Two thousand years of Friesdorf

At that time Friesdorf lay in the south of the province of Germania inferior, about six kilometres south of the Bonn legionary fortress. Since 1876/86 the villa has been investigated in five excavations. It had a bath complex, a central courtyard, a half-timbered upper storey and probably a cellar. A special piece is a fluted column of red sandstone, 2.04 metres high, which once stood in the garden of the Arndtruhe and later went to the Landesmuseum Bonn.

According to local tradition, finds came to light there as early as 1881 and 1926/27; in 1960 a grave with a fragment of a silver arm ring and a clay spindle whorl, and in 1969/70 further graves, some with stone surrounds. In the excavation reports the street is still called Kirchhofgrabenweg. The place name Fritigesdorp, „village of Fritigis“, goes back to a Frankish personal name; the settlement probably arose in the 6th or 7th century.

The charter itself is lost. All that survives is an extract with the place names, which the Cologne patrician Johann Helman (d. 1579) copied from the cartulary of the Bonn Cassius foundation – before its archive was largely destroyed in the Truchsess War in 1587. The extract begins with the words „In pago Bonnensi in villa quae dicitur Fritigestorp“: in the Bonn district, in a village called Fritigestorp.

The charter is the oldest mention of Friesdorf surviving in full. It is dated by the term of office of Archbishop Hathabald of Cologne (819–841). The church of St. Remigius that received the gift depended on the Bonn Cassius foundation; with his gift Alvard secured perpetual remembrance in the liturgy. Viticulture remained characteristic of the Friesdorf valley slope well into the modern era; field names such as „hinter Crochter Capellen“ or „Moersgrube“ recall it.

The foundation in the Harz came into possession of the estate through King Arnulf (887–899): the charter of 956 reports that he had transferred to Gandersheim everything he owned „in Cruft“; no charter of Arnulf himself survives. The only things not supported are the year 852, which is sometimes given, and a confirmation by name by Otto I in 947. On 22 June 1206 Pope Innocent III again confirmed the foundation's possessions of Crucht, Calchem and Bliterstorph with their churches and vineyards.

With him begins a series of charters in which members of this family of lesser nobility appear over two centuries: as witnesses, as advocates over estates in Crucht and Plittersdorf, and as tenants of the Cologne foundation of St. Andreas. Whether two early benefactors of the convent of Rolandswerth on Nonnenwerth belonged to the family is open; their name forms may also refer to Fritzdorf. The last bearer of the knightly title, Rutgerus, is attested in 1328. Their seat may have been the tower house.

Each autumn Heidenricus and Bertheit each had to deliver two ohms of wine „of the best that grows on this estate“ to the brothers' cellar. The charter is the oldest one concerning Friesdorf in the Heisterbach cartulary, written 22 years before Heisterbach Abbey was founded. The monastery's archivists later filed it under the Klufterhof. According to the wording of the exchange charter of 1203, the estate passed to the Bonn church, not to Heisterbach.

For nine years, he writes, they patiently stayed away from church; when shopping they silently laid down the money and pointed at the goods. During this time, according to Caesarius, no one was born there and no one died. As a factual account the miracle story is of no use. But it shows that the farm was known at Heisterbach Abbey around 1220 and that its inhabitants were subject to the Bonn clergy.

By the Cologne measure, two fuder are about 1,750 litres. The foundation supplied the barrels and had them delivered in Plittersdorf or at the harbour „Kaldenhausen“; from there the Friesdorf wine went down the Rhine to Cologne. In 1328 the foundation leased the farm to seven tenants; it included „a vineyard on the hill and one opposite the church“. The press house and cellar of the old farm were to remain standing.

The feudal lord, Lothar of Wickrath, immediately passed the advocacy to Heisterbach Abbey – for eight ohms of wine a year in perpetuity. As early as 1200 Heisterbach had redeemed the advocacy rights of Heinrich of Friesdorf. For the knightly family the step meant the loss of its most important economic anchor in the district. Heisterbach had held the farm itself since 1207 as a fief of the Gandersheim foundation.

Since 3 February 1207 Heisterbach had farmed the estate as a fief in return for annual wine dues; now the abbey became its owner and remained so until secularisation. According to the wording of the charter, Gandersheim had already used the proceeds to buy the neighbouring castle of Gandersheim – money from the Rhineland thus flowed into the foundation's Saxon heartland. That both sides reckoned in French silver currency shows how the Rhineland was integrated into European payment systems.

