Goethe Fountain (Ilmenau)

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The Goethe Fountain on the main path of the Ilmenau cemetery was inaugurated in honor of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1932, the 100th year after his death. The artistic design was carried out by the Bauhaus student Wilhelm Löber .

description

The fountain system. Right in front of the large basin the sign for the Goethe hiking trail (enlarged in a separate illustration).

The fountain system shows Goethe's sentence “ Die and become ” on the front of the scoop. Above it rises a stele with the expressive, expressive relief by the sculptor and ceramist Wilhelm Löber (1903–1981), who lives in the Goethe city of Ilmenau , a Weimar and Dornburg Bauhaus student and Halle master student of Gerhard Marcks .

The artist wrote in a letter to Ilmenau in 1960:

“Consciously overcome what is passing, serve the future! Surrender to the inevitable, start the new! Fight the bad, promote the good!

These mental processes, which, although developing one from the other, generally take effect one after the other, I tried to depict simultaneously in the relief of the fountain. "

The chronological sequence of what is depicted extends from the middle to the lower and then to the upper part. (See also the last illustration in section 3.) The mother of the middle section who died with her newborn child is deeply lamented by the father in the lower section. After “dying” , the person's “becoming ” impresses with the severity of the head with an accentuated chin and a gaze directed towards the future. - The three pictorial representations merge over the joints between the porphyry blocks, which emphasizes the internal connections.

Behind the scoop there is a larger and shallower water basin. The entire system was built from local porphyry . The fountain is a station on the Goethe hiking trail in Ilmenau-Stützerbach . The combination of the Goethe theme with a sculptural work in the design language of the Bauhaus is unique - at least in the case of a "kind of Goethe monument " as a listed building.

History

Goethe's last trip

Hiking trail sign on the right in front of the fountain.

To celebrate his 82nd birthday, Goethe and his two grandchildren made their 28th and last trip to the Amt of Ilmenau , the then exclave of the Weimar Grand Duchy, from August 26th to 31st, 1831 . The celebrations on August 28th with Ilmenau homage and princely congratulations from Weimar were the highlight of the varied program, which also included excursions into the surrounding area.

On September 4, 1831, Goethe wrote to his Berlin friend Zelter about these days :

“After so many years one could overlook: the permanent, the vanished. What was successful stepped forward, what failed was forgotten and forgotten. "

The fountain and the Goethe celebrations in 1931 and 1932

A century after Goethe's last birthday, the facility was put into operation as part of a festival lasting several days, although the artistic design, which was not advertised until March 1932, was still missing. In addition to the design by Wilhelm Löber, a second one with a sculpture of Goethe was submitted. The Ilmenau Welfare Committee unanimously decided on May 9, 1932 in favor of the former, which was carried out in May and June and paid in part from private donations. The inauguration of the facility took place on August 28, 1932, a highlight of the festivities for the Ilmenau end of the 1932 World Goethe Year.

The Nazi era

On March 28, 1933, an informational debate took place in the Ilmenau town hall, during which the National Socialists questioned and disapproved of the unanimous decision of the municipal welfare committee of 1932 in favor of Löber's draft. The State Commissioner appointed by the National Socialists to replace the elected mayor wrote to Wilhelm Löber at the end of May 1933 that the relief had to be removed without demanding that it be destroyed. This was preceded by a polemical evaluation from the Reich Association of Fine Artists of Germany , which considered the relief to be degenerate , and an angry, ironic response from Löber.

Ultimately, the relief above the Goethe quote was covered with boards that were painted porphyry. The function of the scoop well was retained. This compromise was apparently achieved by Eberhard Stachura, who, as a municipal construction engineer, designed the fountain system from 1931. Another, later explicitly as degenerate classified monument Wilhelm Löber had already in 1930 for the residential area Vogelweide in Halle created where he was then at the Art Academy Burg Giebichenstein the master class for sculpture by Gerhard Marcks belonged. This Walther von der Vogelweide monument was completely demolished as unsustainable after a flood of National Socialist slurs in 1937.

The well and above it the relief.

After the Second World War

The system, which had been freed from its casing, was repaired several times in the course of the post-war years. At times the leaking water basins were empty. In a newspaper article in 1991 it was said: Today the well can only be described as a functionless ruin (since there is not even more water in it). The signature on the attached photo ended with:

"... deep asleep today: the Ilmenau Goethe fountain."

