The dolls
' The Puppets ' was a popular name in Berlin for an ensemble of sandstone sculptures of ancient gods and goddesses, which were erected in the middle of the 18th century on the Großer Stern in the center of the Great Tiergarten in Berlin and stood there until the beginning of the 19th century.
The exact number of 'dolls' is not known, it was either 12 or 16. The phrase "up to the dolls" is derived from the 'dolls' for events or long journeys - an allusion to the great distance, which had to be covered on a walk from the Berlin city limits at the Brandenburg Gate to the Großer Stern.
The sandstone sculptures were erected around 1750 by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff as part of his transformation of the former electoral game reserve into a baroque city park. The focus of Knobelsdorff's work was on the southeastern part of the Tiergarten, between today's Strasse des 17. Juni and today's Tiergartenstrasse and on the Großer Stern. On the latter, Knobelsdorff doubled the oaks that surrounded the former resting place, which was built around 1700, put on conical beeches and hedges and erected between them the statues of gods, soon disrespectfully known as 'dolls'.
Like other monuments and ornaments in the zoo, the sculptures were damaged by vandalism at an early stage . At the beginning of the 19th century they were already largely destroyed, so that the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel proposed in 1816 that they be dismantled and instead of their groups of lanterns from the Boumann Opera Bridge, which was to be demolished, put up. However, this proposal was not approved by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. The remains of the 'dolls' were not removed until 1829.
The traditional name 'the dolls' was later carried over to the marble monuments of Brandenburg and Prussian rulers, which were built on the initiative of Kaiser Wilhelm II from 1895 in the Siegesallee (also called Puppenallee ), which is also located in the Großer Tiergarten . This results in the misunderstanding, which can often be demonstrated in depictions of Berlin's urban history, that the phrase “right up to the dolls” goes back to the statues on Siegesallee.
Web links
- Expressions, idioms, proverbs in the Duden online
Individual evidence
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↑ Folkwin Wendland: The Great Tiergarten in Berlin. Its history and development in five centuries . Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7861-1631-8 , pp. 43-50.
Monuments in Berlin. Mitte district. Districts Moabit, Hansaviertel and Tiergarten . Imhof, Petersberg 2005, ISBN 3-86568-035-6 , pp. 43-44. - ↑ Wendland: The Great Zoo . Pp. 82-83, 92, 120-121.
- ↑ See e.g. B. the critical review by Kurt Wernicke to: Katharina Raabe, Ingke Brodersen (eds.): Das Große Berlinbuch . Rowohlt Berlin, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-87134-329-3 . In: Berlin monthly journal . 8th year, issue 4, April 1999, ISSN 0944-5560 , p. 101-103, here p. 102. See IG: Calendar sheet: Die Siegesallee . In: Humboldt: the newspaper of the Alma Mater Berolinensis . Academic year 2001/2002, No. 3, December 2001.