1900: Education and civic spirit in Herrnstrasse
Herrnstraße 25: In the old Offenbach, you didn't need to know the house number to know the building well. At some point, everyone had visited the "Schützenhof" restaurant, which offered "club and social halls" at this location. Its advertisements promised "excellent beers" and "first-class wines", as well as a bowling alley, billiards and a shady garden. Today, Hugenottenplatz opens up onto Herrnstraße in its place.
The Schützenhof stood diagonally opposite the church that we know as the "town church". Originally it was simply called "the Lutheran church". It only received its current name when the Lutheran and German Reformed congregations united to form an Evangelical Protestant congregation in September 1848. At that time, the church was already a hundred years old. Its foundation stone was laid on September 2, 1739. Until then, only the German-speaking Reformed congregation in the Schlosskirche and the French-speaking congregation in what is now Berliner Strasse had a place of worship.
However, the Lutherans repeatedly ran out of building money. They were only able to consecrate their church on September 1, 1748, thanks to donations from Christians who prayed differently. There is probably something to the much-mentioned Offenbach tradition of tolerance. One sponsor of note was the so-called Congress of Princes, which met in Offenbach in 1741. At the time, delegates from German princely courts used an imperial election in Frankfurt to formulate proposals for constitutional reforms in neighboring Offenbach. It was an unsuccessful effort, but the Offenbach Lutherans received a building grant of 779 thalers, as well as communion utensils with Latin inscriptions. In the German translation it said: "Gift from the princely congress in Offenbach in 1741".
The bells that rang in the town church around 1900 are said to have been cast from French booty cannons from 1871. Further along, the pedestrian reached the municipal tax office, the public library and a public reading room run by a private association. At least 181 newspapers and magazines were available there free of charge. They covered all areas of knowledge: politics, literature and science. The Association for Natural History, founded in 1859, also ran its museum in this section of Herrnstrasse. It shared a building with the Chamber of Commerce's commercial training school. Education and entertainment were evidently already concentrated more than a hundred years ago where we find the city library and Klingspor Museum today.
But it was not only spiritual needs that could be satisfied there. In 1887, a private association opened the Offenbach municipal baths at the junction of Kirchgasse. The indoor swimming pool was adjoined by baths, showers and steam baths. The people of Offenbach, who hardly had any bathrooms in their homes, were obviously happy to use it, as the association even decided to extend the building in 1899. It was not until 1905 that the city took over the baths. The municipal baths, the natural history museum, the library and the reading room make Herrnstrasse a good example of civic spirit. When the townspeople could not yet expect any kind of care from their administration, they took matters into their own hands. Since then, not only the appearance of Herrnstrasse has changed.
Lothar R. Braun
