Bismarck Monument (Hamburg)

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Front view of the Bismarck Monument, 2016

The Bismarck monument in the Old Elbpark in Hamburg commemorates the first German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898). It was built between 1901 and 1906 according to plans by the architect Emil Schaudt and the sculptor Hugo Lederer . Easily visible from the port of Hamburg , it shows the “Iron Chancellor” as a Hanseatic Roland , a symbol of urban freedom . With a total height of 34.3 meters, it is the largest Bismarck monument in Germany and one of Hamburg's landmarks. It is a listed building and is currently being renovated.

description

Side view of the Bismarck Monument, 2016

Leaning on the sword, Bismarck looks away from the center of Hamburg in a westerly direction down the Elbe. The monument has a total height of 34.3 meters (base and figure) and weighs 625 tons. The 100 granite blocks used for the memorial come from Kappelrodeck in the Black Forest . It is Oberkirch - granite porphyry . The actual Bismarck figure is 14.8 meters high. The height of the head is 1.83 meters, the length of the sword ten meters.

At his feet, granite figures symbolize the Germanic tribes. These base figures were only made in 1908 after another fundraising campaign, as the question of material was initially left open when the Bismarck monument was designed and a significantly larger proportion of the originally collected donations had to be spent on the granite material.

In the center of the interior, exactly below the figure, there is a 15-meter-high circular room made of brickwork, slightly tapered towards the top. The inside diameter of this drum is 3.70 meters. The cavities in the monument base originally served to ventilate the building.

history

Head of the monument, 1906
Unveiling of the monument, 1906
Aerial photo of the monument, behind it the “ Dancing Towers ”, 2013

prehistory

On July 31, 1898, Bismarck died at the age of 83 in Friedrichsruh near Hamburg. For Max von Schinckel (owner of the Norddeutsche Bank and board member of the Disconto-Gesellschaft , member of the Commerz deputation at that time, today Hamburg Chamber of Commerce , Presidium) it was clear that “immediately and as long as this irreplaceable loss burned in everyone's soul, even in Hamburg the steps for the erection of a grandiose Bismarck monument would have to be taken ”. On the following Monday, he and his “like-minded fellow” Rudolph Crasemann (Member of Parliament, Chamber of Commerce, Presidium) decided to call on then Mayor Johannes Versmann to form the honorary chairman of a committee. The third member of the group was the diamond dealer Ludwig Julius Lippert , an "enthusiastic Bismarck supporter". The committee for the construction of a memorial should include eleven respected citizens of Hamburg . Then the fundraising began, which took longer than planned due to the low willingness of the population.

The Bismarck Monument Comité included the First Mayor Johann Georg Mönckeberg , the shipowners Carl Laeisz and Carl Ferdinand Laeisz , the President of the Higher Regional Court Ernst Friedrich Sieveking , the architect of the Speicherstadt Franz Andreas Meyer , the director of the Museum of Art and Commerce Justus Brinckmann , the architect of the town hall Martin Haller and the director of the art gallery Alfred Lichtwark .

Planning and construction

It was agreed to build Bismarck with a westerly view of the Elbe river for 453,000 marks - instead of the Elbe pavilion, which was approved for demolition in 1901 - on an Elbe height in the Old Elbe Park in the Hamburg ramparts above the Hamburg harbor. In 1901 a competition was held. In January 1902, the fifteen best of the 239 designs submitted were awarded a prize. Hugo Lederer and Emil Schaudt received the first prize and the commission to carry out their design, which shows Bismarck in the form of a huge Roland statue . On July 28, 1905, a team of 16 horses pulled the 1.83-meter-tall granite Bismarck head from the Ottensen freight yard to the construction site in the Old Elbe Park. The inauguration took place on June 2, 1906 after three years of construction.

The largest monument in Hamburg today, measured by its height, was already controversial back then. At first there was also no agreement on the location. As alternative building sites, the Waseberg von Blankenese with a much larger Bismarck statue (over 60 m), which was supposed to look into the Elbe stream region, or a much smaller statue either on today's Fontenay street ( Outer Alster / Alster foreland ) were briefly discussed as alternative building sites. or at the Inner Alster ( Lombard Bridge / Ballindamm).

