\033 



FRANKFURT-AM-MAIN. 



FRANKFQRT-AM-MAI N. 



1090 



ftnd compose the civic tribunal as well as a secondary court of appeal ; 

 the highest court of appeal being the supreme tribunal at Lubeck. 

 The permanent committee is composed of 61 members, and its 

 principal office is to control the income and expenditure. The legis- 

 lative body consists of 85 members, 20 of whom are senators, and as 

 many are members of the permanent committee ; the remaining 45 

 are chosen from an electoral college of 65 burgesses, elected by the 

 three civic orders ; the patrician, or men of letters, the merchants, 

 and the tradesmen, mechanics, &c. They are elected for the session 

 only, which opens in November and sits for six weeks ; their sanction 

 is requisite to all new laws as well as to the budget. The nine 

 deputies who are returned by the rural dependencies of Frankfurt 

 do not assist at the deliberations, excepting when matters connected 

 with the interests of their constituents are brought forward. The 

 senate aud permanent committee are chosen, as vacancies occur, from 

 among the other members of the legislative body. Foreign consuls 

 reside at Frankfurt. Alterations were made in the constitution of the 

 republic in 1848 and 1849, during the revolutionary epidemic in 

 Germany ; but as all efforts made during four years to make the new 

 constitution work proved ineffectual, the German Diet, in August 1852, 

 decreed a return to the former system. 



The public income, according to the budget of 1853, is estimated 

 at 1,655,200 florins, and the expenditure at 1,686,140 florins. The 

 debt in the same year amounted to 6,680,000 florins, exclusive of 

 6,768,700 florins owing for the construction of railways. 



The Lutherans have a consistory aud the Calvinists two presby- 

 teries, which direct all their respective ecclesiastical affairs. The 

 Roman Catholics are under the bishop of Limburg-on-the-Lahn. 



Frankfurt is a member of the Germanic Confederation, and in 

 conjunction with the other free towns, Lubeck, Bremen, and Ham- 

 burg, occupies the seventeenth place in the limited Council of the 

 Diet, but enjoys its independent vote in the full council. It furnishes 

 a contingent of GU3 men to the army of the confederation, and pays 

 a quota of 47 florins 35 kreutzers towards the annual expenses of 

 that body. 



FUANKFURT-AM-MAIN (Frankfort-on-the-Main). This cele- 

 brated commercial city, the scat of the German Diet, stands on the 

 right bank of the Main, across which there is a stone bridge, which 

 unites it with the suburb of Sachsenhausen. It is situated in 50 6' 43" 

 N. lat., 8 41' 24" K. long., and had, in 1849, a population of 62,500. 

 The valley and the town are commanded on the north by the gentle 

 heights of the R<>denberg, and at some leagues distant behind them 

 by the range of the Taunus ; and on the side of Sachsenhausen, in 

 the south, by the Miihlberg, Sachsenhausenberg, and Lerchesberg, 

 offsets of the Odenwald. The old walls and ramparts, with their 

 stagnant ditches, were razed between the years 1806 and 1812, 

 and the site converted into spacious park -like grounds ; the glacis 

 too is now covered with vineyards and gardens, which are exter- 

 nally bounded by a broad road; and beyond this road the adjacent 

 ground is embellished with a profusion of villas, pavilious, and private 

 gardens. 



The principal public entrances are nine large gates, which were for- 

 merly flanked by cumbrous quadrangular towers : most of these have in 

 modern times been replaced by handsome buildings, modelled from 

 the ancient temples of Athens, Rome, &c. Of the nine entrances 

 Frankfurt has seven and Sachsenhausen two. In front of the north- 

 eastern entrance is the monument erected by Frederick William II., 

 king of Prussia, to the memory of the Prince of Hesse-Philipsthal 

 and his gallant followers, who fell at the successful storming of the 

 town on the 2nd of December, 1792 : it consists of a quadrangular 

 block of German marble, surmounted with appropriate trophies, 

 bearing a commemorative inscription, and resting on an artificial 

 rock. The Bockenheim gate, which is the western entrance, is built 

 on the model of the temple of Apteral Victory at Athens, and the 

 Upper-Main gate is an imitation of the porch of the Campus Militum at 

 Pompeii. The adjacent buildings are neat structures appropriated as 

 guard-houses and for the use of the custom-house officers. The 

 Eschenheim gate, the north-western entrance, is the only specimen 

 extant of the ancient gates ; it is a lofty massive tower, crowned by 

 five turrets, and is a fine specimen of the German architecture of the 

 14th century. 



Frankfurt, inclusive of Sachsenhausen, contains nearly 4000 houses; 

 between 400 and 500 of them being in the latter suburb. They form 

 6 large and 14 minor squares or open spaces, and above 220 streets 

 and lanes. The places of worship include 7 Lutheran, 2 Calviuist, 

 and 3 Roman Catholic churches, and one synagogue. 



The city is divided into 14 quarters, numbered from A to 0, 

 12 within the walls and 2 in the Sachsenhausen suburb. The Belle 

 Vue and other streets built along the Boulevards, which form a hand- 

 some screen to the more ancient part of Frankfurt, have been erected 

 since the fortifications were demolished. The largest square, called 

 the Rossmarkt, is surrounded by fine buildings, and connected with 

 the square of the theatre by a spacious avenue of lime-trees and 

 acacias. There are fountains in the centre of the Ross-Markt, as 

 well as in the squares of the Liebfrauen and Roemerberg. The right 

 bank of the Main, from the upper to the lower gate, which is nearly 

 the whoie length of the city, is edged by a spacious quay, and behind 

 this lies an uninterrupted line of buildings. During the fairs a 



oioo. Div. VOL. n. 



portion of the quay, on which rows of booths are erected, presents a 

 scene of the most animated description. 



