You are standing at the former Kanton Köln, a place that today leaves almost no trace of the times of greatest turmoil and transformation in the city's history, yet you only need to close your eyes to imagine life from over two hundred years ago. Listen - the echo of French commands still hangs in the air, the clink of assignats - a temporary currency, the laughter of children running on the cobblestones, and the dark voices of the inhabitants' uncertainty.
At the end of the 18th century, Cologne was a city that had lost its former glory. Imagine narrow streets full of poor people, beggars on every corner, and large, neglected tenement houses - contrasting with the palaces of wealthy patricians amidst gardens. It seemed as if the city had fallen into a lethargy, as if burdened by the shadow of its own past. It was at this very moment, when the inhabitants were already tired of hunger, the costs of wartime quartering, and a catastrophic flood, that revolutionary French troops arrived from the southwest.
Autumn 1794. Rumors circulate about the unstoppable march of General Jourdan's army. Guards on the walls look on uneasily, and in the morning, the city awakens to the sounds of a foreign language. A delegation with Mayor Klespé and the renowned printer DuMont meets the French at Hahnentor - there, they symbolically hand over the keys to the city. Then everything changes rapidly: a tree of liberty with a red cap, like from revolutionary engravings, appears on Neumarkt, and the streets fill with gray-clad soldiers who need to be fed and housed.
The first days give the inhabitants the illusion that the French will leave their existing customs untouched. However, soon the city is divided in a modern way: Cologne becomes the center of one of the French cantons, managed by people like the energetic commissioner Rudler. Do you hear? New regulations are printed in French, and the Declaration of Human Rights is written on every black board of the magistrate. The former councilors - as well as the guilds and the university, which had steered the city's life for centuries - are dissolved with a single signature. The study of law or medicine is henceforth conducted according to the French model, although many professors do not hide their bitterness.
Monasteries and monastic schools disappear, and Protestants gain civil rights for the first time. Services of both denominations are held in Antoniterkirche. A Jewish merchant, Salomon Oppenheim jr., walking here, opens his first banking house in Cologne and takes his first steps towards fortune - the foundation for a great modern Jewish community.
And imagine the buzz in the former Hanseasaal, where instead of courtly and mysterious intrigues of councilors, public hearings are now held in the newly established commercial court. Local cries for justice mingle with speeches in French. Overseeing everything is the freshly organized magistrate, in which people like Maximilian von Kempis - a former opponent of aristocratic privileges, now a leader of change - play an important role.
The school buzz also feels the changes - French becomes the official language, the children of the wealthiest merchants learn it in central schools, while children from the suburbs have to march daily to neighboring villages because they cannot yet afford education in the city.
Above all this hangs anxiety. Every day you smell the strong scent of fresh paint as guild coats of arms are covered, and the commandments of the new order are written on black boards. Gendarmes, former soldiers of the revolution, patrol the streets, and on every corner, you might see the shadows of former monks without cassocks. It is unknown whether a peaceful evening will suddenly turn into conscription into the army or confiscation of property.
And yet, this chaos created the foundations of modern Cologne: unified law, new courts, free trade, as well as freedom of religion and citizenship for everyone. The worries of the elderly and the curiosity of the young, the fear of merchants and the boldness of bankers - all this pulsed here, in the Kanton Köln, transforming the city in a way that even the most far-sighted mayors could not have imagined. You have just witnessed one of the most important chapters in the history of Cologne.
