Freiburg's Second Founding Father

Otto Winterer in half-relief in Freiburg's minster

The day before yesterday, Freiburg commemorated Otto Winterer, its legendary mayor, who they say founded the city a second time. Winterer took this position on May 25, 1888, at 42, and retired from office on May 25, 1913, exactly 25 years later. During his tenure, he transformed Freiburg, the medieval city, into a modern town, doubling its population from 45,000 to 90,000.

Speaking on the occasion of this double commemoration (held a week earlier because of the Whitsun holidays) were Winterer's great-grandson professor Tilman Mayer, the director of Freiburg's Augustinermuseum Tilmann von Stockhausen, and Lord Mayor Dieter Salomon. Note the difference in the spelling of the forenames.

Winterer's great-grandson Tilman Mayer addressing a grey-headed crowd.
 (©Michael Bamberger, BZ)

Winterer, a national liberal, was conservative in preserving Freiburg's cultural heritage while, at the same time, avant-garde. He built new schools and bridges, invested in affordable housing projects, ensured a modern water supply and effluent disposal, created a central gas supply, and electrified the streetcar system as early as 1901. As his great-grandson formulated it, Otto Winterer was a designer, innovator, and preserver.

The Wasserschlössle or how to hide a drinking water reservoir behind a historicizing front (©Wikipedia)

Winterer not only preserved Freiburg's historic building stock, e.g., when founding the Münsterbauverein (Society for the Preservation of the Minster), but he longed to exaggerate the existing Gothic and Renaissance buildings vertically. Sometimes, however, he overshot, e.g., when acting according to his maxim: A village has roofs and a town sports steeples.

Exaggerating vertically

The Martinstor before 1900. There is a painting of Saint Martin on its front face (©Wikipedia)

The Martinstor as it looks today, except for the missing painting
(©Historisches Freiburg)

The Schwabentor in its original form (©Historisches Freiburg)

The Schwabentor highly exaggerated (©Historisches Freiburg)

After the war, due to damage and static reasons, the Schwabentor had to be stripped down. During the present renovations, cracks in the walls of the gate were unexpectedly discovered, demanding the strengthening of its foundations (©Historisches Freiburg).

How were all these building activities possible? Winterer was a man of action, straightforward, and he had visions, twenty-five years in office, and money. It was the Gründerzeit of the 2nd Reich (founding period) following Germany's unification, a period of robust growth. Most of Winterer's developments were sustainable, e.g., his solid school buildings and most of the original effluent systems are still in use.

Winterer's oversized theater (©Historisches Freiburg)

Since Winterer wanted to make Freiburg an attractive town for tourists and wealthy pensioners (at that time, Freiburg was nicknamed the all-German Pensionopolis), he rounded out the city's historical jewels and the natural beauties of the Black Forest with generous cultural offerings. The municipal theater he had built by 1910 was the second biggest in the Reich for a population of less than 90,000 people. It was finished in a period when the times of plenty had elapsed. Otto Winterer died on February 26, 1915, half a year after the outbreak of the First World War that ended the good old times.

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