Captain Hirsch memorial
The Hauptmann-Hirsch monument , also known as the deer monument for short , is a war memorial in Dresden . Created in 1823 by the sculptor Franz Pettrich , it is reminiscent of the officer Johann Baptista Joseph Hirsch (1770–1822). The memorial was erected exactly one year after his death at the place on the Heller , where the captain of the artillery of the Saxon Army had suffered a fatal riding accident . It was later repositioned, damaged and restored in 2019 and is one of the two cultural monuments in Hellerberge .
Biographical
The Saxon officer Johann Baptista Joseph Hirsch had distinguished himself repeatedly in the wars of liberation that took place up to 1815 and received, among other things, the military Order of St. Heinrich and a promotion to captain. On October 7, 1822, Hirsch, last in command of the 1st Riding Battery, stayed at the Royal Stud in Moritzburg . On the way back to Dresden his horse shied and threw him off. His head hit a tree, got stuck in the stirrup and was dragged several meters above the Hellerboden. On the same day, Hirsch died of serious injuries in a Dresden hospital. He was buried in the old Neustädter Friedhof on October 10, 1822; his grave has not been preserved.
history
Hirsch's comrades in the artillery corps erected a memorial dedicated to him at the site of the accident on October 7, 1823, the first anniversary of the accident. The Dresden sculptor Franz Pettrich (1770–1844) created the monument, the iconographic type of which is closely related to the Moreau monument in the south of Dresden, which was created by Christian Gottlieb Kühn in 1814 based on a design by Gottlob Friedrich Thormeyer . Originally it was a large granite cuboid, resting on a truncated pyramid-shaped base made of rubble masonry and crowned with an oversized, classic helmet made of cast iron. The monument stood on an approximately four by four meter large area surrounded by a simple iron fence, which was increased by up to two rows of brick sandstone blocks compared to the initially densely wooded, then cleared and sandy surroundings from 1827. The cuboid got the following inscription:
THE
KOEN. SAECHS. HEAD
OF THE ARTILLERY CORPS
AND KNIGHT OF THE SANCT
HEINRICH ORDER
JBJ HIRSCH
OF HIS GRUDENT
ARMS BROTHERS
D. 7 OCTOBER 1822
The first location of the monument was around 100 meters northeast of the current location. It was located a few meters east of the old connection route from Dresden to Rähnitz , today's Radeburger Strasse, and around 200 meters north of today's confluence with Stauffenbergallee . The first restorations took place in 1872 and 1900. As a photo taken by Ermenegildo Antonio Donadini around 1900 shows, there was a mighty locust tree on which Captain Hirsch died.
Towards the end of the Second World War in 1945, the historically significant monument was probably badly damaged in an act of political iconoclasm directed against militarism. Among other things, the helmet was destroyed. During excavation work in the course of the four-lane expansion of Radeburger Strasse, the Hauptmann-Hirsch monument, which was already listed at that time, was buried in December 1974. On the initiative of Johannes Ziller (1909–1982), a volunteer monument conservator who lived on Hellerhofstrasse, the art historian Volker Helas from the Institute for Monument Preservation contacted the responsible construction company, whereupon the monument was recovered in 1975 and in 1976/77 at a new location on the west side of the street was placed on a sandstone plinth. The parish of the Dreikönigskirche also provided a similar helmet from the discontinued tomb of the officer Horst Robert Steiger (1830–1863) for the restoration at the time. The following inscription was added to the back of the monument:
RECOVERED
AND REALIZED
1974–1977
Johannes Ziller kept a remnant of the original helmet found in the Hellersand on his nearby residential property. The remnants of the memorial survived the last years of the GDR in this condition and were badly damaged again in 1991 by vandalism . The replacement helmet that was knocked to the ground and came from the Steiger tomb was handed over to the Monument Protection Office and has been in the lapidarium of the city of Dresden ever since . The cuboid, the material of which had flaked off on several corners and edges and whose inscription was ultimately barely legible, was in poor condition on an overgrown plot of land a bit away from the intersection, immediately south of a gas station and next to a black pine , which is a particularly protected tree and the last of its kind on the Dresdner Heller. A sign on the tree indicated the monument and its history.
