the
Christian community founded by Rudolf Steiner has been located on
Heinrichstraße since 1997. The congregation is currently looked after by
Pastor Karin Fleischer from Chemnitz. Shortly after the movement was
founded in 1922, the first members gathered in Plauen. Efforts after
reunification to set up a Waldorf kindergarten failed.
The
Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, built in 1998, is located on
Hammerstraße. The building is used by the Plauener and Oelsnitz Assembly
(municipality). About 950 Witnesses live in 13 congregations in the
Saxon Vogtland, which represents a high density in relation to the
population.
In 1908 the Mormon Church in Plauen (officially: The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) was founded. Between 1988
and 1990 a community center was built in the Chrieschwitz district. The
temple responsible for Plauen, in which, for example, the baptism of the
dead is performed, is in Freiberg.
Non-Christian believers also
gather in Plauen. In 2009, the only mosque room in the Vogtland was set
up in a former restaurant on Dobenaustraße. As Imam, Mohammed Hamidi
heads the Muslim community. So far, the community consists mainly of
migrants from traditionally Islamic countries.
A small group of
Baha'i meet near the Upper Station. Officially, however, it is not yet a
separate municipality.
Until the pogrom night of 1938 there was a
synagogue on the corner of Senefelderstrasse and Engelstrasse. It was
built in 1928-1930 in the New Building style according to plans by the
architect Fritz Landauer. Since the destruction of the synagogue and the
persecution and extermination of the Jews in the Third Reich, there has
been no Jewish community in Plauen.
In the 13th century the city was headed by a college under an
"officialus". From 1329 mayors and councilors are detectable. There was
a "seated" and a "dormant" council. The number of mayors and councilors
varied several times. Since 1882 the heads of town have held the title
of Lord Mayor and the first salaried town councilor has held the title
of Mayor. During the National Socialist era, the Lord Mayor was
appointed by the NSDAP and immediately after the Second World War the
Soviet occupying power formed the city council; the city council was
elected by the people. The first Soviet city commander in Plauen was
Lieutenant Colonel Komarov. After reunification, the body known as the
city council was freely elected again. There was initially a special
chairman of the city council. Today it is the mayor who was initially
elected by the city council. Since 1994, the mayor has been directly
elected by the people.
After the former Lord Mayor Ralf
Oberdorfer was confirmed in office in the elections on June 24, 2007
with a clear majority of 87.1% (with three opposing candidates), he only
prevailed in a runoff election in 2014. On July 6, 2014, he was
re-elected with 53.7%. In the first ballot on June 15, 2014, he had only
achieved 40.1%.
On July 4, 2021, Steffen Zenner was elected in
the second ballot as Oberdorfer's successor, who had not stood for
election. He took office on September 1, 2021.
On October 13, 2005, the first Plauen Youth Parliament (JUPP) was elected by students and included 30 deputies from Plauen's secondary schools. Around 4,800 Plauen schoolchildren elected the second youth parliament on April 4, 2007, which consisted of 17 members. The third election to this body took place on October 6, 2009. 3,794 young people who were eligible to vote were able to elect the now 35 deputies from 44 candidates. The fourth youth parliament was elected on January 19, 2012 and again had 30 members. Almost 4,000 children and young people between the ages of 14 and 25 were entitled to vote. Parliament was significantly involved in the federal program Diversity is good in the Plauen/Vogtland funding area by, among other things, electing the members of the monitoring committee responsible for Plauen and sending a representative. The main task of the JUPP was to represent the interests of children and young people in the Plauen city council and its committees. The youth parliament had the right to speak there and could submit motions. The annual budget was 3,000 euros. The youth parliament was dissolved on December 31, 2016 and not re-staffed due to the insufficient number of applicants for a new election.
The coat of arms of the town of Plauen goes back to the seal that was
first mentioned in 1329. In red, it shows two stylized three-pinned
silver towers with pointed roofs and two black window openings arranged
one above the other, decorated with Gothic tracery, connected by a
silver wall with a Gothic archway, topped with a triangular black heart
shield containing an erect golden lion, the heart shield placed on a
golden helmet with green peacock feathers, smooth at the front and
mirrored at the back. Plauen has had the current form of the city coat
of arms since January 12, 1939.
