Invalid column

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Elevation of the invalids column from the Bauwesen magazine 1853

The Invalidensäule , officially the National Warrior Monument in Invalidenpark , was a memorial for all members of the Prussian army who died in the fighting in 1848 and 1849 , surrounded by the graves of the eighteen soldiers who died in the March fighting in Berlin. The column stood in Berlin's Invalidenpark , in today's Habersaathstrasse, about 60 meters from its confluence with Scharnhorststrasse on a roundabout.

Soon after its erection, the monument was considered one of the Prussian national monuments . The property of being a place of worship for the army's deployment against the German Revolution of 1848/49 narrowed its social significance. It had never “engraved” itself in the “public consciousness” of Berlin.

Emergence

In the general mood of reconciliation after the bloody battles of March 18 and 19, the Berlin city council decided to bury all victims, insurgents and soldiers, side by side. However, the decision could not be enforced against the resistance of the lower middle class and the Prussian army leadership. On the following days, there were solemn burials of the civilian dead in the cemetery of those who fell in March and of the soldiers in the Invalidenfriedhof with great general sympathy .

A year after the March fighting, patriotic circles were missing a counterpart to the cemetery of those who died in March. Under the aegis of a private association that had been set up in the Berg and Mark territories , donations were collected for the creation of a cemetery where the dead soldiers were to be brought together and honored with a memorial, because apart from the 15 buried in the Invalidenhof, there was one officer and two soldiers individual resting places in other cemeteries. In the course of 1849, in view of the operations of the Prussian army against the revolution in Baden , the Palatinate and Saxony , as well as in the war between the German Confederation and Denmark, the idea of ​​honoring all Prussian soldiers killed in this grave developed.

The foundation stone of the monument put on 18 June 1850 the "Day of Fehrbellin and Bellealliancestraße ," King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The column was designed by Berthold Brunckow in the years 1850 to 1854 under the direction of August Soller and August Stüler built . The inauguration took place on October 18, 1854, the 41st anniversary of the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig , again in the presence of the king, who, as a donor, had settled all outstanding bills.

description

On a 5.96 meter high granite substructure rose a 33.70 meter high, triple belted cylinder made of fluted cast iron plates, which encased a forged steel cylinder. The double-walled column with a lower diameter of 2.53 meters weighed 70 tons . It had a Corinthian capital designed as a viewing platform. A cast zinc eagle spread its wings on top of it. This eagle sculpture , a symbol of Prussia and the Hohenzollern monarchy , was approximately two meters high and had a wingspan of about eight meters. It was based on a design by August Kriesmann. The platform was accessible via a spiral staircase with 189 steps inside the column, which was illuminated through openings in the belts. On the shaft of the column there were three cast zinc reliefs by Albert Wolff with symbolic motifs: Borussia comforts the bereaved and takes the weapons from the defeated; Minerva crowns one of the returning winners; the brides mourn at the tomb of the fallen. The front of the pedestal showed a large medallion with the relief portrait of Friedrich Wilhelm IV and the inscription:

"National Warrior Monument in memory of the brothers and comrades in arms who fell in 1848 and 1849, loyal to their duty for King and Fatherland law and order, erected by the Berg und Mark Support Association on June 18, 1852."

Another inscription on the column read: "The army saved the fatherland by their loyalty."

The 18 tombs were surrounded by a three-sided stone wall about five meters high, on which 38 marble tablets bore the names of the 475 fallen, and a lockable iron grate. The porter of the nearby invalids' house charged a fee for opening the monument .

destruction

The invalids' column survived the Second World War without any significant damage, but then fell victim to Berlin's post-war policy. On the occasion of the centenary of the March Revolution, the antagonisms that broke out between the SED and the other parties in the run-up to the split in Berlin were to be masked by a common commitment to break with the past and a collective return to the democratic traditions of the workers' movement and the bourgeoisie. For this purpose, the SED parliamentary group applied for the memorial to be removed at the celebratory meeting of the Berlin city council on March 18, 1948. The motion had previously been decided in the committee for popular education and a member of the bourgeois LDPD justified it by stating that the memorial was “neither a national nor a warrior memorial at all, but a memorial stone to commemorate those fighting against revolutionary fighters Soldiers killed in 1848 ”. So it came to the demolition decision, whereby the newspapers withheld the fact that the publicly proclaimed unanimity was not established, but rather unrest arose during the vote in the plenum.

Barely noticed by the public, overshadowed by the events of the split in Berlin, the currency reform and the establishment of the Airlift , the decision was made on August 14th of the same year by a construction company with a cable that tore the disabled column from its base, shattering it on the ground. Their rubble was scrapped and the cemetery complex was leveled.

literature

  • Architects Association of Berlin (ed.): Berlin and its buildings. Two parts . Ernst u. Korn, Berlin 1877, p. 101 (facsimile print of the first edition, accompanying text by Peter Güttler. Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-433-00995-3 )
  • Laurenz Demps : The Royal Invalid House in Berlin. History and development of its site . Sandstein, Dresden 2010, ISBN 3-940319-43-0
  • Jürgen Karwelat: The Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology in historical surroundings at Invalidenpark in Berlin-Mitte . 2nd edition 1999

Web links

Commons : Invalid column  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c National Warrior Memorial . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1875, Part 4, Sights, p. 170.
  2. ^ So Laurenz Demps (list of literature), p. 96
  3. ^ Rüdiger Hachtmann: Berlin 1848. A political and social history of the revolution . Dietz, Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-8012-4083-5 , pp. 214f., Also on the following
  4. ^ Paul Strauch: The Invalidenhausviertel in Berlin . Quelle and Meyer, Leipzig 1912 (= Diesterweg Foundation (Hrsg.): Berliner Heimatbücher , 3.) p. 47f.
  5. ^ Data in Berlin and its buildings (list of literature) and Demps (list of literature), pp. 93–96, construction drawings pp. 94–95, site plan pp. 150–151, always with evidence
  6. ↑ Demps (bibliography), pp. 183–185, with the quotation from the MPs given in indirect speech, p. 184

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 51 ″  N , 13 ° 22 ′ 29 ″  E