À propos de ce lieu
Standing at the corner of Katharinenstraße and Brühl, the Romanushaus is the finest surviving Baroque building in Leipzig, commissioned by Mayor Franz Conrad Romanus between 1701 and 1704 at a cost of around 150,000 thalers, a sum wildly beyond any honest official's means. When forged city debt notes began circulating in Leipzig's trading houses in late 1704 and again at the New Year fair of 1705, investigators searched the building on 16 January 1705 and found more forged notes, a duplicate key to the mayoral desk, a wax impression of the Grand Council seal, and cash taken from the city treasury and from the Nikolaikirche vault. Romanus was arrested on the spot, transferred from fortress to fortress, and held without a verdict for 41 years, dying at Königstein on 14 May 1746. Three centuries later the house returned to the headlines when Frankfurt developer Jürgen Schneider, who had assembled the Romanushaus and several other grand Leipzig addresses after reunification, vanished in April 1994 leaving roughly 5.4 billion Deutsche Marks of bank debt and a Deutsche Bank spokesperson who dismissed 50 million Deutsche Marks owed to craftsmen as mere peanuts.
À retenir
- 150000 thalers — The staggering cost of the Romanushaus, funded by Mayor Romanus through forged city debt notes and stolen public money.
- 41 years — The time Romanus spent imprisoned in Saxon fortresses, waiting for a verdict that August the Strong and his successors refused to deliver.
- 5.4 billion DM — The bank debt left behind when developer Jürgen Schneider, who once owned this building, vanished overnight in April 1994.