Tradition attributes the foundation to Archbishop Walram of Jülich of Cologne (1332–1349) – based solely on a chronicle printed in 1499; no independent source for this is known. The trachyte cross, almost eleven metres high according to Paul Clemen, is first mentioned with certainty in 1445. Until it was moved in 1956/57 it stood within the Friesdorf boundary. Legends tell of atonement for a bloody deed, for instance by a Friesdorf nobleman „von Hochkirchen“ – none of this is historically documented.

Among the properties encumbered were a vineyard „in der Marvlachten“ and a house in Friesdorf – where the „Marvlachten“ lay is no longer known today. The charter names no male heir; no knight of Friesdorf appears after 1328. In 1349 the plague reached the Rhineland. Whether it contributed to the extinction of the family cannot be determined without further sources.

For centuries there were two churches in Friesdorf dedicated to St. Servatius: the parish church at the tower house in the middle of the village and the chapel at the mouth of the Klufter valley. The chapel was the destination of a pilgrimage on St. Servatius' day, 13 May. Behind it, in 1551, lay a quarter of a vineyard belonging to Heisterbach Abbey („hinder Crochter capellen“).

According to Berchem, Johann was a combative man: in 1415 he was feuding with Christian von Zwingenberg, and in 1419 he moved with his son and nephew against the city of Cologne, whose mercenaries then burned down his castle house of Vorst near Frechen. He is said to have died in 1421. The farm remained with his family for generations and was a Siegburg fief until secularisation.

The Turmhof and the Plakenhof were Siegburg male fiefs; their holders belonged to the „Viermänner“, the four vassals of the abbey with rights in the Kottenforst – Friesdorf provided two of them. The sale left these fiefs untouched: as late as 1777 the abbey issued a letter of enfeoffment for the Turmhof.

The land lay „oben der Croichter kirchen an der Steinkoulen“, above the Klufter chapel near a stone pit. The six men had to turn it into vineyards within four years and pay eight Raderalbus per quarter each year at Martinmas to the abbey's Cruchterhof. The charter names six Friesdorf men at once; individual inhabitants are attested by name even earlier.

The charter is the oldest record of mining on the Pützberg, more than two centuries before the usual date of 1807/09. It reports that mines had already been started there under one of Gebhard's predecessors but had then been left unworked. Its list of ores follows the usual formula; alum, vitriol and hard coal were indeed later extracted on the Pützberg. Whether Hutten and Fuerde actually mined there is open.

Archbishop Gebhard Truchseß von Waldburg wanted to make the Electorate of Cologne Protestant; troops of both sides marched through the land. In 1583 the Godesburg was blown up and stormed, and in 1587/88 there was fighting around Bonn. The printed war sources do not name Friesdorf itself. The fire is attested by a Heisterbach charter of 1598: the farms had been „in grundt abgebrandt“ (burnt to the ground). When the farm was rebuilt has not been handed down.

The Cologne chronicler Hermann Weinsberg recorded the rumour in 1595. Jakobe died in 1597 in unexplained circumstances. In interrogations in 1599 and 1601 Dietrich admitted the adultery; according to the files it cannot be ruled out that the confession was extorted. He was sentenced to 5,000 gold guilders, for which his father had to stand surety, and „banished from the Empire for all time“, with the condition that he travel to India or America.

A Bonn notary recorded every step at the Binsfelder Hof: the gate opened and closed, the front door unlocked and locked, a fire lit and put out, the pot hook moved, the pot taken off. The gentlemen stayed overnight; in the morning vineyards and plots followed; at the Marienforster Hof a twig was broken off a young walnut tree. In this way Siegburg Abbey sought to enforce its feudal rights. Johann Giersberg is the oldest known Friesdorf Giersberg with a first name; the surname already appears in the tax lists of 1666/67: „Hall nun Giersberg“ (Hall, now Giersberg).

Wood from the Kottenforst could only be cut with the Elector's permission. Mines on the „Putzbergh“ are attested as early as 1580. Around 1750 the convent of Marienforst had peat and lignite dug on the same hill, bringing in workers from Liblar; because of the low yield it soon gave up this attempt as well. The search for mineral resources on the Pützberg finally led to the alum works in 1809.