The most remarkable buildings in the town are the ' Roemer,' or 

 Guildhall, an irregular structure, with lofty roofs in the old Prankish 

 style. Under its roof are the Wahlzimmer, or Hall of Election, a 

 spacious and handsomely-furnished apartment, in which the electors 

 and their representatives were wont to assemble and partly conduct 

 the business of electing the emperors of Germany. It is now used 

 for the meeting of the senate. Next to it is the Kaisersaal, or 

 Imperial Hall, where the emperor upon his election held his public 

 dinner, at which he was waited upon by the counts and the high 

 officers of the empire. There are niches in this hall which contain 

 portraits of the emperors of Germany from Conrad to Leopold II. ; 

 but there was not one left unoccupied for receiving the portrait of 

 Francis II., the last of those sovereigns. A sort of ante-hall with a 

 painted cxipola, and furnished with specimens of the pictorial talent 

 of the Frankfurters, opens into the Election Hall. Here is also the 

 Depository of the Archives, surrounded by walls six feet in thickness. 

 It contains, among other valuable records, the celebrated 'Golden 

 Bull' promulgated by Charles IV. in 1356, which is written on 45 

 sheets of parchment. The Roemer is situated on the western side of 

 the Roemerberg, an irregular open space or square, which has also 

 much of historical interest attached to it. This is the spot where the 

 people collected to welcome ' the newly-elected emperor, bearing his 

 crown and sceptre in solemn procession, after he had been anointed in 

 the cathedral. 



Not far from the Roemer is the new Hall of Justice with its various 

 courts and offices ; and south of it, on one side of the Fahr-gate on 

 the quay of the Main, stands the Saal Hof, on the site of a palace 

 built by Lewis the Pious, Charlemagne's son, in which Charles the 

 Bald was born and Lewis the German long resided, but of which 

 scarcely any part is extant, save the Chapel of St. Elizabeth, a vaulted 

 chamber with columns of red-sandstone, and walls six feet in thickness. 

 The present building, which is private property, was'raised in 1717. 

 The Braunfels belongs to one of the old equestrian clubs ; the court- 

 yard is used for the Exchange, and the spacious saloons on the first 

 floor are occupied, in the fair times, by dealers in all kinds of luxuries, 

 &c., and are the favourite lounge for visitors. The Palace of the 

 Prince of Tour und Taxis, in the north-western part of Frankfurt, ia a 

 spacious structure in the French style of 1730, richly adorned with 

 paintings, sculptures, and ancient hangings : it contains 150 apart- 

 ments, including two octagonal halls; and here the Diet of the Germanic 

 Confederation holds its sittings. The ancient House of the Teutonic 

 Knights in Sachsenhausen, is a sombre massive building in a low 

 situation, but well laid out in its internal arrangements. It is at 

 present the property of the emperor of Austria. 



The two large buildings in Frankfurt, which were once public 

 arsenals, were stripped of their contents by the French, and are now 

 appropriated to the police as a prison, and for other purposes. The 

 guard-house, which is chiefly used as a prison, is an unsightly structure 

 of the early part of the 16th century, which disfigures the Parade. 

 An old Carmelite convent, now the quarters of the garrison of the 

 town, has cloisters covered with faded fresco paintings executed in 

 the beginning of the 16th century ; the Stone House, near the Roe- 

 merberg, is a fine remnant of the middle ages, and the Fiirsteneck, 

 near the bridge, may be instanced as one of the oldest buildings ia 

 Frankfurt. Besides these, the theatre, public library, academy of 

 arts and sciences, the new hospital of the Holy Ghost, a Jews' hospital, 

 and an orphan asylum, are deserving of attention. 



The church of St. Bartholomew, formerly the cathedral, is built in 

 the gothic style and in the shape of a Roman cross, and though begun 

 in the time of the Carlovingian princes, was not finished uutil the 

 middle of the 14th century. Its colossal tower, 160 feet in height, 

 is one of the latest models of the Gothic. The colossal statue of 

 St. Bartholomew in this church is reckoned a masterpiece of sculpture. 

 On the right of the grand choir is the chapel, in which the electors 

 accepted the German emperor elect as their sovereign after he had 

 been crowned and anointed at the high altar. The tower was begun 

 in 1415 and finished in 1509. At a short distance north of the 

 town is the public cemetery, laid out like a pleasure ground of shrubs ; 

 and adjoining it an equally well-arranged burial place for the Jewish 

 community. There are four hospitals, one of which is for lunatics 

 and epileptic persons ; an orphan asylum, a house of refuge for sick 

 poor, and several other benevolent institutions. Among the scholastic 

 establishments are a gymnasium of six classes, conducted by a 

 director, six professors, and nine masters; a normal school of 

 13 classes, 7 for boys and 6 for girls, and a variety of other seminaries. 

 The public library contains about 60,000 volumes, among which are 

 a complete collection of works relating to German history, and many 

 rare manuscripts, early editions, and engravings. 



The scientific institutions of Frankfurt comprise a Medical Institute, 

 founded in 1763 by the liberality of Dr. Senkenberg, which is com- 

 posed of a medical library, an anatomical theatre and lecture-rooms, 

 and botanical garden. The Senkenberg Society of Naturalists waa 

 united to this establishment in 1817, aud in the adjoining buildings 

 possesses an extensive museum, to which Riippell, the explorer of 

 north-eastern Africa and the parts adjacent, who travelled partly at 

 the society's expense, has contributed several valuable collections in 



4 A 



