House of the Chimes

House of the Glockenspiel, semicircular left in the corner of the tower, in which the figure panels appear in the 3rd segment from above

The house of the glockenspiel in Bremen's Böttcherstraße is known for its glockenspiel made from Meissen porcelain bells and the wooden panels in a rotating part of the tower designed by Bernhard Hoetger . It has been a listed building since 1973.

history

The Bremen coffee merchant Ludwig Roselius had two old warehouses remodeled for Bremen-Amerika-Bank by architects Eduard Scotland and Alfred Runge from 1922 to 1924 as part of the redesign of Böttcherstrasse . This bank was the house and commercial bank of the HAG group until after the Second World War .

Today the building houses the archive and administration of Böttcherstraße GmbH , the film art theater Atlantis as well as offices and shops.

Carillon

Bells from 1934, gold-plated inside

The carillon between the gables of the house was inaugurated in May 1934. It consisted of 30 Meißner porcelain bells , which were blue on the outside and gold-plated on the inside. They were up to 210 millimeters in size and up to 160 millimeters in diameter. On the outside, on the white edge, on one side the Meissen underglaze porcelain mark (the crossed swords without pommel with or without a point between the blades) and on the other side on the glaze in gold the name of the clay , den generated the bell (e.g. F sharp). A painter's mark was affixed to the top of the bell, between the feet of the suspension bracket: once again the crossed swords from the Meissen porcelain factory.

The combination of the carillon with a rotating tower segment, which is located between the house of the carillon and the right-angled Roselius house , was unique at the time . Ten carved and colored wooden panels with scenes of famous ocean conquerors rotate to the sound of the carillon . The panels were designed by Bernhard Hoetger and carved by Victor Kopytko. With this order, Ludwig Roselius once again wanted to “set a monument to the pioneering spirit and drive of mankind”.

The system had a paper roller control , was the third really playable carillon in 1934 and the only one that was installed in the open air without a surrounding sound box . All other games are installed in towers, bay windows or similar structures.

The second carillon

After the partial destruction - only seven bells survived the Second World War - the second carillon was installed in 1954. In contrast to the first bells, pure white bells were now installed. The new carillon was hung in the old copper tendrils, which could be restored in its original form.

In the 1960s, during the game, a bell rang off and smashed on the floor. Nobody was injured, but not a single piece of porcelain could be recovered, the souvenir hunters had done a great job. Back then it was almost impossible to reorder a Meißen bell. The replacement bell that was procured after a few years did not fit into the game in terms of sound and the solution to some technical problems had not yet been found in order to achieve a perfect sound of the bells.

Four different melodies sounded three times a day ( Christmas carols then in the Advent season ): On sailors, their anchor hoisted , rain fell over Bremen (composer Ludwig Roselius ), lullaby on the coast (composer Ludwig Roselius) and on the Weser , the Weserlied. The composer Ludwig Roselius was a relative of the coffee merchant of the same name.

The third carillon

The carillon between the gables

Today's carillon (top three rows)

Bell from 1991

After a shutdown in 1990 and extensive restoration, including the wooden panels, the plant was put back into operation in 1991. This third carillon - also with 30 Meißen porcelain bells - was developed by the company Turmuhrenbau Ferner in Meißen , had a computer control and could also be played on a keyboard .

On March 25, 2000, on the occasion of the completed renovation of Böttcherstrasse, the original F sharp 1 bell of the glockenspiel from 1954 was auctioned in the American style.

The glockenspiel was overhauled in 2002 and received new control electronics at the beginning of 2009 ( Turmuhrenbau Ferner ). The system can now be completely remote-controlled, can be connected to musical instruments via radio and enables new pieces to be played.

Playing times (in case of frost, the system is automatically switched off):

January 1 - March 31 at 12 noon, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
April 1st - December 31st between 12:00 and 18:00 every hour on the hour

With the strike of Westminster , the carillon begins on the hour ( 12 p.m. ^?^/^I ). The following melodies have been played to the rotating picture panels since October 13, 1990 ( 10 melodies (8:26) ^?^/^I ):

Up, sailors, the anchor hoisted (folk song)
Helmsman, leave the watch ( Richard Wagner )
Nordic Sea Song ( Carl Loewe )
Funny sailor song (folk song)
Weserlied (Pressel)
If I were a bird ( Johannes Brahms )
Thoughts are free (folk song)
Roland, der Ries', at the town hall of Bremen (folk song)
We want to go out on land (folk song)
The great longing (blacks)

The voicing of the carillon - including five Christmas carols - was done by Professor Schwarze from Dresden. The carillon comprises 30 tones in two and a half octaves .

Figurative panels "Ocean Conquerors"

Well-known ocean sailors are depicted on the ten wooden panels rotating to the carillon - from the Vikings to the flight of the Bremen in 1928 and the airship pioneers.

Leif Eriksson (around 975), Icelandic explorer, and Thorfinn Karlsefni (around 1010), Icelandic navigator and trader

Didrik Pining (around 1428), German navigator, and Hans Pothorst , German explorer of the 15th century

Christoph Columbus (~ 1451–1506), to whom the discovery of America is ascribed

Robert Fulton (1765–1815), American engineer, built the first serviceable steamships and the Nautilus submarine

Captain König (1887–1933), captain of the North German Lloyd , 1916 first Atlantic crossing with a submarine (unarmed commercial submarine)

Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown and Capitain Alcock , pilots, first non-stop flight across the Atlantic in 1919; Major and engineer George Herbert Scott , British airship pilot , first airship Atlantic crossing in 1919

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974), first solo crossing of the Atlantic from New York to Paris

Captain Hermann Köhl , Colonel James C. Fitzmaurice , Ehrenfried Günther Freiherr von Hünefeld , first crossing of the Atlantic in an east-west direction with a motorized airplane

Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin , Hugo Eckener : Airship designers

Earth, moon, stars and space as well as a hand and footprints and the text: Leif Erikson: “You only know knowledge. You do not know the instinct, hot will, which first gives birth to knowledge ”.