Europe Fountain (Dresden)

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Europe Fountain (2012)

The Europe fountain with the bronze figure group Europe on the bull , made by the Dresden sculptor Georg Wrba , is located in the Dresden- Blasewitz district on Königsheimplatz .

history

After twenty years of tough negotiations between the city of Dresden and the municipality of Blasewitz, it was incorporated into Dresden on April 1, 1921. The then Lord Mayor Curt Bernhard Ottomar Blüher had to accept a number of concessions to the community. A tender by the city for a fountain on what was then Residenzstrasse at the corner of Marschallstrasse, today Loschwitzer Strasse and Händelallee, guarantee. The city council decided on this project and launched an invitation to tender, which was awarded to the professor at the Dresden Art Academy , Georg Wrba. His plans envisaged a spacious fountain system with water features and a fountain worthy of the villa village of Blasewitz.

Europe fountain on Königsheimplatz

Europe fountain before 1945

After the city council approved the drafts submitted by the academy professor, the implementation of the plans began. The base and the high basin as well as the two elongated water basins in front of the fountain were made from Pirna sandstone. The model and the negative form of the figures were created in the professor's studio. The Dresden art foundry Gebrüder Zinke took over the bronze casting from Reisewitzer Strasse. On May 5, 1921, the square was named Königsheimplatz in honor of the meritorious Saxon secret government councilor Arthur Willibald Königsheim , the reformer and founder of the Waldparkverein and the Blasewitz villa colony. And in 1922, Königsheimplatz received its dominant artistic enhancement with the inauguration of the Europe Fountain. The execution was supervised by the official building advisor Borrmann and handcrafted by the Dresden sculptor company Gebrüder Eberlein . The bronze sculpture weighing over 5 tons in the north of the complex represents Europe , a figure from Greek mythology, she is the daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor and Telephassa the lover of Zeus . In the form of a bull he carried her to his cave on the island of Crete and begat Minos , Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon with her .

Europe fountain on Königsheimplatz

The rather folk-looking fountain system with a 14-meter-long sandstone block wall, half-height on the sides, carries the monumental-looking group of figures Europe on the bronze bull in the middle . On each side of the wings, lush flower and fruit baskets form the end. On both sides of the raised plinth, the water gushed from oblong pools of four heads in an imaginative design into a multi-pointed, deeper water basin . From the overflows at the jagged tips, the water got into two parallel lower water basins to splash around. This fountain system after the forced incorporation was initially referred to as Gustel von Blasewitz, who was kidnapped by Dresden's Lord Mayor Blüher, derisively from the Blasewitzers. Luck lasted only 22 years, because when the war developed in 1944, the group of bronze figures was dismantled and transported away as a metal donation for armaments purposes.

After 1945

Although Königsheimplatz was badly hit in the bombing of Dresden in 1945 and all surrounding buildings were destroyed, the fountain system remained almost undamaged. At the beginning of the 1950s, Hans Nadler rediscovered Wrba’s sculpture “Europe on the bull” at the “ Glockenfriedhof ” in Hamburg (the warehouse of the Zinnwerke Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg ); it had not been melted down. However, it was completely crushed and could not be restored.

In the GDR , the fountain basin was subjected to an initial renovation in 1952, which, however, did not last long, as vandalism occurred again and again. A radical transformation planned in 1960 was not pursued for financial reasons. At the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the fountain system was left to decay: stone carving work was partly smashed and the water technology had meanwhile become completely unusable. In the years 1985 to 1986, after protests by the population, a laborious repair of the fountain basin began without a group of figures according to the possibilities of the shortage economy at the time , but the necessary complete reconstruction did not take place.

In 1994, the sculptural reconstruction of the system for the sandstone work was completed, the fountain basin was sealed and the water technology was renewed.

In 1995 the Dresden sculptor Lothar Janus from Bühlau created a new sculpture based on a historical model after funding from the Dussmann Foundation. This was cast by the Dresden company Gebrüder Ihle in Rabenau . Since September 22, 1995, a complete European fountain with the bronze figure group Europe on the bull has graced Königsheimplatz again.

See also

literature

  • Thomas Pöpper: In the shadow of modernity: Georg Wrba (1872–1939). Plöttnerverlag, Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-938442-67-8 .
  • Fritz Löffler : The old Dresden: history of its buildings. Seemann, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 3-86502-000-3 , p. 485.
  • Daniel Jacob: Sculpture Guide Dresden: From Aphrodite to Twin Fountains. Jacob, Freital 2010, ISBN 978-3-942098-05-2 .
  • Cornelius Gurlitt : Wrba's new fountain in Dresden-Blasewitz. In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung. Volume 42, No. 103, December 23, 1922, pp. 629–630.
  • Walter May, Werner Pampel, Hans Konrad: Architectural Guide GDR District Dresden. 1st edition. Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1979, DNB 800551532 .
  • Workers and Farmers Faculty (Weberplatz 5). In: Handbook of German Art Monuments. Dresden. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-422-03110-3 , p. 151 ff.
  • Detlef Eilfeld, Jochen Hänsch: The Dresden fountain book - water in its most beautiful form. Volume II, SV Saxonia Verlag, Dresden undated 2015, ISBN 978-3-944210-75-9 , pp. 145-149.

Web links

Commons : Europabrunnen (Dresden)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Historical views from Blasewitz.
  2. ↑ Cornelius Gurlitt : Wrba's new fountain in Dresden-Blasewitz . In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung . Volume 42, No. 103, December 23, 1922, pp. 629–630.
  3. ↑ a b Detlef Eilfeld, Jochen Hänsch: Das Dresdner Brunnenbuch. 2015, p. 147.
  4. ↑ Detlef Eilfeld, Jochen Hänsch: The Dresdner Brunnenbuch. 2015, p. 148.
  5. ^ Dresden districts - Königsheimplatz.
  6. ↑ Detlef Eilfeld, Jochen Hänsch: The Dresdner Brunnenbuch. 2015, p. 149.

Coordinates: 51 ° 3 '14.4 "  N , 13 ° 47' 10.1"  E