The seal from 1329 mentioned
above shows between two towers, which are provided with two
pointed-arched window openings one above the other and each with three
wall spikes, a shield with the uncrowned lion, erected to the right,
whose tail ends in several partial tails; Above the shield hovers a
spiked helmet decorated with four mirrored peacock feathers on the right
(in the heraldic sense) and four smooth peacock feathers on the left.
The inscription reads: + SIGILLVM • CIVIVM • IN • PLAWE.
Since
1899, Plauen had to use the "house colors" of the Wettins, so the city
colors were gold (yellow) at the top and blue at the bottom. The Plauen
city archivist Dr. From 1926 to 1939, Ernst Pietsch worked intensively
on the Plauen city coat of arms and the city colors. On January 12,
1939, the colors were finally (again) adapted to the colors of the coat
of arms, since an old law of coat of arms reads the colors of the coat
of arms in such a way that they are placed in the corresponding flag,
the color of the coat of arms at the top and the color of the field at
the bottom. Therefore, the city flag now appears gold (yellow) at the
top and black (covered with the coat of arms) at the bottom.
Plauen has maintained partnerships with various cities in Germany and
abroad since 1962. It is remarkable that already at the time of the
East-West conflict, partnerships were formed with the cities of Lens and
Hof, which were in what was then the “Western bloc” with which the
relationship was politically cold. The town of Plauen supports
encounters within the framework of town twinning with grants to clubs,
associations or school classes.
In 1962 the first town twinning
agreement was signed with the Czech town of Aš. Since then, the two
cities have been working together on a cultural, sporting, economic and
political level. The cooperation within the framework of the Euregio
Egrensis and the Festival Mitte Europa is particularly close. In 2012 it
turned out that the city administration had no official documents on the
start of the town twinning.
There has been a town twinning with
Steyr in Austria since 1970, which connects the two towns in particular
in the areas of culture, sport and tourism. The partnership has the
status of an "informal permanent cooperation".
In 1987, after
lengthy efforts by the city of Hof, a special kind of town twinning was
agreed. In the immediate vicinity of the inner-German border, an
exchange took place between two cities with different political systems.
Until the turn of the century, the exchange could only take place within
the framework of annual agreements. Since then, there have been a
variety of joint events and projects such as the joint airfield have
emerged.
The first contacts with the city of Siegen were made a
few weeks after the fall of the Wall. The focus of the agreement signed
on August 3, 1990 was to support the establishment of the administration
and the structural development of the city of Plauen from a federal
German perspective. In the meantime, the partnership has been extended
to almost all areas of social life.
On September 25, 2005, a
partnership agreement was signed between the town of Plauen and the
Hungarian town of Cegléd. This was followed by the signing of a town
twinning agreement between Plauen and the Polish city of Pabianice on
November 19, 2005. Partnerships are sought in the cultural and economic
fields.
In April 2005, a letter of intent was signed with the
Lithuanian city of Šiauliai, in which both cities declared their
intention to establish a twinning. Since then, various meetings of
delegations from the two cities have taken place to strengthen
cooperation. At the city council meeting on May 27, 2010, it was decided
to establish an official twinning with Šiauliai. The signing of the
contract took place on September 10, 2010 in Šiauliai.
A town
twinning with the French town of Lens was dissolved in 2005.
The
district of Jößnitz maintains a separate partnership with the town of
Heilsbronn in the district of Ansbach.
There are twelve primary schools in Plauen, of which the Karl Marx
primary school is the largest in Saxony.[89] There are also five high
schools and two high schools in the city. A mathematical and scientific
profile and a language profile are offered at the Lessing-Gymnasium. In
addition to the grammar school for grades 5 to 12, the Diesterweg
grammar school also offers a Vogtland college for adult education. The
Abitur can be obtained there either in the regular three-year school
program or part-time, in evening classes. There is also a special needs
school, the Käthe Kollwitz School.
The Plauen University of
Cooperative Education was founded in 1999 and was included in the Saxon
University of Cooperative Education Act as the seventh place of study in
December 2006. Since 2010, the degrees Bachelor of Arts (health and
social management), Bachelor of Arts (trade and international
management) and Diplom-Ingenieur (BA) (technical management) can be
achieved. In 2011, the food safety course was added with a degree in
industrial engineering (BA) or Bachelor of Science.
