Old town hall
German towns were traditionally built around a market square
which had three obligatory features: the town hall, a magnificent
Christian church, and a beautiful fountain. In Dachau's Altstadt
(Old town) the town hall is across the street from the parish
Church of St. Jakob and there is a beautiful red marble fountain
in front of it, so the town square meets all the requirements
for a typical German town. The pink-colored old town hall, shown
in the photograph below, is a reconstruction completed in 1936.
It replaces the previous town hall which was a 1614 reconstruction
of the original town hall that had been on this same spot since
at least 1486. The Baroque gable is a reproduction of the the
one on the previous town hall, built in the years 1614 to 1615.
The old town hall in Dachau, completed March, 1936
The photograph below shows the old town hall on the left,
with the modern new town hall in the middle and on the right,
a gray building with a Baroque gable similar to the one on the
old town hall. The gray building is called the Lebzelterhaus
which means gingerbread maker's house. Four buildings are joined
together here with no space in between them: starting on the
extreme left of the picture, the Zieglerbräu Brewery and
Inn, then the old town hall, the modern new town hall and the
gingerbread maker's house. This street is on a slope and a small
yellow building with blue shutters is set down below the other
buildings; this building is currently being used as a photographer's
place of business. The edge of a roof that you can see in the
right hand corner is the District Administration Building. Note
the beautiful hawthorn tree in bloom in front of the gray building.
The new town hall was designed by Professor Werner Fauser.
New modern town hall adjoins old Baroque town hall
The photograph below shows a close-up of the emblem on the
top of the old town hall. In the round window in the center of
the picture, you can see a silver spur. A spur has been used
in the Dachau town seal since as far back as 1374.
A spur has been part of the town seal since 1374
The red marble fountain in front of the old town hall was
designed in 1915 by a Dachau artist named Ignatius Taschner,
who was a good friend of Ludwig Thoma, Dachau's first lawyer
and a famous writer. The old town fountain, which dates back
to 1788, was moved to the corner of Weiningerstrasse and Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse.
Town fountain made of red marble from Ruhpolding
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