Participants of the vocational training center Dresden the SRH developed after the end of 2016, an employee at the remains of the monument had become aware, after a restructuring plan and put the monument in 2018 at a personal contribution of more than 1,000 hours of work by historical models restores. In particular, they created a clay replica of the old helmet. The stone sculptor and stonemason workshop Andreas Hempel and the art foundry Gebr. Ihle carried out the work. Other sponsors were the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Saxony , the Order of St. Heinrich in Bamberg and the Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr . The sponsors made around 30,000 euros available. A new inscription drew attention to the years of restoration:
RENOV.
1872
1900
2018
The inauguration of the Hauptmann-Hirsch monument took place on October 7, 2019. An honorary formation of the Royal Saxon artillery unit and the Bundeswehr flanked the monument. SRH Managing Director Marcus von Oppen presented Dresden's 2nd Mayor Annekatrin Klepsch with the deed of donation to the City of Dresden in the presence of Prince Alexander of Saxony . The current location is 50 meters southeast of the previous one, directly next to Radeburger Straße in the Hellerberge district, near the land border to Trachenberge . On September 13, 2019, an honor salute was shot at the Königstein Fortress on the occasion of the upcoming inauguration of the monument .
literature
- The northern district of the city of Dresden, from the history of its districts. Dresden 1982.
- Dieter Miedtank, Rolf Rehe, Manfred Beyer: Disappeared monuments - destroyed - forgotten. (= Military writings of the working group Saxon military history e.V., issue 7). Dresden 2005, ISBN 3-9809520-1-0 , p. 29.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ David August Taggesell (ed.): Diary of a German citizen . Buchdruckerei Ferdinand Rühle, 1854, p. 414 ( full text in Google Book Search).
- ↑ German soldiers, hiking and drinking songs. Publishing house “Der Kamerad”, Berlin-Wannsee 1913, No. 3.
- ↑ Wolfgang Müller, Sächsische Zeitung , ed. 4th / 5th July and 11./12. July 1981.
- ↑ Klaus Brendler: Monument conservator Johannes Ziller (1909–1982). Graves in the St. Pauli cemetery. In: Neustadt-Zeitung, Dresden, December 8, 2019.
- ↑ Klaus Brendler: Brendler's stories: The "deer monument" is reminiscent of a royal Saxon artillery captain. In: pieschen-aktuell.de, Dresden, October 30, 2018. Accessed December 20, 2019.
- ↑ Laura Catoni: After mental illness: This is how the restart can succeed. In: dnn.de , Dresden, October 6, 2019. Retrieved December 20, 2019.
- ↑ 200 year old memorial brings mentally ill people back to work. Vocational training centers Dresden of SRH Berufsbildungswerk Sachsen GmbH Dresden, August 2, 2018. Accessed December 20, 2019.
- ↑ Winfried Schenk: Restored Hauptmann Hirsch monument inaugurated on Radeburger Strasse. In: pieschen-aktuell.de, Dresden, October 7, 2019. Accessed December 20, 2019.
- ↑ Hauptmann Hirsch monument inaugurated. Sachsen Fernsehen , October 7, 2019, accessed on December 6, 2019 .
- ^ Salute of honor & re-dedication of the monument for Captain Hirsch. Fortress diary, Königstein, August 28, 2019. Accessed December 20, 2019.
- ↑ A salute of honor for Captain Hirsch. Vocational training centers Dresden of SRH Berufsbildungswerk Sachsen GmbH Dresden, September 10, 2019. Accessed on December 20, 2019.
Coordinates: 51 ° 5 ′ 37.3 " N , 13 ° 44 ′ 11.9" E