The parish gave 400 thalers and parish priest Leutzen 120 malters of Kirchheim lime; the rest of the costs was borne by the Bonn Cassius foundation. In the churchyard stood a tall stone cross of 1742, erected by the lay judge Leonardus Offenberg, tenant (Halfmann) of the Klufterhof, and his wife Anna Catarina Baugs. It remained standing when the churchyard was levelled in 1888 and today stands in the garden of the house Im Bachele 1b.

Siegburg Abbey issued the letter of enfeoffment on 10 January 1777. Belderbusch, the dominant politician of the Electorate of Cologne, lived in Bonn and took little care of the farm, which already had structural defects; in 1783 the property qualified him for a seat in the diet. The Turmhof carried the right to propose a parish priest to the parish – recorded for instance for 1637, 1690 and 1766. The gateway arch of 1777 is today part of the Friesdorf village coat of arms.

The chapel had existed since the Middle Ages; in the 16th century the patron, the parish priest and the parish quarrelled with Heisterbach Abbey over the grain for two weekly Masses there. Pilgrims venerated St. Servatius against the „Frieseln“, a skin rash. The site remained known as the „Kapellenplatz“ (chapel square). Whether the chapel stood on a Roman sanctuary or merely reused the stone cannot be decided without an excavation.

Bonn became the chief town of an arrondissement to which Godesberg and Friesdorf belonged. The feudal tie of the Turmhof to Siegburg Abbey, more than 400 years old, had in effect lapsed. The burdens of war rose sharply; a lease for the Klufterhof dated 22 February 1798 therefore reduced the dues. After the Congress of Vienna the Rhineland passed to Prussia: from 1815 to 1904 Friesdorf belonged to the mayoralty of Godesberg in the district of Bonn.

Since late autumn 1794 French troops had occupied the left bank of the Rhine. In the deed of sale the monastery complains of war costs, contributions and being plundered three times by the Franks. Elisabeth Schumacher paid three quarters of the price at once but received no valid title of ownership; a marginal note records: „Der Verkauf wurde von den Franzosen nicht anerkannt.“ (The sale was not recognised by the French.) With the Peace of Lunéville in 1801 and the consular decree of 1802 the farm fell to the French state.

Around 1800 Friesdorf had 404 inhabitants, most of whom worked as day labourers. At least 17 manorial lords and rent holders had determined their lives – none of them lived in the village. The people of Friesdorf hardly benefited from secularisation: the large properties mostly went as a whole to buyers with cash capital. The Klufterhof continued to be farmed by the tenant family Birkhäuser; when it acquired ownership has not been established.

The watercolour shows a column of soldiers on the Koblenzer Straße, which makes the size of the pillar visible. The rediscovery of the cross had begun with the descriptions by Eichhoff (1783) and Huepsch (1789); after journeys in 1821 and 1823 Samuel Prout spread pictures of the High Cross among English Rhine travellers. In 1829 the Oberpräsident (provincial governor) Karl von Ingersleben initiated the first conservation. Turner's sheet can be seen today in the LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn.

The local literature had so far dated the purchase to 1828. Wilhelm Pfaffenberger had been manager of the works since 1822 at the latest; he remained so until his death in 1856. Since 1818 Köhler had owned the later Villa Simons at Im Bachele 1, which he called „Ludwigslust“. From 1841 Moll was sole owner.

The Servatius Kirmes for the patronal feast on 13 May was already a festival of several days, from Sunday to Tuesday, in 1827. In the following years other innkeepers also issued invitations, for instance Johann Vershoven; the Vershoven inn at the Waasem had existed since 1793. In summer there was a second, smaller Kirmes: the feast of St. Margaret around 20 July. In 1908 the steam tram ran twice as many trains on Kirmes days.

At that time both brothers were brewers in Bonn. According to the sale advertisement for Anton Wolter's estate, a brewery was operated on the Friesdorf property from 1851 to 1886.

According to the first timetable, the only stations between Bonn and Rolandseck were Godesberg and Mehlem. What became important for Friesdorf commuters was the Bonn–Godesberg steam tramway, opened on 22 May 1892 along the Bonner Straße; from 1911 it ran on electricity, and in the same year its depot was built in Friesdorf. Many newcomers worked in businesses in Bonn and Poppelsdorf and lived in Friesdorf because of the lower rents.

In the 18th century only a few mutilated statues could still be seen; in 1789 Huepsch recognised damage caused by cannonballs. The old iron cross on the top had already gone to the Bonn museum in 1842; it was now replaced by a finial. The new figures of Burgsandstein – Christ, John the Baptist and two angels – had already been made by the sculptor Christian Mohr in 1856. Afterwards the cross looked more complete, but now contains only part of its medieval substance.

