Large Dresden Stollen knife
The large Dresdner Stollenmesser was a giant knife created in the 18th century that belonged to the Wettiner court silver chamber until 1945 .
history
The stollen knife comes from the time of the Saxon Elector and King of Poland August the Strong . The art-loving and splendor-loving ruler organized numerous festivals during his reign, including the Zeithainer Lustlager , which is considered the most important baroque festival in Saxony. The festival took place from May 31 to June 28, 1730 near Zeithain near Riesa .
One of the many highlights of the festival was the presentation of a giant tunnel , weighing 1.8 tons, 18 ells long and 8 ells wide, according to historical records , which was created by the Dresden master baker Andreas Zacharias with the help of 60 baker journeyman. For this spectacle, Oberlandbaumeister Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann had specially built a furnace, from which the tunnel was brought from the Mühlberg bakery to August's warehouse with the help of a cart pulled by eight horses . The “Large Stollen Knife” created for this festival, a 1.6 meter long sterling silver kitchen utensil, was used to cut the baked goods .
After the end of the pleasure camp, the large Dresden Stollen knife was placed in the court silver chamber of the Dresden Palace , where it was one of the showpieces in the collection. The court silver chamber was located in some of the rooms directly adjacent to the Green Vault and was used to store valuable silver equipment for court parties and the kitchen area. It was housed here until the fall of the monarchy during the November Revolution and then in 1919, together with the entire Dresden art collections, became state property.
Whereabouts
As part of the contract on the disputes between the Free State of Saxony and the former royal house of July 21, 1924, the Princely House of Wettin was awarded the entire court silver chamber, including the Great Dresden Stollen Knife and the Great Cake Knife. The Wettins then moved their property to Moritzburg Castle . In the last weeks of the Second World War , these art treasures were buried or hidden by Ernst Heinrich von Sachsen and some close confidants in various depots in the Moritzburg area in order to hide them from looting and the advancing Red Army . The Great Dresden Stollen Knife has been lost since the end of the Second World War .
Replica
After 1990, the Heidelberg art and culture expert Peter Mutscheller spent more than two years researching museums, archives and libraries to find the trail of the tunnel knife. In this context, the idea arose to recreate the historical kitchen tool as a copy. After the historical copper engraving "Praise and fame of the praiseworthy bakery trade" by Elias Back, which shows a scene from the "Zeithainer Lustlager" with the portrait of the "Great Stollen Knife", and based on existing measurements, a replica of the "Great Dresden Stollen Knife from 1730" was created. Made by Saxon and Solingen handicraft businesses and presented to the public for the first time on the occasion of the 1st Dresden Stollen Festival in 1994.
The Great Dresden Stollen Knife from 1730 has also been available as a detailed, historical replica since 1994. But it now has a handy size of approx. 35 cm. The license rights for production and sales were acquired by the silverware manufacturer Koch & Bergfeld in Bremen. The versions in sterling silver, 90 g silver-plated and also with a porcelain handle from the Sächsische Porzellan-Manufaktur Dresden GmbH in Freital are manufactured there.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Hans Beschorner: Das Zeithainer Lager von 1730. in: New Archive for Saxon History and Archeology, Ed. Hubert Ermiseh, Volume 28, Dresden 1907, pp. 50 ff
- ↑ Georg Kretschmann: The silver of the Wettins. Ch. Links Verlag, 1995, ISBN 978-3861530886 .