The Great Elector (monument on the Sparrenburg)

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The great elector

The Great Elector is a statue in honor of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm (1620–1688) on the Sparrenburg in the East Westphalian city ​​of Bielefeld, unveiled in 1900 . It is a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm II to the city of Bielefeld. It is a first installation of a work by the sculptor Fritz Schaper . It is part of the figure program that was erected between 1895 and 1901 on Berlin's Siegesallee .

Technical specifications

title The great elector
sculptor Fritz Schaper
Caster Aktiengesellschaft / formerly H. Gladenbeck & Sohn
Location Inner courtyard of the Sparrenburg
Total height of the statue 2.50 m + 2.40 m = 4.90 m
revelation August 6, 1900 by Kaiser Wilhelm II.

description

The Great Elector is depicted as the peaceful founder of the state in court costume. When it came to the costume, Schaper, the first version of which was rejected by Wilhelm II as a general, was based on the fashion of the time. He is holding gloves in his left hand while he is leaning on a stick with his right hand. He's wearing riding boots and his hat is rolled up. Standing in the courtyard of the Sparrenburg, the Great Elector looks north towards Bielefeld's city center. The statue with a height of 2.50 m stands on a granite plinth 2.40 m high: a connection cannot be determined.

The words F. SCHAPER FEC are on the hollow base. Engraved in 1899 ( Latin Fec [it] 'made it' ). On the south side of the granite plinth are the words KAISER WILHELM II - THE CITY OF BIELEFELD - 1900. The front of the plinth is adorned with a plaque with the inscription FRIEDRICH WILHELM - GROSSER KURFUERST - 1640–1688 - DOMINE, FAC ME SCIRE VIAM, - QUAM AMBULEM. ("Lord, let me know the way I will go.")

Setting up the still image

Kaiser Wilhelm planned the castle garden on Sparrenberg as the location for the statue. The cost of the memorial was 18,000 marks (1871) . With the gift, the emperor showed his gratitude for an earlier reception in Bielefeld. In 1897 he visited the institutions at that time in Bethel and received homage from the city of Bielefeld at the Sparrenburg. At the same time, the statue is intended to be a reminder to the emperor to emulate his ancestors and to remain true to his principles by continuing "undeterred in spite of all resistance [sic!] Once recognized as the right path".

The emperor described the unfinished original in a telegram as "an outstandingly successful one". It was unveiled on March 30, 1901 in Siegesallee in Berlin.

For the city of Bielefeld, the gift was “an unexpected, great joy”, which emphasized the “world historical significance” for the city and the Sparrenberg, established by the elector. The Sparrenburg had repeatedly been the residence of the Brandenburg Elector and his family in the years 1647–1668. Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg had the damage to the castle repaired after the Thirty Years War and, among other things, promoted the linen trade in Bielefeld. Friedrich Wilhelm also gave the Ravensberger Land a nickname : "Spinn- und Linnenland".

On July 19, 1899, Fritz Schaper visited the Sparrenburg to get to know its style and to determine the exact location of the statue. The sculptor was taken with the rafter castle and ordered that the statue should be cast in bronze and the pedestal should be made of granite. The corporation vorm took over the casting. H. Gladenbeck and son from Friedrichshagen near Berlin. The monument was erected in June, while the official handover by the emperor took place two months later.

revelation

In preparation for the ceremony, a special committee was formed to regulate the issue of 750 invitation cards and the arrangement of the trellis formation in the streets of Bielefeld by school children and factory workers.

Kaiser Wilhelm II. Sitting on his horse in front of the unveiled monument

On August 6, 1900, the monument was unveiled in the presence of the emperor, his wife Auguste Viktoria and the sculptor Fritz Schaper. For the celebration, the three-kilometer route was decorated with pennants and wreaths and an imperial tent was set up in the inner courtyard of the castle. The citizens of the city lined the way from Bielefeld train station to the castle. An escort from Munster cuirassiers accompanied the emperor's procession. The Empress drove in an open four-in-hand horse and behind her the Emperor rode in Garde du Corps uniform. Only invited guests who had to adhere to a dress code had access to the castle. There were also a number of people in costume at the time of the Great Elector. The imperial couple was greeted with a poem by Frida Schanz , recited by Minna Bunnemann, the daughter of the then mayor Gerhard Bunnemann (term of office 1881–1910).

