Blinker Monument Jena
The Blinker Monument is a memorial on the Landgrafen-Berg in Jena in memory of the German Blinker who fell in World War I and belonged to the intelligence force .
history
Established in 1921
The monument, classified as a national monument, was erected on the initiative of the Association of German Blinkers, Jena local group, in honor of their comrades who died in World War I. The blinkers had the task of relaying military messages using blinkers. They had their training in Jena on Zeiss machines, and their practice area was near the “Landgrave”, around the 363 meter high and bare Windknollen mountain. From there you had a wide view of the country and appropriate optical communication options. Most of the indicators came from Jena, Apolda and the surrounding area. The design for the monument came from the architects Schreiter & Schlag , which also designed the planetarium and the homesteads in Jena. The master mason Carl Gretscher took on the execution in limestone. The inauguration of the monument took place on May 29, 1921 in a big celebration. 180 former blinkers and numerous spectators had appeared, patriotic speeches were given, the Jena men's choir accompanied the event, and a clergyman carried out the consecration. The cube-shaped limestone memorial under an oversized steel helmet showed a large iron cross on the front and back, oak leaves on the sides and the inscription: "1914 - Our Heroes - 1918. The German Blinkers".
The monument after 1945
After the surrender of the Wehrmacht and the end of the war, the monument was demilitarized: the steel helmet dome was alienated, the iron cross, oak leaves and inscriptions were removed. The intended purpose of the remaining stone block was no longer recognizable. The war memorial on the edge of a Soviet military training area fell into disrepair over the decades, was overgrown by undergrowth and was completely forgotten.
The Reservistenkameradschaft Jena pursued the goal of making the monument accessible again and to restore it to a simplified form after the turn. Although it was not on the official list of monuments, “Jenakultur”, a company owned by the city of Jena, financially supported the reconstruction of the Blinkerdenkmal as “important in terms of urban history”. The condition was that this had to be done in a demilitarized form, i.e. without a steel helmet, iron cross, oak leaves and with an abbreviated inscription in reserved form: "The German blinkers".
From March 2009 onwards, the comradeship and the youth working group of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge carried out a series of work assignments . The remains of the monument were cut out of the undergrowth and waste was removed from the area. A logistics battalion of the Bundeswehr from Paderborn provided support with the further work. The Camburg stonemason company Holger Schöne took over the reconstruction of the monument .
On 17 November 2009, was re-inauguration of the renovated monument indicators take place. In the presence of Mayor Frank Schenker , representatives of "Jenakultur", the stonemason, the reservist comradeship Jena and the public. The reservist comradeship also donated two Serbian spruce trees and sponsored the monument, including its maintenance.
Three years after its restoration, the approximately four-meter-high monument was sprayed with red paint over a large area by strangers. It is assumed that (similar to the attack on the fraternity monument ) a converted fire extinguisher was used.
literature
- Körbs, Michael / Voigt, Immanuel: Blinker - Between forgetting and rediscovery. Optical telegraphy and signalists from 1880 to 1918. Florian Görmar Verlag, Jena 2017, ISBN 978-3-00-055258-8
- Müller, E.Fr .: The blinker in the world war . Panse, Weimar 1936
- Voigt, Immanuel: The blinker monument of the field signal troops of the First World War in Jena. Heritage and culture of remembrance in dissent , in: Zeitschrift für Thüringische Geschichte (68) 2014, pp. 297–312
- Voigt, Immanuel: Jena as the stronghold of the "blinkers" . 07 The city magazine for Jena and the region. Edition 66, May 2015, pp. 14–16 online edition (PDF; 15.2 MB)
- Matthias Eichardt: Flashing signals on the Landgrave. The indicators in Jena . 07 The city magazine for Jena and the region. Issue 27, June 2011, p. 16f. Online edition (PDF; 15.6 MB)
- Restored blinker monument inaugurated on the Landgrave . Thüringer Allgemeine, Jena local section, November 18, 2009, online edition
Web links
- Report from CampusTV at the monument. Retrieved November 3, 2015 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Again the color of the blinker monument in Jena - Jena | OTZ. In: jena.otz.de. Retrieved January 30, 2013 .
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 24 ″ N , 11 ° 34 ′ 40.4 ″ E