The infested plants were American experimental vines that had come from Washington in 1866. Dr. Kreusler and Professor Körnicke found the insect when the vines were to be moved before the nursery was closed. The vines were burned and the soil disinfected. In 1878 destroyed vines sprouted again, and in 1885 the louse was also found in a Friesdorf vineyard.

Its founder was Martin Faßbender, then a student in his final semester, later a professor and member of the Reichstag. He first won over the landowner Josef Peters of the Klufterhof, who became chairman; after about a month some forty members had joined. The association gave credit to smallholders, craftsmen and day labourers and bought coal, seed and fertiliser jointly – in 1881 thirty wagonloads of coal came to Friesdorf. The Friesdorf branch is regarded as the oldest founding branch of today's VR-Bank.

In the 1880s and 1890s the Bonn newspapers reported the Friesdorf grape harvest year after year; in 1884 the grapes fetched 20 pfennigs a pound. In 1901 only a few Morgen of vines were left at the Wolter brewery, and from 1907 no directory lists a Friesdorf winegrower any more. Today the street „Im Weingarten“ recalls viticulture.

In many Friesdorf families all the adults had to work outside the village, but the municipality could not afford a nursery school. In 1899 the Cologne sugar manufacturer Pfeifer provided 10,000 marks and obtained the plot. The building, named after his wife, was the first in Friesdorf to have running water. The sisters looked after small children, gave girls needlework lessons and cared for the sick and the poor; locally the foundation was called the „Klösterchen“ (little convent).

The establishment had grown out of the forest tavern of the Wolter brewery. Joseph Loevenich, son-in-law of Mina Wallraff née Wolter, took it over between July 1902 and May 1903 and expanded it into a hotel restaurant. The name „Arndtruhe“ is attested as early as 1903, so it does not come from Lauff. The museum was founded by Loevenich and his wife Maria. In 1921 Loevenich sold his Arndt memorabilia to the city of Bonn.

By the end of November 1914, 23 men from Friesdorf had already fallen. The founder, Eugen Pfeifer, provided 20 beds and bore the costs; in 1915, 157 soldiers were nursed there, and the foundation's kitchen served about 200 portions of soup a day. Schoolchildren dug over a municipal meadow for soldiers' wives and collected scrap metal, nettles and fruit stones. From November 1915 Tuesdays and Fridays were meatless days; in 1917 St. Servatius had to give up two bells and the organ pipes.

According to Hedrich-Winter, 30 people died; the city's chronological table gives 26.

The expelled men went to Bad Salzuflen. After an attempted bombing of the Godesberg railway embankment, the military government twice imposed a week-long curfew from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. At the same time inflation ate up wages: a bread roll cost 60,000 marks in Friesdorf, a single briquette later 1.5 million. Quakers from the USA made school meals possible for 50 children, and on 1 August 1923 the „Sterbenotgemeinschaft Friesdorf“ (Friesdorf funeral aid society) was founded.

Following the Locarno treaties, the Cologne zone, to which Bonn and Godesberg belonged, was evacuated from 30 November 1925; the last troops left at the end of January 1926. A few months later, by decree of 10 June 1926, Godesberg received permission to bear the name „Bad Godesberg“; it was only raised to the status of a town in 1935. For Friesdorf, the northern district, the title at first changed little.

It had been preceded in 1922 by a festival association of several clubs and in 1928 by the carnival committee „Kleffbotze“. The Ortsausschuss included choral societies, the church choir, marksmen, gymnasts, footballers – and the goat breeders' association, with 180 families the second-largest club in the village. It took over tasks that the municipal council used to have: the Kirmes, village festivals, common concerns. The first negotiations were dominated by a bus that only went as far as Dottendorf. On 3 February 1937 the NSDAP dissolved the Ortsausschuss.

In Friesdorf the Centre Party won 43.6 per cent, the SPD 21.7 and the KPD 18.6 per cent. In November 1932 the NSDAP fell to 8.7 per cent in the village, and even on 5 March 1933 it reached only 19.0 per cent. The chairman of the Godesberg Centre Party was the teacher Joseph Roth, married since 1924 to a woman from Friesdorf. On 13 March 1933 an SA detachment forced his suspension.