At the handover speech, Kaiser Wilhelm II emphasized the long-standing loyalty of the city of Bielefeld and the Ravensbergers to the Hohenzollern and highlighted the deeds of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg. Now it is the emperor's task to continue his work and the Germans should show "that the arm of the German emperor extends to the most distant parts of the world". After these words, the memorial was freed from its shell and the German imperial hymn " Heil dir im Siegerkranz " followed. Thereupon Lord Mayor Bunnemann thanked the city for the statue of the Great Elector and praised his work for the city of Bielefeld and the Ravensberger Land. He concluded his speech with a declaration of loyalty to the emperor. Then he handed the cup of honor filled with wine to the emperor, who drank it with the words "The Count of Ravensberg the Ravensbergers". After the ceremony, a commemorative coin was placed on the cup of honor, the inscription of which contained the emperor's saying and the date. The imperial couple then went to the eastern castle wall, where an oak was planted. The offspring came from the oak planted by the then Prince Wilhelm in 1876 in the garden of the Princely House of Kassel. On this occasion, the emperor presented his former tutor, Privy Councilor Georg Ernst Hinzpeter, with the first-class order of the crown.

After the final celebrations with a parade march and music by the trombone choir, the imperial escort went to the house of Privy Councilor Hinzpeter before the court train left Bielefeld for Kassel.

painting

Painting "The Count of Ravensberg his Ravensbergers"

On the day of the unveiling, Kaiser Wilhelm II appointed the publisher Johannes Klasing to the Prussian Council of Commerce . To commemorate the unveiling of the monument, the publishing booksellers Johannes Klasing and Wilhelm Velhagen donated a painting, which the Berlin painter William Pape was commissioned to carry out . It took William Pape four years to complete the semicircular painting entitled "The Count of Ravensberg his Ravensbergers". He used a photo as a template.

Nowadays (as of May 2015) the painting adorns the Nahariya room in the old town hall , which is used as a meeting room or event space .

After the reveal

Despite the bomb damage on the Sparrenburg towards the end of World War II, when parts of the main building were destroyed, the tower and statue remained intact. On May 18, 1984, the Sparrenburg with the Kurfürstendenkmal was entered in the list of monuments of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the responsible lower monument authority rated the Sparrenburg as a "monumental building of national importance". The Bielefeld property service company is responsible for the monument. During drainage work in 2010, an underground vault was discovered under the monument, but this does not endanger the stability of the Electoral Monument. After the paving work was completed, the newly discovered vault was backfilled and is therefore not open to the public. During city tours on the subject of “High Lords close to the citizen”, interested parties are introduced to the times under the Brandenburg electors and Prussian kings as well as the visits of the emperors to Bielefeld.

literature

  • Reinhard Vogelsang: Stadtzeichen - Sculptures, monuments and fountains in Bielefeld - A documentation . Verlag für Druckgrafik Hans Gieselmann, Bielefeld 2011, ISBN 978-3-923830-79-4 , p. 247 .
  • Johannes Altenberend, Reinhard Vogelsang, Werner Best, Johannes Müller-Kissing, Stefan Eismann: Sparrenburg archaeological - The excavations 2007 to 2013 . tpk-Regionalverlag, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-936359-61-9 , p. 200 .
  • Arne Thomsen: Bielefeld as it was . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 2014, ISBN 978-3-7700-1516-0 , p. 175 .
  • Gerhard Müller: The sculptor Friedrich Schaper - honorary citizen of the city of Alsleben on the Saale . Local history association of the city of Alsleben an der Saale e. V., Alsleben 1994, DNB  943403189 , p. 42 .

Web links

Commons : Statue Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg (Bielefeld)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Bielefeld City Archives, inventory 108.2 / Magistratsbauamt, No. 434
  2. ↑ a b Bielefeld City Archives, inventory 108.2 / Magistratsbauamt, No. 94
  3. ↑ a b Bielefeld City Archives, inventory 108.7 / Hochbauamt, no.120
  4. ^ The West: (North Rhine-Westphalia, Bremen, Lower Saxony) . In: Inge Kießhauer, Rolf Kießhauer (eds.): Friedrichshagener Hefte (=  bronzes for Germany from the Gladenbeck foundries 1851 to approx. 1926 ). tape 3 . Antiquariat Brandel, Berlin-Friedrichshagen, p. 17-18 .
  5. ^ W. Fricke: The great elector on the Sparrenburg. Festschrift for the unveiling ceremony of the monument to the Great Elector on August 6, 1900 . Wilh. Knauf, Bielefeld, p. 8 .
  6. ↑ a b c Honors, public festivals and elections . In: Annual report on the status and administration of community affairs in the city of Bielefeld 1899/1900 . S. 117-120 .
  7. ↑ a b Imperial visit to Bielefeld . In: Westfälische Zeitung . August 7, 1900, p. 1 .
  8. ↑ Peter Stuckhardt: On a proud horse among subjects . In: Neue Westfälische Zeitung . August 5, 2000.
  9. ↑ Admission and usage regulations for the transfer of meeting rooms to third parties. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on September 23, 2015 ; accessed on May 12, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bielefeld.de
  10. ↑ Communication from the lower monument protection authority to the Bielefeld city archive dated May 23, 1984.
  11. ↑ vault under the electors . In: Westfalen-Blatt . April 1, 2010.
  12. ↑ Gentlemen close to the people. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 18, 2015 ; accessed on May 12, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bielefeld.de