Canossa column

Canossa column with Bismarck portrait

The Canossa Column is a monument on the Großer Burgberg, south of the town center of Bad Harzburg in the Goslar district in Lower Saxony . It stands on the summit region at 482.8  m above sea level. NN height amidst a view area that offers a sweeping view of the city and region.

description

Inscription plaque

The 19 m high monument is an undecorated obelisk made of tapered blocks on a high pedestal . This is crowned with a wide cornice ; its base stands on a three-step square staircase. On the front of the pedestal is a bronze plaque with the laurel-wreathed profile picture of Otto von Bismarck , including the year 1877. The reverse bears a stone plaque with the inscription:

WE ARE NOT GOING TO CANOSSA - REICHSTAG MEETING 14 MAY 1872.

The column is illuminated in the dark .

history

Drawing of the Canossa column, Illustrirte Zeitung , September 8, 1877

In April 1872, at the suggestion of Bismarck, the German cardinal Gustav Adolf zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst was appointed envoy of the young German Empire to the Holy See . Pope Pius IX however, refused to give his consent because Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst had been one of the opponents of the infallibility dogma at the First Vatican Council . During the heated debate about this in the Reichstag on May 14, 1872, Bismarck drew his rhetorical parallel, which later became a popular word and a memorial inscription, with the Canossa walk , the - real or tactical - self-humiliation of King Henry IV before Pope Gregory VII in January 1077 The disgruntlement was one of the triggers of Bismarck's “ Kulturkampf ” for the position and rights of the Catholic Church in the new, Prussian - Protestant- dominated, small German empire.

The 800th anniversary of Canossa fell in the middle of the most violent phase of the Kulturkampf, and the Protestant bourgeoisie developed a plan for a monument with a current reference. The ruins of the Harzburg castle , which Heinrich IV. Had built as an imperial fortress, were chosen as the location . The design should combine the memory of the historic anniversary with the function of a Bismarck monument.

The Harzburg mining director Wilhelm Castendyck was one of the most committed sponsors of the monument . The Bismarck relief was designed by Wilhelm Engelhard . The ceremonial unveiling took place on August 26, 1877. Engelhard added two flanking Valkyrie figures in 1883; they were weathered before the beginning of World War I and had to be removed.

When the region's first post-Reformation Catholic church was consecrated in Bündheim in 1880 , it was given the name of Heinrich's opponent in the investiture dispute of Pope Gregory VII.

In his novel Cécile (1886) and in private letters, Theodor Fontane referred to the Bismarck quote and the Bad Harzburg Canossa column.

In April and May 2018 the Canossa column was renovated for € 30,000, with the inscriptions being gilded. The costs are covered by private donations.

Web links

Commons : Canossa Column  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Klaus Röttger: The Canossa column (Harzburg hiking page ) , on harzburger-wanderseite.de
• Canossa, Bismarck and the column of Bad Harzburg , on harzlife.de
• Ralf-Peter Märtin : The King is kneeling ... ( Die Zeit ), July 20, 2006, on zeit.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Elevation of the Canossa column according to the German basic map (M = 1: 5,000, topographic map), Lower Saxony State Surveying Office, Ed. Georg Westermann Verlag, Braunschweig, 1976; at that time was still sea level (MSL)
2. ↑ So Röttger ; however, the drawing from 1877 already shows two winged female figures to the right and left of the column.
3. ↑ Chapter 20
4. ↑ Peter Sprengel : "We're not going to Canossa!" Motifs for cultural struggle in Fontanes Cécile . In: Hanna Delf von Wolzüge (ed.): Theodor Fontane. At the end of the century , Würzburg 2000, pp. 61–72
5. ^ Canossa pillar is being renovated , goslarsche.de, April 11, 2018

Coordinates: 51 ° 52 ′ 19.1 ″  N , 10 ° 33 ′ 58.6 ″  E