The Altländer Markt. Photograph taken in the 1950s
Just in the picture, on the very right of the photograph, we can see the house belonging to Claus Rehder’s farm. A family retirement house used to be located behind the tree on the photograph. To the left of it, we can see the villa-type house and garden nursery that used to belong to the Pajunk family and was built in 1902. Before that, the mayor of Hamburg, Nicolaus Schuback, used to have a summer- and guest-house that stood here, in which the poet, critic and philosopher, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and his Jork bride, Eva Catharina Koenig, celebrated their wedding on 8th October, 1776. On the site where the nursery once stood, we can now see the savings bank building, which has been there since 1973; it is in the road that was re-named Lessingstraße (from Mittelweg), where a memorial stone reminds us of these events. All the buildings we can see on this photograph no longer exist. The Altländer Markt (the market place) was erected in their stead in 1983/84.
In retrospect, Jork politicians and the advertising association of local businesses (the Werbegemeinschaft Jork) no longer think that the choice of buildings on the market place was the best. They are still searching for suggestions to amend the unsatisfactory situation in the town centre, that meet with the inhabitants’ approval.