In a correspondence with the Ilmenau local researcher Fritz Barth, Wilhelm Löber had promised to revise the relief and lettering, but could not do it before his death. A general renovation of the complex, which was postponed again and again, only took place in 1995. After that, the fountain was placed under monument protection and included in the Goethe hiking trail. The hiking trail sign was renewed in 2008 (see picture) with a text that goes back to the Ilmenau city walker and honorary citizen G. Lacroix and to which the Ilmenau GoetheStadtMuseum also contributed. The signage for the Goethe hiking trail was updated in 2017.

Wilhelm Löber, his teacher Gerhard Marcks and his relief

Born in 1903 in the Rhön , Wilhelm Löber came to Ilmenau in 1912, where his father had changed as a pastor. After graduating from the Goethe School in 1922 , he completed an apprenticeship as a journeyman from 1923 to 1926 at the Dornburg pottery workshop of the Bauhaus Weimar , which was headed by Gerhard Marcks . From 1923 to 1925 he also trained as a wood and stone sculptor in the Bauhaus sculpture workshop under the sculptor Josef Hartwig.

1929–1932 he was a master student of Marcks in the class for sculpture at the Halle Kunsthochschule Burg Giebichenstein . After the end of the Weimar Bauhaus in 1925, the professor accepted a call there, and from 1928 he headed this institution until he was dismissed by the National Socialists in 1933. He and his wife retired to Niehagen on the Fischland until 1945 , where the Löber couple had lived in neighboring Althagen since 1932 . (Both villages are now part of Ahrenshoop ).

Front of the well with the quote from Goethe.

The ceramist Marguerite Friedlaender , who had gone to Halle with Marcks in 1925, wrote that the “ castle ” there was a “real improvement in the idea of ​​the Bauhaus”. In his contribution “The way into the Bauhaus and back again. Gerhard Marcks und seine Kreis ” for the catalog of a Marcks exhibition, the co-editor Arie Hartog from the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus Bremen quotes Marcks' view of a letter from 1975 on the Bauhaus idea,“ that there were 2 Bauhaus houses that were little together have to do ” . One found its continuation in Dessau under the motto “Art and Technology A New Unity” (Gropius 1923). The other's idea, which had originally dominated and included an individual artistic development based on craftsmanship, was carried on in Halle, among other places.

The end of the text on the hiking trail sign at the fountain (see picture), according to which it is "one of the important monuments of the Bauhaus in Thuringia due to its relief", can also be seen in this light. Löber later wrote in his personal notes:

“The Bauhaus has shaped me fundamentally. ... Everything that I could give my students ... was taught to me by Marcks. "

Wilhelm Löber's relief above the scoop fountain.

On January 12, 1933, he wrote about a criticism of his work on the Goethebrunnen, which was passed on to him by the Ilmenau city administration. a .:

"If what the critic criticizes were really mistakes, Prof. Marcks, one of Germany's best sculptors, would not have praised the work and would not have found it very good how he did it."

In this criticism, Löber misinterprets death and assumes: Goethe did not think of the higher development of humans through successive genders, as it was ... in the sculpture. Rather, he wanted to say "that the upward striving man must come to the realization that he is not yet on the right path. Goethe lets him die figuratively, but in reality with new strength, based on previous life experiences to a higher goal strive towards. "

Löber, however, also saw this modified interpretation and wrote in connection with his draft: Whoever shies away from such striving, who cannot let the tension of the forces follow the tension, can no longer develop, he can no longer become anything ... . at the then realized closer for a cemetery version he wrote afterwards: the center of the design shows the departed mother, including the desperate, dying in pain man, about the purified by the death of man to new are focused on. This is an ancient folk motif, which was created in hundreds of reliefs, especially in German countries, in the Last Judgment of the Middle Ages. As the Löber biographer Hartmut Gill writes, the work of art was controversial from the start. It was modern and not in keeping with the conservative traditional beliefs of the general public. In addition, Goethe's poem came and continues with “the famous sentence 'Die and become!' one of his most difficult works ”. As part of the “Book of the Singer” from the “ West-Eastern Divan ” , it, according to Gert Ueding , “expresses an attitude towards life that inverts our usual ideas of life and death by making death a condition of life. “ And further: “ This: 'Die and become!' means an unheard of impertinence: the demand to really set life on it, to tremble in the fear of death so that all existence is as if dissolved ... "

"There is a serious and bitter trait in the overall work, indeed over almost every single work by the sculptor Wilhelm Löber" . This is what an extensive article by the art historian Oscar Gehrig says about him. This is particularly true of his relief representation at the Ilmenau fountain to the quote from Goethe carved in stone along the entire length of the scoop.

