Bridge Man (Bonn)

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The bridge man with original parts in the restaurant "Bonner Stuben"

The Bonner Brückenmännchen ( bönnsch : Bröckemännche ) is a stone sculpture that was attached to the right tower of the Beuel river pillar, directly above the pedestrian passage, in 1898 during the construction of Bonn's first Rhine bridge , and its buttocks stretched towards the Beuel side. The background was that the bridge was financed exclusively by Bonners because the residents of the " schäl Sick " did not want to share in the costs.

The bridge man thus represents a neighborly greeting.

The people of Beuel reciprocated with the sculpture of a nagging washerwoman , which was attached to the left tower of the Beuel river pillar. The sculpture of the female bridge showed a woman with a grim look and raised, ready-to-throw slipper in her hand.

backgrounds

The underlying reasons for the dispute were that Bonn and Beuel could not agree on the exact location of the bridge and Beuel refused to pay for this reason. The people of Beuel wanted the bridge a little further south, because that is where the center of Beuel was. However, the Bonners built the bridge as originally planned, which meant that the bridge ended on the Beuel side in the middle of the fields and there was not even an access road to the bridge at the beginning. However, an agreement was later reached. The people of Beuel created the necessary routes and also paid their share of the bridge.

After the old Rhine bridge was blown up on March 8, 1945 by German soldiers retreating from the approaching Allied combat units, the rubble of the bridge had to be cleared in the summer of 1945. During the clearing work, the male bridge fell from its base. The innkeeper Philipp Otto from Beuels “To the small museum” took it for fear of souvenir hunters and buried it in his garden at Rheinaustraße 5 (today 105). When the 125th anniversary of the Weiberfastnacht was celebrated in February 1949 , the landlord revealed his secret. Together with Mayor Reuter and representatives of the Heimatverein, the little bridge man was taken out of his hiding place. For the carnival parade , it was driven through Beuel's streets on a decorated carriage with the bridge woman.

Before the bridge man could be attached to the newly built Rhine bridge in 1949 , it had to be restored. The Bonn sculptor Jakobus Linden took over this work . After completion, he wrote a typical Rhenish invoice to the city of Bonn: "Dem Bröckemännche de Botz jeflickt" ("The trousers of the bridge man mended"). However, after assembly, the sculpture now pointed towards the bridge pillar on the Bonn side of the Rhine, instead of towards Beuel, now towards the south. After the city of Bonn had won against Frankfurt on the capital issue, the rumor arose that the sculpture had been deliberately "turned" into this position - in fact, however, it was because there was no longer any masonry above the road surface into which it could be inserted as before could have installed again.

On March 18, 1960, the bridge man was badly damaged by four young people from Beuel and was therefore no longer usable for outdoor use. A copy of the sculpture was made through fundraising campaigns and attached to the bridge. Taking into account the remains of the original sculpture, another bridge man was made and installed in the Bonn restaurant Bonner Stuben (Wilhelmstrasse 22), where it is still located today. In 1963 the Rhine bridge after was assassinated US president John F. Kennedy in Kennedy Bridge renamed.

As part of construction work on the bridge, the bridge man was dismantled from its bridge pier in 2007. The Beuel local history museum then worked with a Beuel stonemason to recreate the male and female bridges based on old original photos. In the meantime, there were male and female bridges on the Beuel side at the height of the ferry on the newly constructed flood protection wall. After the construction work was completed, both of them returned to their original places. The ceremonial unveiling of the new bridge man took place on January 19, 2008 by the Beuel washer princess during the 2008 carnival session. The bronze information boards on the male and female bridges were designed by the Königswinter artist Sigrid Wenzel .

  • The bridge man at the Kennedy Bridge

  • Replica of the male bridge in 2008

  • The female bridge on the Beuel protective wall

Bröckemännche price

The Bonn Media Club gives annually since 2000 a replica of the bridge male as a prize to people who "against the pricks man leap" (actually against the pricks man leap - balk, his unruly) and made through nonconformism, courageous behavior a name in the Bonn region to have.

Award winners

Web links

Commons : Bridge Man  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sigrid Wenzel - bronze plaques on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn-Beuel
  2. ^ Bettina Köhl: President of the Federal Audit Office awarded the Bröckemännche Prize. General-Anzeiger , October 24, 2013, accessed October 29, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Jürgen Kleikamp: Bröckemännche Prize for the "technology woman" ( Memento of the original from December 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Westdeutscher Rundfunk , July 6, 2016, accessed on July 7, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.wdr.de
  4. ↑ Carsten Schultz: Bonn Media Club: Member of the Bundestag Ulrich Kelber receives the Bröckemännche Prize . In: Kölnische Rundschau . ( rundschau-online.de [accessed on January 23, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Bonner Bröckemännche for the Beethovenfest director. State Chancellery of North Rhine-Westphalia, January 25, 2019, accessed on January 26, 2019 .