The
vocational school center (BSZ) e.o.plauen for technology and design
includes not only the vocational school, the vocational school and the
technical college, but also a vocational high school and a technical
school. The textile, design and media education continues the tradition
of the art school in Plauen. Training in twenty other trades in industry
and crafts round off the offer. The same types of school, but in the
area of business and health, are available at the BSZ Anne Frank. The
technical school for economics of the Gothaer Bildungsgesellschaft Gobi
trains the state-certified business economist. Additional training to
acquire the advanced technical college entrance qualification can be
completed either full-time or part-time. Various other vocational and
vocational schools in different disciplines complete the educational
offer.
The music school "Vogtland Conservatory 'Clara Wieck'"
goes back to a music school founded in 1952, which was given the name
Clara Wieck in 1969.
The city has roads with a total length of 396 kilometers. The A 72 Hof–Chemnitz runs through the south-east of the city with the Pirk, Plauen-Süd and Plauen-Ost junctions. From the A 72, at the triangle Hochfranken, the A 93 leads south to Regensburg. The A 9 Munich-Berlin can be reached from Plauen after about 35 kilometers via the A 72 in a southwesterly direction at the Bayerisches Vogtland triangle or in a northwesterly direction after about 32 kilometers via the B 282 at the Schleiz junction. The A 4 Dresden-Eisenach can be reached after about 80 kilometers on the A 72 in an easterly direction. Federal roads 92 and 173 lead through the city. The B 173 connects Plauen with the neighboring towns of Zwickau and Hof, the B 92 with Gera and the Czech Republic. The B 169 begins at the Plauen industrial park near Neuensalz, as a branch off the B 173. It leads via Chemnitz to Cottbus. In Plauen-Kauschwitz, the B 282 branches off the B 92, leads to the Schleiz junction of the A 9 and forms part of the European route 49 with the B 92.
There are five railway stations in the city that are served by
passenger trains: Obere Bahnhof and Mitte, West, Jößnitz and Strassberg
stops. Only the Vogtlandbahn stops at the four stops.
The new
"Plauen-Mitte" station was opened on September 7, 2015 after more than a
year of construction and is located between the lower station and the
former Chrieschwitz station. The latter was closed in 2006 due to safety
deficiencies on a railway bridge. With the opening of the new station,
the lower station and the Plauen-Zellwolle station were closed. The new
construction of a tram stop makes it a central link to local public
transport.
The railway lines Leipzig-Hof (part of the
Saxony-Franconia-Magistrale) and Plauen-Adorf-Cheb run through Plauen.
The Elstertalbahn Gera–Greiz–Wei Schlitz runs via the Plauen Mitte
station and joins the Plauen–Cheb railway in Wei slot.
From June
2001, Plauen was temporarily a station in the ICE route network of
Deutsche Bahn. Since the Nuremberg-Dresden ICE route was not fully
electrified, the diesel-powered ICE TD was used, which was to prove its
advantages on the winding route with the tilting technology. After
frequent breakdowns, it was removed from the timetable in December 2002.
A train set of the electrically operated brother of the ICE TD, the ICE
T, was subsequently christened Plauen/Vogtland. However, the baptism
took place in Reichenbach im Vogtland because of the lack of overhead
lines. In the interim, locomotive-hauled IC trains or class 612 railcars
repainted in IC colors ran as Intercity trains. Since then, Plauen has
no longer been connected to the Deutsche Bahn long-distance network.
Between December 2006 and June 2016, the Franken-Sachsen-Express ran on
the previous IC route as a regional express, which was operated by DB
Regio on behalf of Deutsche Bahn. From June 2016, the route was taken
over by the Mitteldeutsche Regiobahn, which operates the route with
Coradia Continental railcars.
