Haydnstraße - 2

The ground floor was originally a Bäckerei run by the Körner family. Erich Körner, a former POW who had learned baking in a French camp, opened the shop on a shoestring budget. Locals remember the smell of Roggenmischbrot wafting onto the sidewalk every morning at 4 a.m. The ovens left a ghost stain on the outer wall—visible until the 1990s renovation.

Number 2 is strategically placed. Often, the first few numbers on a German street are closest to the main thoroughfare or the historic core. In this case, Haydnstraße 2 sits near the intersection with a primary feeder road, making it a gateway of sorts. If you stand outside today, you’ll notice a building that refuses to be ordinary. The current structure at Haydnstraße 2 is not the first. Archival photographs (held in the Mönchengladbach city archive) show that around 1895, a typical Wilhelmine tenement house stood here—ornate stucco, high ceilings, dark hallways, and a courtyard designed to maximize rentable space. That building was largely destroyed during a bombing raid in February 1945, one of the heaviest attacks on the city. haydnstraße 2

Have a memory or photo of Haydnstraße 2? Share it with the Eicken History Workshop or tag #Haydnstrasse2 on social media. The ground floor was originally a Bäckerei run

Fräulein Ilse Brand, a spinster and violist with the defunct city orchestra, lived in the 2.5-room apartment on the first floor. Neighbors recall the scales and arpeggios drifting from her open window every afternoon at 4 p.m.—a living echo of Haydn. After her death, her family donated her 1780 copy of Haydn’s “Emperor” Quartet to the city library. The ovens left a ghost stain on the

Behind the Facade: Uncovering the Stories of Haydnstraße 2

More than just an address—a cross-section of German history, architecture, and everyday life.

When the bakery finally closed in 1999, the ground floor was transformed into a Gemüseladen run by the Demir family, part of the second wave of Turkish immigration to Mönchengladbach. For nearly two decades, Haydnstraße 2 became a hub of integration: German pensioners buying olives, Turkish children doing homework at the counter, and Syrian refugees, after 2015, finding their first job there. The Turning Point: Preservation vs. Progress In 2020, a developer purchased Haydnstraße 2 with plans to demolish it and build a sleek, four-story Studentenwohnheim . The local Bürgerverein Eicken (neighborhood association) fought back. They argued that the building was not just architecture but a “living chronicle of Eicken’s transformation.”