The reason for this portrayal of Löber was the death of his sister-in-law Ella Lüttich-Etzrodt in March 1932. This is illustrated in the “fallen asleep, desperately mourned mother” in the text on the hiking trail medallion (see picture). For the Etzrodt family, Wilhelm Löber wrote a three-page typescript "GOETHEWORTE to explain the relief at the Ilmenau Goethebrunnen" , especially "about the value of the dark side in life."

In 1932, in correspondence with the Ilmenau city administration on his draft, Wilhelm Löber commented on the Goethe quote in detail, although those depicted in the relief remained anonymous. He only shared his personal experience with family and close friends, as well as the National Socialist correspondence partners in 1933, when it came to the removal of the relief, which led to his draft submitted a few days later. The deficits in providing information to outsiders have contributed to a lack of understanding and misunderstanding.

The brochure by Kathrin Kunze (see under 5 .: Literature) and the online publication offer more detailed information. They were created in connection with an exhibition on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus foundation in 1919, in whose catalog the Goethe Fountain is also dealt with in detail.

additions

According to a letter from the Thuringian Office for the Preservation of Monuments dated June 16, 1995, the complex (parcel 878/1 of Ilmenauer Corridor 9) is listed . The fountain trough has an area of ​​0.8 m × 3.3 m and the rear basin 5 m × 6 m. The latter is stocked with goldfish and planted with water lilies during the season.

Long before the Goethe fountain in the cemetery near Ilmenau there was a "Goetheplatz mit Goethe fountain" with benches above federal road 4 in the direction of Manebach - in the forest area opposite the entrance to today's Hammergrund stadium. The facility was inaugurated in 1877 and 4 years later it was supplemented by a bronze relief image of Goethe on the masonry above the fountain. It was maintained until the middle of the 20th century, but since then has largely fallen into disrepair, as has the access from the former "Felsenkeller" along the steep slope.

literature

  • Hartmut Gill: Wilhelm Löber. From Bauhaus to Fischland and Rügen ceramics. Hinstorff, Rostock 2015, ISBN 978-3-356-01907-0 .
  • Konrad Kessler among others: Wilhelm Löber. Bauhaus student · ceramist · sculptor. Exhibition catalog. Funding group Ceramics Museum Bürgel and Dornburger Keramik-Werkstatt e. V., 2018.
  • Hartmut Gill: Wilhelm Löber. The forgotten Bauhaus student and Rügen ceramist and the "6th Bauhaus album". Exhibition catalog. Edition Schwarzdruck, Gransee 2018, ISBN 978-3-935194-88-4 .
  • Kathrin Kunze: The Bauhaus student Wilhelm Löber and the Goethe fountain in the Ilmenau cemetery. Ilmenau 2019.