Between 2012 and 2013, Plauen was
connected to the railway's electrical network. This laid the foundations
for Plauen to be integrated into the Central German S-Bahn network once
the city tunnel in Leipzig had been put into operation (the tunnel is
not approved for diesel vehicles). The route from Herlasgrün to Oberen
Bahnhof was electrified in 2012, with some road bridges over the railway
on the route section being demolished due to insufficient height for
overhead lines and having to be replaced as needed. The continuation of
electrification to Hof took place in 2013. The electrified line between
Reichenbach and Hof was officially put into operation for the 2013/14
timetable change.
Urban transport in Plauen is mainly carried out by five to six tram
lines and two city bus lines operated by Plauener Strassenbahn GmbH.
From 8:30 p.m., four "night bus" lines and one call bus will operate,
replacing the daytime tram and bus lines. On Sundays and public
holidays, the dial-a-line taxi (ALiTa) replaces the tram service between
5 a.m. and 8 a.m.
15 Tatra KT4D-M trams and 9 Flexity low-floor
trams operate on the Plauen tram lines in the 37.6 km long rail network.
The offer is completed with 6 low-floor buses. On the Postplatz in the
city center is the central station Tunnel, which is served by all lines
and whose name refers to the Syrabach "over tunneled" here. Six tracks
are arranged there in a triangular shape.
The regional bus service in Plauen is mostly scheduled and is mainly carried out by the Plauener Omnibusbetrieb GmbH. The regional buses take over part of the city traffic functions, since most of the outer districts are not served by city buses. The western parts of the city in particular are largely served by the RufBus in regional transport.
40+ Plauen ↔ Steinsdorf Reißig – Jößnitz Plauener Omnibusbetrieb
PlusBus
42 Plauen ↔ Zeulenroda Syrau – Mehltheuer – Pausa Plauener
bus company TaktBus
45 Plauen-Neundorf ↔ Plauen-Neundorf Zwoschwitz -
Kauschwitz - Plauen Park - Rößnitz Plauener Omnibusbetrieb RufBus
47
Plauen-Neundorf ↔ Wei Schlitz Thossen - Misslareuth - Reuth - Kloschwitz
Plauener Omnibusbetrieb RufBus
48 Plauen-Neundorf ↔ Weischnitz
Kürbitz – Kloschwitz – Possig Plauener Omnibusbetrieb RufBus
50+
Plauen ↔ Rodewisch Taltitz – Oelsnitz – Falkenstein – Auerbach Plauener
Omnibusbetrieb PlusBus
63 Plauen ↔ Plohn Neuensalz – Treuen –
Lengenfeld Verkehrsgesellschaft Vogtland TaktBus
70+ Plauen ↔
Rodewisch Theuma – Bergen – Falkenstein – Auerbach Plauener
Omnibusbetrieb PlusBus
74 Plauen ↔ Thoßfell Jocketa – Neudörfel –
Helmsgrün Plauen bus service RufBus / SaisonBus
90+ Plauen ↔ Aschberg
Oberlosa – Oelsnitz – Schöneck – Klingenthal Plauener Omnibusbetrieb
PlusBus
92 Plauen ↔ Bad Elster Oelsnitz – Adorf Plauen bus company
TaktBus
143 Plauen ↔ Schleiz Syrau – Mehltheuer – Mühltroff KomBus
163 Plauen ↔ Hirschberg Wei slot - Reuth - Tanna - Gefell KomBus
Plauen can be reached from the air via the Hof-Plauen airfield, which
is about forty kilometers away in the Pirk district southwest of the
city of Hof. The Auerbach airfield, located about twenty kilometers to
the east, is mainly used for aviation, but is also used for business
flights. The nearest airports with international scheduled connections
are Leipzig/Halle Airport, about 150 kilometers to the north, Dresden
Airport, about 150 kilometers to the east, and Nuremberg Airport, about
160 kilometers to the south-west. Scheduled flights were discontinued at
Leipzig-Altenburg Airport, about 80 kilometers away.
pedestrian
and bicycle traffic
Together with two other municipalities, Plauen
was a model city for the Federal Environment Agency's "pedestrian and
bicycle-friendly city" project. The main purpose of the project, which
was completed in 2004, was to find ways to make cycling and walking more
attractive through the use of inexpensive and unconventional means. As a
result, a route network for cyclists was developed from 15 everyday
routes and 4 tourist routes with corresponding cross connections. These
routes were equipped with appropriate signposts. Plauen is located,
among other things, on the Elster cycle path and on the Vogtland
Panorama Path. In addition, the Uranus Path, which leads to the
Rodewischer Observatory, ends at the old Elster Viaduct.