Expansion to an air raid shelter

The cavities of the memorial were expanded into air raid shelters for up to 950 people in the war years from 1939 to 1941. They were mainly intended for passers-by, visitors to the landing stages and direct residents. Suspended ceilings and partition walls were installed with 2,000 tons of concrete. Eight honeycomb-like rooms were created inside around the 15 meter high stone drum under the statue. Stairs lead to the lower levels of the shelters. After 1941, a golden swastika was placed in the cone point of the round room. A huge eagle is painted on the wall with an oak wreath in its claws. Inside this wreath there is presumably a whitewashed swastika. In addition, there are further wall paintings in the interior, including coats of arms and a swastika as a sun wheel (see also Black Sun ) as well as quotes from Bismarck in Fraktur , taken out of context .

Repairing war damage

The substructure of the monument, which was damaged by bombs in the Second World War , was repaired by the late summer of 1950 for 50,000 marks. Until then, the former air raid shelter inside the Bismarck memorial was a welcome night shelter for homeless young people. For security reasons, the substructure is locked to the public. Individual tours for specialist audiences and media representatives have, however, been possible over and over again in recent years.

Entry in the list of monuments

On March 17, 1960, the Bismarck monument was legally registered under the number 461 in the list of monuments of the FFH. A protected status came into effect pretty much immediately after its completion and therefore planning considerations for the International Horticultural Exhibition (IGA) of 1963, which wanted to build a lookout tower in place of the Bismarck monument on the former bastion in the Old Elbpark, could be shelved. As a result of Bismarck's reassessment, the monument was cleaned in 1969. Joachim Gerhardt, the head of the monument protection office at the time, explained that the monument was "of particular artistic and cultural historical importance not only for Hamburg" and a landmark "synonymous with the Michel ".

The Hamburg Bismarck Monument can, with some restrictions, be described as a work of art of modernism .

Redevelopment

The "Hamburger Roland" in the old Elbpark, 2015

The Hamburg cultural authority is the owner of the monument . The walls of the plinth were stressed by the concrete load of the air raid protection installations, cracks appeared in the walls, there are stalactites inside, the figure tilts. Since the beginning of 2003 there have been considerations to renovate the Bismarck monument due to static problems (at that time nine centimeters incline to the total height). Renovation costs of at least 2 million euros were discussed in 2003. In June 2014 it became known that the area - d. H. Monument and old Elbpark - is being renovated for 13 million euros. 6.5 million have been approved from the federal culture budget and the other half is to be subsidized by the city of Hamburg.

The Bismarck monument has been restored for 8.9 million euros since the beginning of 2020, with the federal government bearing the majority of the costs. Hamburg is paying a further 6.3 million euros for the renovation of the Old Elbe Park, which began at the end of 2019. A museum on the history of the monument is also planned in the previously unused vault. First of all, the system was removed from soot , dust, graffiti, algae, lichen, moss and bird droppings using a low-pressure particle blasting process using hot water high-pressure cleaners .

Trivia

More Bismarck monuments in Hamburg

In Altona's old town there is a bronze statue of Bismarck on a granite base in a green area on Königstraße ( Schleepark , near Behnstraße and Heilig-Geist-Kirchhof ). The monument was created in 1898 by the sculptor Adolf Brütt . Altona, like hundreds of other cities, made Bismarck an honorary citizen on his 80th birthday in 1895 .

Another smaller Bismarck monument, created by the Hamburg sculptor Karl Garbers , is located in the Bergedorf district . It was inaugurated on October 28, 1906 and initially stood on the corner of Reinbeker Weg and Grasweg in Bergedorf. In the 1960s it was moved to its current location in the castle park of Bergedorf Castle . The monument consists of a large granite slab with a Bismarck portrait relief, which rests on three columns tapering towards the top.

