Imperial Quarter of Metz

The Imperial Quarter of Metz is a district of the city of Metz built by the German government during the period of annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Originally named "Neue Stadt" (literally "new city"), it is today divided between the administrative district of New Ville and Metz-Centre.

It is principally represented by the "Imperial Triangle," delineated by the area in between the water tower of the main railway station, St. Therese's Church, and the Serpenoise Gate. But the district extends beyond this core to include other edifices of the same period, such as the Governor's Palace, situated on the Place Giraud, behind the Serpenoise Gate.

Aside from the more important Neustadt district of Strasbourg, the Imperial Quarter of Metz comprises the most complete and best-preserved examples of urbanism under the German Second Reich. In Germany itself, the comparable districts of such cities often suffered the bombardment by Allied forces in the Second World War. The Imperial Quarter is remarkable for the multiplicity of architectural styles represented, despite of the voluntary Germanization assumed by the city.

History

Das neue Generalkommando. Absteige-Quartier des Kaisers, vintage postcard dated 31 July 1917, showing some of the Rhenish Baroque-revival apartment buildings constructed in the Imperial Quarter between 1902-14.

Kaiser Wilhelm Ring, old postcard mailed on 11 February 1917, showing the broad, tree-lined "ring" avenues along the path of the old city walls.

Up until the beginning of the twentieth century, the district was generally referred to as the Neue Stadt ("New City"), an area where the German authorities had decided to build a new extension south of the historic center of Metz. The enlargement of the city used the land ceded by the military garrison thanks to the removal of the old medieval city walls by order of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1898, but most of the development only gathered steam starting in 1902. The moniker "New City" was reborn in the name of the administrative district "Nouvelle Ville."

This urbanization project proceeded under the guise of the modernization of the city of Metz, but equally under a marked desire of Wilhelm's government to Germanize the city. Metz essentially had existed as a city characterized by a French building tradition since the Middle Ages, and despite its inclsion within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire, the use of High Gothic architecture was evident in monuments such as the cathedral, which was less Germanic in character than the Cathedral of Strasbourg. Wilhelm II hoped to give the Metz a much more Germanic identity, breaking with the policies instituted under the reign of his grandfather Wilhelm I, wherein stylistic continuity in architecture had generally been respected.

The urban guidelines of 1903 instituted a different status to the north side of the "ring" of open land that was opened up with the demolition of the old ramparts. It stipulated that this area should be comprised of houses encircles by gardens, having a maximum height of three floors, in order to soften the transition between the older buildings of the city center and the new, taller apartment houses that would populate the areas to the south. The villas on what is today known as the Avenue Foch in Metz exude this kind of neat and tidy character, reflecting the traditions of the period, and use a diverse, usually historicist, set of styles.

Urbanism and General Morphology

The Avenue Foch with its garden on the median strip.

The Imperial Quarter of Metz is distinguished by broader streets in a ring of urban development loosely defined by its main artery, the Avenue Foch. It is bordered to the north by the old city and to the south by the train lines and yards that form a man-made barrier. In keeping with the general tenets of Haussmannian nineteenth-century urban development, the Imperial Quarter is split up with regularity by large spaces such as public squares and isolated edifices that are distinguished from their neighbors by their style or their verdant surroundings. Thus, despite the dominating presence of rows of apartment buildings, certain parts of the district, such as the Vacquinière, to the southwest, neighboring the city of Montigny-lès-Metz, are composed entirely of mansions. The army installations, which predate the urban development of this area, are equally concentrated to the northwest.

The general organization of the space hinges on two main plazas, the Place Raymond-Mondon (formerly the Place Impériale), and the Place du Général-de-Gaulle, which forms the large forecourt to the main railway station, accessed from the rue Gambetta. When it was known as the Place Impériale, the Place Raymond-Mondon symbolized otherwise the associated powers of the Kaiser (an equestrian statue of whom, located there, was overturned in 1918 by the French). These included financial power, symbolized by the Imperial Bank; the corporate powers of the Chamber of Commerce; military power through the view of the Prince-Frederick-Charles army barracks; and the religious power with a church, whose construction was canceled due to the First World War. This plaza also constituted the junction between the new city and the old districts, as indicated by the preservation of the medieval Tour Camoufle, part of the old city walls.

Architecture

An example of a Gothic-revival apartment building in the Imperial Quarter on the rue Mozart.

The district is home to a remarkable diversity of architecture. It served, in effect, as a stylistic laboratory for the German architects in the city during the Second Reich. Historicist styles characterize the majority of the buildings, but respond often to the desire of the Imperial state to Germanize the city, which meant that many buildings use architectural styles that recall the German Middle Ages. In turn, the parts of the district constructed during the interwar period (1919-1939) retain the trend of continuing modernization of the city, but in a way that recalls its French heritage.

The period of urbanization during the 1900s and 1910s often revives architectural terms such as Rhénish-Romanesque-revival for Metz's railway station and the main post office, or Flemish-Renaissance-revival for the Governor's Palace. Everywhere one notes a multiplicity of styles in the architecture of private buildings of the era, a development easily visible in the eclectic composition of structures on the Avenue Foch, mixing a kind of Neoclassical rigor with elements of Art Nouveau or traditional Alsacian residences. On the other hand, certain francophile architects maintained their symbolic opposition to the newly entrenched German regime through their preference for neoclassical, Haussmannian apartment buildings. Still others were inspired by currents such as the Vienna Secession, manifest in the so-called Crystal Palace, whose façade was only rediscovered in the 1960s.