The town of Plauen is inextricably linked to the Plauener Spitze. The
name is a registered trademark of the branch association Plauenerspitzen
und Sticken e. V. to which several manufacturers belong, including
Modespitze Plauen GmbH. The companies in Plauen and the surrounding area
produce a wide variety of products from lace fabrics. The palette ranges
from tablecloths and accessories to women's outerwear and wedding
dresses.
The roots of WEMA VOGTLAND Technology GmbH go back to
VOMAG. As a mechanical engineering company for metal-cutting, WEMA
operates worldwide and manufactures machine tools for almost all major
automobile manufacturers and their suppliers. Since August 2010, the
company has also had a branch in the USA, in Belvidere.
Plamag
Plauen GmbH was located in the north of Plauen on the border with the
district of Kauschwitz and was one of the largest employers in the
region. Printing machines were made there. After the insolvency of
manroland Druckmaschinen AG, the plant was spun off as an independent
company and has had its old name since February 2012. Negotiations are
being made with various potential investors about the sale of the plant,
which initially acted as a supplier for the manroland plant in Augsburg
that had been taken over by the Possehl Group. On December 19, 2012, the
insolvency administrator announced that the plant would be permanently
closed. Since February 4, 2013, the 200,000 m² site has been marketed as
the Plamag Plauen Industrial Park.
Neoplan Omnibus GmbH Plauen
emerged in 1991 from a factory for the repair of Ikarus buses. Around
700 people were employed there in 2010. After Neoplan was incorporated
into MAN Nutzfahrzeuge AG in 2008, there were initial discussions in
2010 as to whether massive jobs should be cut in Plauen due to the
relocation of parts of production to Poland. There, the bodies of the
buses were temporarily assembled and the interior fitted, the skeleton
of which is manufactured in Poland. In the years 2011 to 2013, the plant
should be expanded with about 20 million euros. After large parts of the
production were relocated to Turkey in 2014, production in Plauen was
discontinued. Instead, a so-called "bus modification center" was
operated on the site until 2021. In 2021, the vehicle manufacturer Binz
from Ilmenau took over the plant with 120 employees. Special vehicles,
e.g. B. for THW and rescue service.
In the east of the city, near
Neundorf, is the plant of vosla GmbH (VOgtland special lamps). Special
lamps are made there. Having emerged from a Narva location, it has
belonged to Philips Technologie GmbH since 1991. In the summer of 2011,
the production line for Philips H4 lamps was relocated to Pabianice,
Poland. This reduced the number of employees to around 300. The company
has been part of the Bavaria Industries Group since September 2012.
Plauen Stahl Technologie GmbH manufactures steel constructions and
bridges with around 130 employees. The former VEB Stahlbau was taken
over by Lentjes AG after reunification and sold to mg capital GmbH in
2001. Today's company was founded in 2003. She is active in bridge
construction, among other things she built the Niederwartha bridge over
the Elbe and was involved in the renovation of the Fleher bridge. In
addition, parts of the Hamburg Exhibition Center and an exhibition hall
of the Düsseldorf Exhibition Center were built.
Sachsendruck
Plauen GmbH produces a variety of print products with around 80
employees (as of 2014). In 1991 the former VEB was taken over by the
Sebaldus Group and later by the schlott group. The company in the center
of Plauen has belonged to the Pinguin Group since 2016.
Sternquell-Brauerei GmbH Plauen belongs to Brau Holding International
and employs around 160 people. The brewery has locations in the center
of Plauen, near the Friedensbrücke, and in the Neuensalz commercial
area. Ten different types of beer are brewed.
Vogtlandmilch GmbH
produces dairy products and soft drinks with the Vogtlandweide and
Sachsenland brands. The company with around 120 employees is the only
school milk bottler in Saxony (milk number: SN 008). After the
reunification, the business founded in 1928 as Vogtländische Milchhof AG
went to Sachsenmilch AG; production, which had previously been spread
across five companies, was concentrated in Plauen. In the course of the
takeover of Sachsenmilch AG by the Müller Group in 1994, the
shareholders, the Milch Plauen producer association and Glauchau dairy
cooperative, bought back the shares in Vogtlandmilch GmbH and still hold
them today.