On the facade of the Laeiszhof is a Bismarck statue, together with Kaiser Wilhelm I , Albrecht von Roon and Helmuth von Moltke , by Bruno Kruse , 1897/98.

literature

Web links

Commons : Bismarck Monument  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Geotopes in the administrative district of Freiburg. (PDF) In: dynamicearth.de. State Office for the Environment, accessed on April 25, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Jörg Schilling: Keep your distance. The Hamburg Bismarck Monument and the monumentality of modernity. 2006, p. 36.
  3. ↑ a b Jörg Schilling: Keeping Your Distance - The Hamburg Bismarck Monument and the Monumentality of Modernism . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0006-4 , p. 355 .
  4. ↑ Elsabea Rohrmann: Max von Schinckel - Hanseatic banker in Wilhelmine Germany. Dissertation . HWWA Institute for Economic Research - World Archive Association, Hamburg 1971, p. 189, note 844: according to Hamburger Nachrichten of August 2, 1898 , Schinckel was called the initiator - probably a sign of Schinckel's tendency to stay in the "background" as much as possible.
  5. ↑ Max v. Schinckel: Memoirs. Self-published by Hartung, Hamburg 1929, p. 448.
  6. ↑ protocol STAH, BDC, A2, volume 3, the 289th
  7. ^ Jörg Schilling (arrangement): The Bismarck Monument in Hamburg 1906-2006. Contributions to the symposium “Keep your distance”. P. 36.
  8. ^ Ekkehard Mai , Stephan Waetzoldt : Art Administration. Building and Monument Policy in the Empire. Berlin 1981, p. 281.
  9. ↑ a b Jörn Lindner: The Bismarck Monument - Colossus on hollow feet. In: under hamburg. unter-hamburg e. V., accessed April 2, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Michael Berndt: The Bismarck Monument - a virtual tour. In: Hamburger Unterwelten. Hamburger Unterwelten e. V., April 8, 2017, accessed April 2, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Friederike Ulrich: The Bismarck is leaning. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , June 19, 2013, p. 7.
  12. ↑ Jörg Schilling: Keep your distance. The Hamburg Bismarck Monument and the monumentality of modernity. 2006, p. 364.
  13. ↑ Confirmed Bismarck. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. Historical archive, No. 217 of September 16, 1950, p. 3 and Bismarck without night quarters. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. Historical Archives, No. 76 of March 30, 1950, p. 3.
  14. ^ Jörg Schilling (arrangement): The Bismarck Monument in Hamburg 1906-2006. Contributions to the symposium “Keep your distance”. 2008, pp. 121/122.
  15. ↑ Jörg Schilling: Keeping Your Distance - The Hamburg Bismarck Monument and the Monumentality of Modernism . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0006-4 , p. 337 .
  16. ↑ Jörg Schilling: Keeping Your Distance - The Hamburg Bismarck Monument and the Monumentality of Modernism . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0006-4 , p. 391 .
  17. ↑ Friederike Ulrich: The Bismarck is leaning. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. June 19, 2013, p. 7.
  18. ↑ Federal government pays 6.5 million euros for the renovation of the Bismarck monument, Abendblatt dated June 6, 2014
  19. ↑ Expert opinion on behalf of the FFH from the engineering office Grassl GmbH Repair of the Bismarck monument. 19th February 2014.
  20. ↑ Alter Elbpark Two development variants Presentation of the development and design of Landschaft GmbH from February 19, 2014
  21. ↑ rtl.de
  22. ↑ Bismarck Memorial Hamburg - address, pictures, information. Retrieved April 23, 2019 .
  23. ↑ Abendblatt.de April 2, 2020
  24. ↑ An ibex is enthroned on Hamburg's Bismarck monument . Welt Online , May 18, 2015.
  25. ^ Bismarck memorial. Art in Public Space Lübeck, accessed on December 17, 2016.
  26. ↑ Local Notes. In: Lübeckische Blätter , volume 45, number 36, edition of September 6, 1903, p. 462.
  27. ↑ List of recognized monuments of the FHH, as of April 2010 (PDF; 1.9 MB)
  28. ↑ Arthur Mennell: Bismarck monument for the German people . 1895 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  29. ↑ Andreas von Seggern: "... a particularly serious duty, especially for those from Bergedorf ..." On the Bismarck monument in the castle park. In: Lichtwark booklet , No. 70, Verlag HB-Werbung, Hamburg-Bergedorf 2005. ISSN  1862-3549
  30. ^ Statues Hither & Dither: Hamburg

Coordinates: 53 ° 32 ′ 55 ″  N , 9 ° 58 ′ 19 ″  E