Hauptwache Frankfurt

The Hauptwache is a baroque building in downtown Frankfurt and houses the Café Hauptwache. It gives its name to the square at the Hauptwache and the underground U-Bahn and S-Bahn station Hauptwache.

It couldn't be more central. And not historical either. The building of the Café Hauptwache not only has an eventful history behind it, it is also reminiscent of the many magnificent coffee houses that once existed in Frankfurt.

The baroque building, which is now used as a café, was the seat of the city defense force and a prison with interrogation rooms and dungeons from the middle of the 18th century. On the square next to the main guard station, the population could heap scorn and meanness on prisoners, who were displayed in the pillory or in a rotating "trill house". Susanna Margaretha Brandt, Goethe's "Gretchen", was executed here on the scaffold. During the Frankfurt Wachensturm in 1833, the Hauptwache and the Konstablerwache became the scene of an uprising that was supposed to herald the end of the principalities and the beginning of a free, national and democratic state. There were deaths on both sides during the prisoner release. The uprising failed: the rebels were either arrested or had to flee abroad. In January 1837, six of the imprisoned students managed to escape, as evidenced by a mocking song: