Düxer Bock

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Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 4.4 "  N , 6 ° 58 ′ 38.5"  E

The monument to the Düxer Bock in Cologne

The Düxer Bock is the unofficial heraldic animal of Cologne's Deutz district . Numerous associations and initiatives use the Düxer Bock in their name, logo or as a mascot. A monument to the Düxer Bock has also stood in Deutz since 1964 and commemorates the urban legend.

Legend

There are various traditions of the legend of the Düxer Bock, the long version of which is a few pages long. The story is divided into two parts. The first part deals with a bizarre neighborhood dispute and represents the core of the story of the Düxer Bock. The second part is more conciliatory and complements the story with a love story with a happy ending. Usually there are variations in which both parts are told alternately.

part One

A long time ago a hard-working tailor lived in Deutz who had to supplement his meager wages by breeding songbirds. The songbirds sat in many small cages that hung over his window. Opposite, at Siegburger Strasse 24, lived a neighbor who was a tax collector by profession and slept very late and was disturbed by the cheerful song of the songbirds in his morning sleep. The tax collector could not convince the tailor to switch to another extra income and sued him in court. There the tax collector was defeated because the smart tailor pointed out the fact that in Cologne many families kept songbirds in front of their windows and even the judge was one of them.

The tax collector did not endure this defeat. Eventually the tax collector had the idea of ​​beating the tailor at his own gun and hung a billy goat in a large bird basket by his window. The buck was badly fed, and so his grumbling could be heard across the street. The action was very successful because people mocked the tailor everywhere he was seen and vilified him with a loud “tailor's mess”.

After 14 days the animal died and the tailor breathed a sigh of relief. But he had been happy too soon. The wealthy tax collector had a stone trestle made and had it installed over his front door. Then the tailor realized that he had come up short. The tailor offered to forego his songbirds if, in return, the stone goat was removed. But the tax collector remained tough. Eventually the tailor and his family could no longer bear the ridicule and scorn, and they left.

Part II

After the court ruling, the tailor's daughter, Gertrud, and Fritz, the tax collector's son, discovered their affection for one another. They could only meet in secret, since their fathers should not notice anything about the love. When the Deutz family left, Fritz believed he had lost his Gertrud. Many years later, when the tax collector died and the house was up for sale, the daughter secretly came back to Cologne and bought the house with the goat. She later met Fritz by chance and married her childhood sweetheart.

Historical buildings and folk customs

The story of the Düxer Bock is very old. Already in 1512 a house in the Siegburger Strasse was mentioned with the name “Im Bock”, which was called “Wirt im Bock” in 1583 and finally in 1795 “The house with the Bock picture”. The Düxer trestle made of black stone was attached over the entrance to the house. In the Middle Ages, it was a Cologne custom that a tailor's apprentice had to kiss the stone goat after passing the exam and to celebrate it three times while waving a hat.

Later a house flag was made, the so-called Düxer Bock flag . This flag symbolized via scales that a billy goat weighs more than 99 tailors. The Düx buck flag was hung up every year on the shooting festival days.

The historic building at Siegburger Strasse 24 was demolished in 1935/36. The trigger was the construction work to widen the bridge approach to the Deutz bridge , during which numerous houses had to give way. The old town area with five side streets to the Rhine, where the house used to stand, is now a meadow.

The Düxer Bock flag and the relief of the Düxer Bock are now stored in the archive of the Cologne City Museum .

The city of Cologne promised the Deutzers a new monument.

Monument Düxer Bock

As of 2016

The upcoming 500th anniversary of the St. Sebastian Schützenbrüderschaft increased the pressure on the city of Cologne to remember the promise to erect a monument to the Düxer Bock in Deutz. When designing the monument, the ideas of the Deutz citizens and the zeitgeist in the Cologne council differed somewhat. The Cologne council only approved a modern sculpture.

The memorial led the sculptor Gerhard Marcks back to the beginning of his artistic career, during which he was so successful through his early studies in the Berlin Zoo that he was initially known almost exclusively as an animal sculptor. According to the order of the Cologne Council, it shows a stylized goat. In its basic form it is a naturalistically recorded animal that "in its simplified form seems to capture the essence of the typical billy goat".

The bronze sculpture stands on a 2.50 meter high column with an implied Romanesque cube chapter. The base consists of an inconspicuous rectangular fountain.

On October 24, 1964, the inauguration ceremony took place, to which numerous clubs and a large crowd came. The fountain was placed under monument protection in 1989 and the eleven buildings around it as a whole in 1993.

Site of the monument

Weekly exam 2013.
Place "Am Düxer Bock", 2016.
Community garden buck on garden
Former restaurant, as of 2011.

The memorial was not erected at the historic location at Siegburger Strasse 24, but in a small square on Lorenzstrasse. The small square had no official name until June 2017 and was often referred to in official German as "Green area on Lorenzstrasse". Overall, like the surrounding streets, the square has few features that promote identification, although the Düxer Bock stands there.

The city of Cologne took the opportunity over the Cologne format "city laboratory for art in public space" the Austrian artist group WochenKlausur to commission. From October 21 to November 14, 2013, a "conversation container" was set up as a contact point. The landmark of Deutz den Düxer Bock was chosen as the location and the Düxer Bock was wrapped in a white mountain to draw the attention of the population to the project. During the three weeks, the artist group held more than 200 discussions with residents, businesses and stakeholders. The head of the city planning office praised the dialogical approach of the artists: "We cannot do it as a city in such a small-scale form."

