1927: The Zwiwwel saw many a rendezvous
There are no longer many people who can remember the clock tower on the Alter Markt. But they talk about it as wistfully as the previous generation. A little bit fondly, a little bit tenderly. Feelings are attached to the clock tower, which they called "die Zwiwwel". In 1927, the landmark disappeared from the city center
The tower was a foundation. From June 28 to July 6, 1885, Offenbach hosted a festival that united marksmen from Baden, the Palatinate and the Middle Rhine region in competition. The whole town was decked out in decorations as a parade crowned the event. The Grand Duke of Darmstadt, Ludwig IV, brought his entire family with him. They were respectfully received on Sprendlinger Landstrasse and led into the city by Lord Mayor Wilhelm Brink. Music, dancing and public entertainment at the shooting range on the Erlenbruch enabled the population to take part in the big shooting festival. The Offenbach shooting club made a net profit of 14,658 marks.
What to do with the money? The mayor suggested investing it for the benefit of all residents, in a clock tower on the market square. This was decided at the general meeting on September 3, 1885, and two years later the clock would have stood. Anyone walking through the Große Markt-Strasse to the market walked towards it. The little tower with the onion top, the "Zwiwwel", towered over the market and became the meeting point for thousands of rendezvous.
It had become part of Offenbach's identity when the city council had it dismantled in 1927 and erected in the swimming pool on the harbor tip. This was because the market square, which had long since lost its weekly market, had to be widened. Space was needed for the tracks of streetcar line 27, which from then on ran along Waldstraße to about the height of today's Odenwaldring.
Ten years after the transplant, the clock tower also disappeared from the top of the harbor. It was simply scrapped in 1937, for whatever reason. What has remained is a countless memory. In 1970 and then again in 1983, the town council considered the idea of erecting a clock tower on the Alter Markt again. Nothing came of it. And the generation of those to whom the little tower meant something is gradually dwindling.
By Lothar R. Braun