The Plauen housing association (WbG for short) is the
non-profit municipal housing association of the city of Plauen. The city
of Plauen is the sole shareholder and has given it the responsibility to
provide every citizen with affordable housing (public services of
general interest), to participate in urban development and to maintain
functioning urban structures. The cooperative is the lessor of 7,738
apartments and 177 commercial units.
There are two hospitals in
Plauen: the Helios Vogtland Klinikum Plauen GmbH as the only hospital
specializing in care in the Vogtland and the Bethanien hospital as the
hospital providing standard care.
Plauen is the starting point for extensive hikes in the Vogtland.
Several hiking and cycling trails run through the city area, for example
the E3 long-distance hiking trail with the Eisenach-Budapest mountain
hiking trail, the Vogtland Panorama Trail, the Elster Cycle Trail and
the Euregio Egrensis long-distance cycle trail.
The Plauen park
railway, inaugurated in 1959, is located on Hainstraße in the Syra
Valley, near the Friedensbrücke. Founded as a pioneer railway, it is now
operated by an association.
The AREA241 Skateplaza is one of the
largest skate parks in Germany in the Elsteraue, near the Old Elster
Bridge. There are stairs of different heights, widths and degrees of
difficulty. Skill can also be put to the test on numerous banks, ledges,
rails and curbs.
The city's youth hostel has been located in the
city center since 2007. For this purpose, the old fire station was
converted into accommodation with 135 beds in 48 rooms. The original
equipment, such as the sliding pole, has been retained.
Guided
tours of the city can be booked at the tourist information office,
during which the 64 meter high town hall tower can also be climbed.
The seat of the Vogtland Regional Television (VRF) was in the
Neundorf district. From 1994 to 2016, the station produced a weekly
changing program with reports from the region.
The regional radio
station Vogtland Radio is based in Plauen-Haselbrunn. Since 1998 it has
been broadcasting its own, independent 24-hour radio program for the
entire Vogtland in eastern Thuringia, western Saxony and Upper
Franconia. In addition, the radio station MDR Sachsen operates a
regional studio in Plauen.
Two daily newspapers are published in
Plauen, the Vogtland-Anzeiger in Plauen with a circulation of around
7,000 copies and a local edition of the Freie Presse in Chemnitz with a
circulation of around 16,000 copies.
Since the spring of 2007,
the private online magazine Spitzenstadt.de has been reporting on the
city on a daily basis. It supplements the city's official website with
the latest news from politics, business, sport and culture.
Like all larger towns, Plauen is associated with numerous personalities. In politics, there were both positive and negative examples. With Heinrich the Elder and Heinrich Reuss von Plauen, the Lords of Plauen provided two Grand Masters of the Teutonic Order. In the Second World War, however, the Plauen manufacturer Martin Mutschmann played an inglorious role as Gauleiter in Saxony. In 1989, Jörg Schneider wrote the appeal "Come to the demonstration on October 7th!" From 2004 to 2019, Frank Heidan was a member of the Group of 20, the citizens' representative body at the turn of the autumn of 1989, in the state parliament. The theologian and astronomer Georg Samuel Dörffel is outstanding in the scientific field. In his work Astronomical Observation of the Great Comet, which A. 1680 and 1681 appeared years before Newton's theory of gravitation, he proved that comets move on parabolic orbits with the sun at their focal point. In the field of sport, the Olympic champions Kurt Helbig (weightlifting), Angelika Bahmann (canoe slalom) and Kornelia Grummt-Ender (swimming) have excelled. Plauen has also produced some cultural figures, such as the church musician and composer Johannes Petzold, the actors Claudia Loerding and Stefan König, the cabaret artist Olaf Schubert and the worker photographer Walter Ballhause. The most well-known Plauener is the cartoonist Erich Ohser. The creator of the father and son stories made the city famous by his stage name "e.o.plauen". Born in Untergettengrün/Vogtland, he grew up in Plauen, went to school there and completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith in the last years of the First World War.