Almost all of the buildings on Zwickau’s Schumannstrasse were erected at the turn of the 20th century and have a strong historicist character.
Architecture
On the right edge of the picture, the street begins with a 30s building on Dr. Friedrichs-Ring. Crossing the Ring, the street on the right leads directly into the Innere Altstadt (inner old town). The building is characterized above all by its strikingly designed balcony-like upper floor, the old lettering above it refers to a former Zwickau institution, the Ring Kaffee, which resided here. In the meantime, the rooms are used as offices.
To the left are predominantly Gründerzeit buildings. No. 2 and 4 form a double tenement house from 1897 with elaborate and richly articulated sandstone facade and shutters on the first floor. The eye-catching letters “E” and “S” are emblazoned above the windows on the 2nd floor. No. 6 is a sandstone building built in 1924-25 with strict articulation, expressionist gaff heads between floors, and a roof bay with featured vases. The building, which was completely vacant at the time of the photograph, has an inscription in the entrance area referring to “Wohnungsbau/des Zwickauer/Handwerks/1924-1925” and the architect Joh. Zimmermann. House No. 8 is a commercial building built in 1895 with a likewise high-quality sandstone facade, which is dominated in the panorama by a decoration store.
At the corner of Georgenstrasse, No. 12 is a magnificent corner house, also built in 1895, with elaborate balconies, oriels and floral decorations. The stores here are used by the Malzkorn driving school and a handicrafts store.
Villa Wolf | Moccabar
To the left, the panorama ends with Villa Wolf, which was built in 1911-13 by Johannes Zimmermann for the Wolf family of factory owners. The neo-baroque building, located at an important crossroads, stands out in the cityscape. It is characterized, among other things, by a broad central round tower and an overhanging terrace with balustrade, on which two sphinxes sit. The building was converted into a “Mokkabar” in the GDR, transferred back to the heirs after reunification and, after several changes of operator, is still used as a mocha bar today.
Cityscape development
The short Schumannstrasse with its central, cityscape-defining location is on the one hand an example of the former economic as well as architectural wealth of Zwickau. Due to its secondary location to the parallel shopping street Äußere Plauensche Straße, it also illustrates the problems of preservation and use of the historic building fabric under the economic conditions of the post-reunification decades in East German medium-sized cities with vacancies and redevelopment cases.