The architectural decoration is equally distinctive for its variety of colors, dominated by the grey and pink of buildings constructed of granite and the yellow of those constructed out of the pierre de Jaumont, a type of local limestone.

The interwar period, when Metz reverted to French rule, was marked by a "revanchist" architecture, wherein one finds the large-scale use of Haussmannian Neoclassicism and a Baroque revival. These styles harmonize well with the heavy Neoclassicism characteristic of French architecture during the Belle Époque of roughly 1890-1914. These remain, however, less ostentatious overall than the German constructions throughout the rest of the district, out of respect for historic traditions, in line with a municipal ordinance in Metz for the preservation of the physiognomy of the city between 1911 and 1939. During the 1930s, modern architecture also became visible through the implantation of Art Deco, already in full bloom throughout the rest of the world.

Recognition

Even though it is depicted in postcards of Metz from the early twentieth century, the Imperial Quarter was not well-appreciated by Messins of the interwar period. They instead favored the nationalism of the Lorraine native Maurice Barrès, who castigated the architecture of Metz's railway station (which had been designed by the Berlin architect Jürgen Kröger and built between 1905–08): "One welcomes the dignified ambition of a cathedral, but this is only tortuous, an immense paté of meat."

However, starting in the 1980s the Imperial Quarter gained new favor with both local officials and residents. Several campaigns for the renovation and refurbishment of the architectural patrimony of the district began, such as the cleaning of building façades, most notably those of the train station, which had blackened over the years. By 2014, the remaining restorations to take place encompassed a much smaller scale, such as those to the façade of the former Hôtel du Globe, on the Place du Général de Gaulle, facing the train station.

The district was nominated by the city for inscription by UNESCO onto its list of World Heritage Sites in June 2007 due to several features of original urban planning and architectural character:

• The variety of architectural styles, from Romanesque revival to Jugendstil (Art Nouveau), by way of the Baroque
• The variety of colored stone used in construction, such as the pierre de Jaumont, a yellow stone; pink granite; or white stone.

When its candidacy was rejected, a new dossier was prepared in 2009 by the office of the mayor of Metz. This new application dubbed the district "Metz Royal and Imperial," thereby putting the emphasis on the double urban identity of the city, playing on the opposition and complementary nature between the "royal" old city around the cathedral (developed under the French monarchy of the ancien régime before 1789), and the Imperial Quarter developed under the Wilhelmine Empire. It thus showed the transformation of urban space from an older, clustered, topographically-oriented and organically-developed medieval city to the newer, rationally-planned, transportation-oriented and distinctly zoned sectors of the enlarged urban area. One month and a half after its submission to the French Committee for Worldwide Patrimony, the body approved its inscription to the list of French World Heritage Sites of UNESCO, later ratified by the Ministry of Culture and Communication. In April 2014, the internet site for UNESCO added the candidacy of Metz to its page for France.

Landmarks and Important Buildings

The Ring

File:Metz-Kaiser Wilhelm Ring ca. 1910.jpg

Postcard, ca. 1910, showing the great diversity of architectural styles used in the villas built on the north side of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring (now the Avenue Foch).

Constructed in the wake of the demolition of the old city walls in 1902, the urban Ring of Metz begins at the Boulevard Paixhans/Boulevard du Pontiffroy, to the north of the historic city center, and enters the Imperial Quarter via the Avenue Jean XXIII and the Place Mazelle. It southern side is dominated by the rail yards approaching the main railway station. Nearby here are situated:

• The Grand (Catholic) Seminary of Metz, dominated by its Chapel of St-Charles-Borromeo (1907)
• The railway station water tower (1908)

The avenue Foch, notable for its green space and central walking path, features several private mansions at its west entrance:

• Villa Bleyler (no. 14), Baroque-revival, punctuated by Art Nouveau, designed by Ludwig Becker, 1904-1906
• Villa Wildenberger (no. 16), Art Nouveau decoration, designed by Karl Griebel, 1903
• Villa Wahn (no. 18), Renaissance-revival, designed by Conrad Wahn, 1903
• Villa Linden (no. 20), Renaissance-revival, designed by Scheden, 1905
• Villa Burger, also known as Villa Salomon (no. 22) rural vernacular with wood paneling, designed by Eduard-Hermann Heppe, 1904
• Villa Lentz (no. 24), Neoclassical, designed by Jules-Geoffroy Berninger et Gustave Kraft, 1904

The avenue also includes some other impressive buildings:

• The Hôtel Royal, Rhenish-Renaissance-revival, 1905
• The Hôtel des Mines, also called the Hôtel Terminus, Renaissance-revival, 1906
• The General Treasury of Moselle, formerly the Bank of Luxembourg, Neoclassical

The Place Raymond-Mondon, built when the Imperial Quarter was laid out in 1902, was formerly the Place Impériale. In its center was an equestrian statue of Friedrich III of Germany, which the citizens of Metz toppled and destroyed in 1918. Around it, one will find:

• The Hôtel Foch, Baroque Revival, 1907
• The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Moselle, no. 10-12 Avenue Foch, constructed in pink stone as the Imperial Bank, a symbol of financial power, designed by Robert Curjel and Karl Moser, 1907
• The Hôtel des Arts et Métiers, no. 1-3 Avenue Foch, Flemish Renaissance-revival structure of pink stone, built as the Chamber of Commerce, a symbol of German corporatist power, designed by Gustave Oberthür and Ernst Priedat, 1909
• The Tour Camoufle, in its eponymous square on the Avenue Foch, one of the last vestiges of the medieval walls of the city