Gustav Adolf Monument (Lützen)
The Gustav Adolf Monument near Lützen is part of a memorial that is intended to commemorate the Swedish King Gustav Adolf , who died here in the Battle of Lützen in 1632. Originally it consisted only of a boulder made of granite , which was set after the battle at the place where Gustav Adolf's body was found. In 1833 Karl Friedrich Schinkel designed a cast iron canopy , which was made in 1837 and has covered the stone ever since.
background
On November 16, 1632, King Gustav Adolf fell in the battle of Lützen. Around noon he had left his right wing with a regiment of Småländer to support his beleaguered deputy Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar on the left . He was moving west by the shortest route between the front lines. In the fog the nearsighted king came close to the enemy lines, from where he was spotted and received a musket shot in the left arm so that he could no longer control his white horse. He asked his companion, Franz Albrecht von Sachsen-Lauenburg , to get him out of the turmoil. Drifting helplessly, they met a swarm of imperial cuirassiers who killed the king with pistol shots in the back and stabs. Gustav Adolf was personally known to one of these cuirassiers, Moritz von Falkenberg, because he had been released from captivity by the king shortly before. He was the first to shoot Gustav Adolf from about six meters away with a pistol in the back, under the right shoulder blade.
The bullet penetrated the lungs, the king fell from the saddle and was then dragged along by his horse with one foot hanging in the stirrup. Gustav Adolf, who was ultimately left lying on the ground , was inflicted many more stab wounds by the imperial cuirassiers - also with armored stabs. Most recently he had been shot in the head, his tunic and boots had been removed, and his signet ring, gold chain and watch had been stolen. Grotesquely, the imperial soldiers involved did not know that they had left the body of the Swedish king behind, because Falkenberg had also been shot in the fray by Wolf Sigmund von Lüchau, stable master of Franz Albrecht von Sachsen-Lauenburg. While Franz Albrecht was able to escape, the looted and half-undressed corpse remained in the field. It was around one in the afternoon. The battle raged on into the darkness.
The dead king was only rescued from the battlefield by Swedish soldiers late in the evening, brought to the church of Meuchen and then to Weißenfels to today's escort house , where he was embalmed for onward transport to Sweden. He lies there in a marble sarcophagus in Stockholm's Riddarholmskyrkan .
History of the monument
The king enjoyed high recognition in the Protestant states of Brandenburg and Saxony , as he belonged to the same denomination. At the place where his body was found after the battle, a granite boulder was later set in memory of him, the Swedish stone . After the Congress of Vienna , Lützen came to the Kingdom of Prussia in 1815 . On the upcoming 200th anniversary of Gustav Adolf's death, the Lützen magistrate decided to build a chapel over the Schwedenstein. For this purpose, a citizens' association had already been founded, which set up a fund for the construction of a monument.
However, the Prussian Crown Prince and later King Friedrich Wilhelm IV took over the project and made sketches himself. He also commissioned Karl Friedrich Schinkel to submit a draft. Initially, massive architecture was considered, but Schinkel suggested an open iron monument, a canopy with an apse . Schinkel's design was ultimately carried out without the apse. The monument was unveiled on November 16, 1837, the 205th anniversary of Gustav Adolf's death. At the request of the Prussian King, the Prussian War Minister Gustav von Rauch ordered a war invalid to be guarded.
A chapel was added to the memorial in 1907, donated by the Swedish consul Oscar Ekman (1812–1907) and his wife Maria Ekman (1846–1915). In 1931, on the initiative of the Gothenburg pastor Per Pehrsson (1867–1953), the Stiftelsen Lützenfonden (Lützenstiftung) was founded, based in Gothenburg, which took over the maintenance of the entire memorial from 1932 to the mid-1990s. In 1932 and 1982 two Swedish wooden houses from the Dalarna region were added, one of which is a small museum. The Swedish administrator who looked after the facility on site was not allowed to re-enter the GDR after a home leave in 1961. However, since the East German state was interested in good relations with the non-aligned Sweden in terms of foreign policy, it subsequently contributed financially to maintaining the memorial. With around 40,000 visitors a year, the Gustav Adolf Memorial was one of the most visited private museums in the GDR.
On the 350th anniversary of the battle, a ceremony took place in 1982, at which the bishop of the Evangelical Church Province of Saxony Werner Krusche , the archbishop of Uppsala Olof Sundby , the Swedish marshal Sten Rudholm , Ernst Sommerlath (the uncle of Queen Silvia of Sweden ), Swedish and Finnish officers, bishops and pastors as well as many other guests from Sweden attended. The memorial has been operated jointly by Stiftelsen Lützenfonden and the city of Lützen since the 1990s. The anniversary of Gustav Adolf's death is celebrated annually on November 6th.
Structural execution
The components were cast in the art foundry in Lauchhammer . The canopy rises on a U-shaped, three-tier sandstone plinth that is open to the northwest and encloses the Swedish stone. Four bundle pillars with pinnacles carry the iron canopy, which consists of four circular arches and a ribbed vault with a tabernacle attached , which is supported by the pillars by means of four buttress arches . The pillars are decorated with finials and crabs . The helmet with a cross sits at the highest point .
Artistic evaluation
Schinkel no longer used this filigree, Gothic-looking formal language in his late work as consistently as in his earlier ironwork. The Gustav-Adolf-Monument can be found antique style elements as well as Renaissance- like allusions. In the opinion of the critics, it appears rigid, although it is light and at the same time serious architecture. Gustav Adolf was never the subject of the ideological disputes of the 20th century, so the monument has remained almost intact over time. In 1978 it was restored, although some details were lost.
literature
- Günther Arndt: The Gustav Adolf memorial near Lützen. Leipzig 1992.
- Hartmut Mai, Kurt Schneider: The town church of St. Viti and the Gustav Adolf memorial in Lützen. Union-Verlag, Berlin 1981.
- Maik Reichel : Gustav Adolf memorials in Lützen and Weißenfels. 3rd edition, Lützen 2009.
- Inger Schubert, Lennart Limberg: Sweden and Lützen in the 20th Century. Chapel, Reich Association and Lützen Foundation. In: Maik Reichel u. a. (Ed.): Gustav Adolf, King of Sweden. The power of memory 1632–2007. Pp. 159-166.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Eduard Philippi: The death of Gustav Adolph, King of Sweden, in the battle of Lützen on November 16, 1632. In memory of the second secular celebration. Carl Heinrich Reclam, Leipzig 1832.
- ^ Andreas Bernhard: Karl Friedrich Schinkel - Guide to his buildings. Volume II, Munich / Berlin 2008, p. 52.
- ↑ a b Nina Fehrlen: The conception of the "Schwedenstraße" as a German-Swedish memorial of the Thirty Years' War. In: Janina Fuge u. a .: memory spaces. Images of history and cultures of remembrance in Northern Germany. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2014, pp. 385–404, on p. 400.
- ↑ Marlies Menge: The GDR and the Battle of Lützen - A King of Sweden is celebrated. In: Die Zeit , No. 46/1982, November 12, 1982.
- ^ Andreas Bernhard: Karl Friedrich Schinkel - Guide to his buildings. Volume II, Munich / Berlin 2008, p. 53.
- ^ Hilbert Ibbeken, Elke Blauert (ed.): Karl Friedrich Schinkel - the architectural work today. Stuttgart / London 2001, p. 325 f.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 16 ′ 4.4 " N , 12 ° 9 ′ 23.7" E