Franzius bust (Bremen)
The Franzius bust is part of a monument to Ludwig Franzius (1832–1903), which was erected in 1962 in Bremen Neustadt , on Franziuseck on the Weser . The bronze portrait bust is a replica of the portrait, melted down during World War II , of the monument originally erected in 1908 on the old town side of the Great Weser Bridge .
Ludwig Franzius
Ludwig Franzius had been working in Bremen since 1875 and from 1883, as Bremen's senior construction director, was in charge of the hydraulic engineering measures of the Weser Correction (e.g. the piercing of the "long bay" near Gröpelingen), which led to the tidal wave in the North Sea reaching Bremen again so that ships with a draft of up to 5 m could reach the city. Only then did it make sense to build harbors in the west of the city in the decades around 1900, the first stages of which were also planned by Franzius.
The original monument from 1908
Already in the year of death of the now internationally known hydraulic engineering expert, a senate commission dealt with the question of the location and financing of a monument. In 1905 a place was chosen to the west of the ramp on the old town side to the Great Weser Bridge, which at that time still crossed the Weser as a continuation of the Wachtstrasse . Since a good architectural solution seemed necessary for the chosen position, an architectural competition was announced, which was won by Fritz Schumacher, who grew up in Bremen (the later important city planning director of Hamburg) and who in turn won the sculptor Georg Roemer for the design of a bust and the other sculptural jewelry brought in.
The complex, inaugurated on October 15, 1908, consisted of a large, semicircular niche made of shell limestone and decorated with putti reliefs, which opened up several steps to the old town and a semicircular room for a herm -like stele with a bust placed in the middle of the electricity builder. An inscription in capital letters read:
"Ludwig Franzius paved the way to the city for the flood."
At the back of this architecture, a distinctive staircase led down the bank wall to the river, which had been so much at the center of Franzius' life's work.
On June 6, 1942, the bronze Herme with the bust fell victim to the so-called metal donation of the German people , i.e. arms production. The structure was not destroyed until 1959, when the new administration building of the freight forwarding company Kuehne & Nagel was built on this site as part of a comprehensive urban reorganization .
The present monument from 1962
Fortunately, a plaster model or cast of the destroyed bust of the monument erected in 1908 had been preserved. So it was possible to erect a new monument in 1962, on the banks of the Weser, but on the Bremen Neustadt side , in a less prominent place and with much more modest effort. It is located on a small square now called "Franziuseck" on the Stadtwerder , near the Wilhelm-Kaisen-Brücke on the Herrlichkeit street that joins Weserstraße , opposite Hermann-Heye-Straße and not far from Franziuseck street .
On the small square on the river promenade on the river Weser facing the New Town, the replenished bust was mounted on a high, smooth stele made of natural stone. The rectangular and upwardly tapering (" truncated pyramid-shaped ") stone stele bears the following inscription in capital letters on one of the wider side surfaces:
"Ludwig / Franzius / 1832–1903 / He opened the / world shipping / the way to the city / Bremen."
literature
- Beate Mielsch: Monuments, free sculptures, fountains in Bremen. 1800–1945 (= Bremen volumes on cultural policy , volume 3). Schmalfeldt, Bremen 1980, ISBN 3-921749-16-6 , pp. 16-17, 47.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Franzius died on June 23, 1903; the Mielsch specification "1905" is a misprint.
- ↑ Illustration in Mielsch, p. 68.
Coordinates: 53 ° 4 ′ 18.1 ″ N , 8 ° 48 ′ 21.2 ″ E