Web links



Commons : Wilhelm Löber  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Hartmut Gill: Wilhelm Löber - From Bauhaus to Fischland and Rügen ceramics. Hinstorff, Rostock 2015.
  2. ^ A b Heinrich Arnold: The Bauhaus artist Wilhelm Löber and his Ilmenau Goethe fountain. 2019.
  3. ^ Heinrich Arnold: The Bauhaus artist Wilhelm Löber and his Ilmenau Goethe fountain. 2019, pp. 27–28.
  4. ^ Heinrich Arnold: The Bauhaus artist Wilhelm Löber and his Ilmenau Goethe fountain. 2019, Section 8 The Bauhaus and Goethe .
  5. ^ KR Mandelkow: Goethe's letters, Hamburg edition. 1962–1967, letter no. 1505.
  6. ↑ This balance can be traced on site by following the instructions behind the two arrows on the hiking trail sign shown below: The Goethe City Museum is located in the administrative building , where many things that have been successful and unsuccessful are documented. The latter is particularly clear at the hiking trail station at the collapsed Johannes-Schacht, to which a short junction is signposted on the way to the Middle Berggraben on Erfurter Straße.
  7. ^ Claudia Fiala: Goethe celebrations in Ilmenau. In: Preparatory Committee Goethestadt Ilmenau `99 (Ed.): Contributions to the Goethe year 1999 in Ilmenau. Editor Jürgen Apel. City administration Ilmenau, 1999, pp. 8-16.
  8. ↑ a b Right there: Bernd Frankenberger : Goethe monuments in Ilmenau. Pp. 28-34.
  9. ↑ a b c City Archives Ilmenau, file 10/925. That was the last document on this process, as all other files from the Nazi era are missing in the archive after May 1933.
  10. ^ Heinrich Arnold: The Bauhaus artist Wilhelm Löber and his Ilmenau Goethe fountain. 2019, pp. 34–36.
  11. ↑ Martina Springer: Nazis destroyed a memorial to the minstrel. Cultural barbarism. In: MZ . June 3, 2009. - This year was in connection with the Bauhaus renaissance at Giebichenstein Castle . (In: MZ. September 10, 2009) commemorates the work of Löbers on the 90th anniversary of the Weimar Bauhaus foundation.
  12. ^ Frank Schröder: Historical tombs on the Ilmenau cemetery. Part 6: Almost forgotten - the Goethe fountain. In: Free Word. (South Thuringia), August 17, 1991.
  13. ^ Günter Andrä, Jürgen Apel, Bernd Frankenberger : Ilmenau - Pictures of Memory. Ilmenau / Homburg-Saarpfalz 1991, ISBN 3-924653-11-9 , p. 131.
  14. ↑ Gedenkblatt after Löbers death in 1981 for the local "Section for local history" of the Cultural League in Ilmenau. Copy in the private archive of Bernd Frankenberger.
  15. ↑ a b c Anke Blümm et al. (Ed.): Ways out of the Bauhaus. Gerhard Marcks and his friends. Weimar 2017. Catalog of the opening exhibition for the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus in 2019.
  16. ↑ Angela Dolgner: Burg and Bauhaus - "they were related, like brothers". In: Simplicity in multiples: Berlin porcelain under the influence of the Bauhaus and Burg Giebichenstein. Berlin 2009, pp. 10-13.
  17. ↑ Matthias Ratayczyk (ed.): We're going to Halle. Marguerite Friedlaender & Gerhard Marcks. Exhibition catalog. Halle (Saale) 1918, ISBN 978-3-932962-96-7 , p. 142.
  18. ^ "An die Friedhofsverwaltung", Ilmenau City Archives No. Zo4252, C. Schöbel: receipt stamp November 26, 1932 and W. Löber: January 13, 1933.
  19. ^ Karl Otto Conrady : Goethe. Life and work. Dialogue with Hafez and a trip to the Rhine region. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2006, p. 870.
  20. ↑ Gert Ueding : Die and become! In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Ed.): 1000 German poems and their interpretations. Volume 2: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Pp. 338-341.
  21. ^ Oscar Gehrig: The sculptor Wilhelm Löber. In: Monthly Issues for Mecklenburg. 14th vol., H. 168, 1938, pp. 560-566.
  22. ↑ See the web link “Artists from the Dornenhaus Ahrenshoop”.
  23. ↑ The script is owned by Lore Müller, b. Zimmermann, from the estate of her father Albert Zimmermann. He was a youth and hiking friend of Wilhelm Löber in Ilmenau, and his brother-in-law Eberhardt Stachura had taken over the structural design of the Goethe Fountain as the town planning manager.
  24. ^ Heinrich Arnold: The Bauhaus artist Wilhelm Löber and his Ilmenau Goethe fountain. 2019, facsimile on pp. 25–27.
  25. ↑ Hartmut Gill: Wilhelm Löber - From the Bauhaus to Fischland and Rügen ceramics. Hinstorff, Rostock 2015, facsimiles on pp. 67–73.
  26. ^ Heinrich Arnold: The Bauhaus artist Wilhelm Löber and his Ilmenau Goethe fountain. 2019, pp. 27–28.
  27. ↑ Hartmut Gill: Wilhelm Löber. The forgotten Bauhaus student and Rügen ceramist and the "6th Bauhaus album". Exhibition catalog. Edition Schwarzdruck, Gransee 2018, ISBN 978-3-935194-88-4 .
  28. ↑ Reinhard Döring: The Ilmenau Promenaden. On the trail of old memorials and resting places. Ilmenau 1999.