As a result of the many discussions and workshops, there was on the one hand the mandatory final report with numerous suggestions for improvement to the city of Cologne. On the other hand, the artist group WochenKlausur was able to use its method, which has been refined since 1993, to provide a starting impulse for long-term local initiatives and networking. Since June 21, 2014, the “Deutz Dialog” has emerged as an informal umbrella for the various Deutz initiatives.

For the area around the Deutzer Bock, a sponsorship of the green area was created in the form of “Bock auf Garten”, an initiative for community gardens in public spaces. The fountain has also been in operation again since 2016. The city of Cologne has also set up two park benches.

On May 4, 2017, the responsible city center / Deutz district council unanimously decided to name the square “Am Düxer Bock”. The inauguration of the Platz-Schild took place on July 15, 2017.

The structural improvements suggested in the final report of the WochenKlausur and the reopening of the café on the “Am Düxer Bock” square are still open.

reception

The story of the Düxer Bock between the rich tax collector and the poor tailor was dealt with in many ways. In addition to carnival songs, poems and performances, there is also an operetta and a folk opera.

  • Performance of "D'r Düxer Bock" (for the Hänneschen Theater) by Wilhelm Schneider-Clauß.
  • Poem "Da Düxer Bock un de Schnied're" (written down by Th. Schumacher) in: Deutzer Bürgerervereinigung (Ed.): Deutz 1888 - 1988. 100 years of incorporation, pp. 206–207.

literature

  • Hubert Kruppa (2001): "The story of the Düxer Bock" in: Deutz - A Cologne district with a great history. 2nd edition, revised and expanded edition by Carl Dietmar, Bachem-Verlag, Cologne, d-nb , ISBN 3-7616-1459-4 , 103-106.
  • WH Hochscheid (1988): “Monuments in Cologne” in: Deutzer Bürgerervereinigung (Ed.): 1888 - 1988. 100 years of incorporation, Cologne 1988, pp. 138–141.
  • WH Hochscheid (1988): “The Düxer Bock. Summary of various individual sayings ”in: Deutzer Bürgerervereinigung (Ed.): Deutz 1888 - 1988. 100 years incorporation, Cologne, pp. 145–148.
  • WochenKlausur (Ed.): "Model Lorenzplatz" in: Projektwerkstatt Deutz. Suggestions for improving the Alt-Deutz district (2013), pp. 22–27, PDF 1.5 MB (accessed on October 3, 2016)

Web links

Commons : Düxer Bock  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ WH Hochscheid (1988): “The Düxer Bock. Summary of various individual sayings ”in: Deutzer Bürgerervereinigung (Ed.): Deutz 1888–1988. 100 Years of Incorporation, pp. 145–148.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Hubert Kruppa (2001): "The story of the Düxer Bock" in: Deutz - A Cologne district with a great history. 2nd edition, revised and updated by Carl Dietmar, Bachem-Verlag, Cologne, d-nb , ISBN 3-7616-1459-4 , pp. 103-106.
  3. ^ A b c d e W. H. Hochscheid (1988): “Monuments in Cologne” in: Deutzer Bürgerervereinigung (Ed.): Deutz 1888–1988. 100 Years of Incorporation, pp. 138–141.
  4. ↑ Anne Meyer (2016): “Flair as in the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis” in: Kölner Stadtreue, p. 31.
  5. ↑ Gerhard Marcks. Kulturtussi blog, February 28, 2008, accessed September 28, 2016.
  6. ↑ Kultursekretariat Nrw Gütersloh: Home. In: nrw-skulptur.de. December 1, 2014, accessed October 27, 2016 .
  7. ↑ Database for the list of monuments of the city of Cologne - search with “Lorenzstraße”, accessed on October 31, 2016. See also: List of architectural monuments in Cologne's Deutz district .
  8. ↑ ratsinformation.stadt-koeln.de / ... - Green space on Lorenzstrasse, so-called "Lorenzplätze" on Düxer Bock (accessed October 24, 2016).
  9. ↑ a b c http://www.stadt-koeln.de/leben-in-koeln/kultur/kulturfoerderung/stadtlabor-fuer-kunst-im-oefflichen-raum (accessed on October 3, 2016).
  10. ↑ http://www.wochenklausur.at/projekt.php?lang=de&id=42 (accessed on October 30, 2016)
  11. ↑ Satisfied Deutzers want to beautify their quarter: Cologne - WELT. In: welt.de . November 14, 2013, accessed October 27, 2016 .
  12. ↑ a b http://www.stadt-koeln.de/mediaasset/content/pdf41/stadtlabor/wochenklausur_vorschlaege.pdf (PDF 1.5 MB) (accessed on October 3, 2016)
  13. ↑ stadt-koeln.de / ... - "List of resolutions to be published" in: Official Journal of the City of Cologne, No. 25 of June 7, 2017, p. 225 (PDF 150 KB) (accessed on June 26, 2017 )
  14. ↑ Now the name is official. In: cdu-deutz.de. July 15, 2017, accessed October 27, 2019 .