Anger Erfurt
The Anger has been Erfurt’s main trading centre since the early Middle Ages. Located between the main railway station and the cathedral, the name of the elongated square indicates a meadow or pasture where mainly dyers traded their goods between the 14th and 17th centuries. Today the Anger has established itself as a main shopping street with numerous retails. Flanked by magnificent commercial buildings from different architectural eras, the Anger widens to the northeast as a square. In the southwest it appears more as a pedestrian zone street extending to the old Angerbrunnen. Here, the panorama is located. The photographed town houses from the 19th and 20th centuries were not only renovated over the years as cultural monuments, but also kept their original names.
Anger 21 – 23
In the Haus Zum Riesen (To the Giant), far left in the panorama, was built between 1899 and 1920. The Erfurter Brauhaus was located there until 2007. The building was renovated in 2012. The retail trade is now located on the ground floor with offices and apartments above on the top floors.
The adjacent narrow Art Nouveau building dates from 1892. The uses of the Haus Zum grünen Hirsch (To the Green Deer) are typical for the renovated buildings on the Anger similar to the house Zum Riesen with trade, offices and apartments on the upper floor. The façade and the dormers were restored on the basis of original drawings. Another impressive community centre is the businessman’s house in the Angers 23, which was renovated in 2012.
Anger 24 – 28
The Haus Zur Goldenen Krone (The Golden Crown) was built in 1900 by the Lamm brothers. The office and commercial building at Anger 24 was originally used as a textile shop and production facility. It was renovated and rebuilt in 1998 and 2016.
The building Haus zum Rehbock (To the Roebuck) was built during the Renaissance. It was replaced in 1928 by a new building of the city of Erfurt as the seat of a state bank. In the New Objectivity style, architects Ludwig Boegl and Johannes Klaß designed a new building whose façade, which is now a listed monument, was supplemented by the Erfurt sculptor Hans Walther. The reliefs flanking the building symbolise the waste of money on the left and economy and the resulting prosperity on the right. Today, after a comprehensive redesign of the interior of the building, the Sparkasse is located here. The adjacent building to Angers 26 also dates from the time of Neues Bauen. The commercial building was rebuilt in 1927 on behalf of Alfred Hess, a German entrepreneur and art collector.
Until 1922, the Apollo Theatre was located in the artfully decorated office building at Anger 27. Right next to it, in the three-storey historical Haus Zum kleinen Paradies (To the Little Paradise), there is a jeweller’s shop and a bookshop.
