Palais Lüder

You find the Palais Lüder on Ludwigsplatz in Saarbrücken's Alt-Saarbrücken district, beside the Ludwigskirche. It is a town palace of three storeys, its gabled roof flanked by corner risalits with mansard roofs. Christian Friedrich von Lüder, First Court and Government Councillor, bought the land. Building began in January 1765, and Friedrich Joachim Stengel saw the work through to 1767. The architecture follows the classical principles of the baroque, and the scale mirrors the social standing of its first owner.

In 1768 Baron von Lüder sold the house to Prince Wilhelm Heinrich of Nassau-Saarbrücken. The new prince used it as a residence for Gymnasium teachers. By 1814, after the Napoleonic Wars, it housed Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, the Prussian field marshal. Wounded officers found quarters here in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and the future Emperor Wilhelm I paid a visit. Air raids on Saarbrücken destroyed it in the Second World War.

The palace rose again by 1955: outer walls and roofs rebuilt to the historical pattern, interiors modernised behind them. The square around it is one of the key examples of baroque town planning in Germany. Stengel gave the square its shape, and the main axis runs along the Wilhelm-Heinrich-Straße. The State Chancellery of Saarland keeps offices here.