Before that, the house chapel of the Paula-Maria-Stift was used. The lease of 200 Reichsmarks a month was valid for ten years or until a new church was completed and excluded any restaurant business in the building. Parish priest Josef Kelzenberg led the parish through the first years of hardship. Because all the other halls in Friesdorf had also been destroyed, the town of Bad Godesberg had the hut „Margaretenhof“ put up on Margaretenstraße as a temporary solution in 1948/49.

The 19th-century mansard roof had been destroyed. That the house was saved is thanks to the Landschaftsverband Rheinland (regional authority), the town of Bad Godesberg and the owner at the time; he pressed for reconstruction because three families could thereby get a home again. The office of the state conservator and the Friesdorf building firm Noisten und Walbröhl restored the building. Today the tower house is a private residence restored in keeping with its listed status and the main motif of the village coat of arms.

Friesdorf lay in the „Bonn enclave“, where the Federal Government, the Bundestag, the federal ministries and the Allied High Commission took up residence. For the district, which had just under 4,000 inhabitants in 1948, this was noticeable within months: the country road between Bonn and Bad Godesberg, later the B 9, became the main axis between the Bundeshaus and the Petersberg. Locals called it the „Diplomaten-Rennbahn“ (diplomats' racetrack).

After the first sod was turned on 11 September 1949, cathedral canon Prelate Dr. Wilhelm Corsten laid the foundation stone on 30 October 1949; the plans were by the Cologne building officer Otto Bongartz. The new building followed the lines of the neo-Gothic hall church but was extended to the west, because the parish had grown greatly through the arrival of expellees. The Baroque statue of St. Servatius returned. The consecration was performed by Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Ferche on 16 November 1952.

Opposite stands the Maarhaus, built in 1937, the first Protestant meeting place in Friesdorf. After the war the congregation grew through expellees and federal civil servants moving in. The cubic brick building with a free-standing light-coloured tower received an organ from the Göttingen workshop of Paul Ott in 1966 and windows by Reimund Franke in 1985. In 2003 the Paulus congregation merged with the Christus congregation of Plittersdorf to form the Thomas congregation.

The master plan by the architect Joachim Schürmann provided for seven such „Kreuzbauten“ (cross buildings) for all the federal ministries; only two were built, to a design by Planungsgruppe Stieldorf, with fifteen and thirteen storeys. They retained their ministerial use even after 1999, today among others for the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. In 2004 the ensemble was listed as a monument.

For Friesdorf it was the second incorporation in 65 years. 1 July had been planned, but the Constitutional Court of North Rhine-Westphalia had suspended implementation for a month. The cadastral district of Friesdorf still exists in the land register today. In November 1969 (according to another source on 29 October) the Friesdorf Spar- und Darlehnskassenverein merged with the Spar- und Kreditbank Mehlem to form the Bad Godesberger Kreditbank.

The religious community of the Syro-Malabar Church had been founded in Kerala in 1831; CMI fathers had been studying in Bonn since 1957. In 1983 the archdiocese and the order concluded the contract, and in 1984 the parish was formally transferred; for over twenty-five years Bonn-Friesdorf was regarded as the order's German headquarters. On 1 January 2009 the parish became part of the parish community of St. Marien and St. Servatius. On New Year's Eve 2010 the Indian priests celebrated their last Mass in St. Servatius.

For the widening of federal road B 9 the cross had been moved from the middle of the old crossroads in 1956/57; until then it had stood within the Friesdorf boundary. Vibrations from lorries and trams and air pollution damaged the stone, and in 1978 parts threatened to fall. From August 1979 the cross was dismantled and restored in Cologne workshops. The replica stands at Godesberger Allee 97.

The Bundestag had decided on the move on 20 June 1991 by 338 votes to 320.

The Kirmes, traditionally celebrated around the patronal feast of St. Servatius in May, thus experienced its first longer interruption since the years of the world wars and the immediate post-war period. The carnival of the KG Kleffbotze also paused; the male voice choir suspended its rehearsals and later sang at open-air „window concerts“. Bonn's vaccination centre was set up in the World Conference Center in the nearby federal quarter.

Beneath the red screed, 15 centimetres thick, stood pillars of 13 bricks each, 0.65 metres high; the area of pillars measured 6 × 6.5 metres. A camera travelled through the cavity. Finds from the courtyard, among them a coin of Emperor Valentinian I (364–375), show that the villa was used until the end of the 4th or beginning of the 5th century. After documentation the cavity was filled in; the hall remains preserved in the ground.