Kaiser Wilhelm National Monument

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Kaiser Wilhelm National Monument at the Schloss Freiheit , around 1900

The Kaiser Wilhelm national monument at the Berlin Schloßfreiheit recalled the German Kaiser Wilhelm I . Erected in the years 1895–1897 by Reinhold Begas and Gustav Halmhuber in the neo-baroque style , it was one of the main works of the Berlin School of Sculpture . After the Second World War , the largely intact national monument was destroyed on the orders of the SED leadership in 1950 . Three figures have been preserved, which are set up in the Märkisches Museum and Tierpark Berlin , as well as the base on which the controversial Freedom and Unity Monument is to be built in the form of an accessible bowl.

Competitions and intervention of the emperor

Site plan of the national monument
Berlin Palace and Kaiser Wilhelm National Monument, around 1900

After the death of Wilhelm I in the three emperor year of 1888, an open competition was announced in 1889 for the construction of a central national monument in his honor on the Schlossplatz in Berlin . The first competition, in which the architect Bruno Schmitz succeeded with the design of an “Imperial Forum”, did not bring the desired success. In 1891, for example, a second, limited invitation to tender was sent to eight selected artists. The west side of the Schloßfreiheit on the bank of the Spree Canal opposite the Eosander portal of the city ​​palace was set as the monument site .

When it became known that - probably due to an intervention by Kaiser Wilhelm II - Reinhold Begas and Wilhelm von Rümann , who mainly worked in Munich, were to be involved in addition to these eight artists , half of the artists withdrew from the competition. As expected, Begas, who was highly valued by the emperor, won the first prize and carried out the memorial with his students and young sculptors he sponsored . The architectural part of the complex was designed by the Stuttgart architect Gustav Halmhuber , who prevailed against the court building officer Ernst von Ihne with his rival design developed in collaboration with Begas . The shape and dimensions of the framing colonnades on the Spree Canal were adapted by Halmhuber to the Eosander portal and the palace dome.

In June 1894 construction work began with the demolition of the row of houses on the Schloßfreiheit . The foundation stone was laid on August 18, 1895, the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Gravelotte , and the monument was erected on March 22, 1897 in the presence of many guests of honor as part of the ten-day centenary of Emperor Wilhelm I (so-called centenary celebration , see also the centenary medal ) revealed. The construction costs of four million marks were a considerable amount compared to the old town house built a few years later in Berlin with construction costs of seven million marks.

Description of the monument complex

Equestrian statue of Wilhelm I with Viktoria , before the installation (for size comparison see person below left)
Photochromic print of the national monument, around 1900
Detailed view of the equestrian statue, around 1900

The center of the 21 meter high monument was the 9 meter high equestrian statue of the emperor, accompanied on the left by a female genius of peace. The alignment of the equestrian monument of the first German emperor in the axis of the Eosander portal (portal III), the main portal of the city palace, followed in a heightened manner the tradition of the equestrian monuments erected around the Berlin palace. The monument to the Great Elector on the Kurfürstenbrücke was oriented towards Portal I, and the monument to Friedrich Wilhelm III. in the pleasure garden referred to portal IV.

The bronze base, at the corners of which four goddesses of victory floated on balls, bore the inscription Wilhelm the Great, German Emperor, King of Prussia 1861–1888 on the front and the German people out of gratitude and true love on the back . On the granite steps of the substructure lay a colossal statue of war to the north and one of peace to the south, created by Eugen Boermel . On the four protruding corners, four lions guarded victory trophies . The rear part of the monument was accessible from the Spree Canal from the north. There is a jetty that is still preserved today, which was probably used for barges. Apart from a few ventilation shafts, there are no other entrances from the pier to the vault.

The entire monument complex stood on a raised substructure made of polished red Wirbogranit from Sweden. This “elevated fairground around the rider” could be reached via nine steps from the sidewalk and was “suitable for national festivals of all kinds”.

The equestrian statue was framed on the three sides facing away from the castle by a sandstone hall formed by coupled Ionic columns, which was closed at the ends by two corner pavilions. In order to emphasize "the terraced rise of the square" even more, the hall was raised again by four steps. The open and light construction of the hall, only the corners were more massive, enabled a good view of the rider and the castle from all sides. The floor of the hall was covered by a splendid mosaic floor, “which in its colored effect contrasts with the simple but noble sandstone color of the architecture and the sculptures”.

On the front ledge, four groups of figures embodied the kingdoms of Prussia (from Peter Christian Breuer ), Bavaria (from August Gaul ), Saxony (from August Kraus ) and Württemberg (from Peter Christian Breuer). The four groups on the back facing the Spree represented trade and shipping (by Ludwig Cauer ), art (by Hermann Hidding ), science (by Karl Begas) and agriculture and industry (by Ludwig Cauer). The southern corner pavilion was crowned by the bronze one Viergespann of Bavaria , the work of Carl Hans Bernewitz . The counterpart on the northern corner pavilion, the four-team from Borussia, was created by Johannes Götz .

reviews

After the unveiling, the Kaiser Wilhelm National Monument was rated differently. The art historian Alfred Gotthold Meyer praised it:

“If you take the sum, this imperial monument is the highest achievement that Begassian artistry could ever achieve in this task. […] A unique work has been created, in its entirety the most grandiose prince monument of our time, internally organic in all its parts, and in these themselves it shows a skill that probably no other German sculptor of the present has. "

For Victor Laverrenz , who published Die Denkmäler Berlins und der Volkswitz in 1900 , the imposing monument complex was a particularly daunting example of the bad habit of some sculptors and clients to add all sorts of useless accessories to an artistically good statue: in addition to the emperor and his horse “19 half-naked women, 22 ditto men and 12 ditto children. The actual zoology, however, is represented as follows: 21 horses, 2 oxen, 8 sheep, 4 lions, 16 bats, 6 mice, 1 squirrel, 10 pigeons, 2 ravens, 2 eagles, 16 owls, 1 kingfisher, 32 lizards, 18 snakes, 1 carp, 1 frog, 16 crabs, a total of 157 animals. ”Disrespectful Berliners therefore also called the monument the Wilhelm zwo zoo , while others scoff at the monument as Wilhelm in the lions' den . The latter alluded to the compositional appeal of the central figure in a semicircle to the painting Daniel in the Lions' Den by Briton Rivière, which was then just being reproduced across Europe .

In the history of the sculptures with the direct influence of Kaiser Wilhelm II. And his neo-baroque forms is the main work of the sculptor Reinhold Begas for the memorial culture of Wilhelmine , along with the Victory Boulevard and the original front of the Reichstag building erected Bismarck Memorial .

History up to the demolition in 1950

Demolition of the national monument during the GDR era, 1950

The memorial was partially damaged during the fighting of the November Revolution in 1918. In the ensuing debate, however, a majority decided in favor of rebuilding and against demolition. During the Nazi era there were plans to demolish the monument complex for a new Reichsbank building. The monument survived the Second World War without major damage (see pictures by Bodo Rollka / Klaus-Dieter Wille, see below). In the winter of 1949/50, however, the SED had the monument removed down to its base. The demolition was purely politically motivated, as was the case a short time later with the Berlin City Palace . The base can still be found today on the south-western edge of the Schlossplatz and is a listed building. The base floor is partially decorated with mosaics, which are now protected from the weather by an asphalt layer. In the subterranean vaults of the base, artists exhibit their light art works, which can be viewed at irregular intervals at your own risk via the steep ladder of an inspection shaft.

From the actual memorial there are still two groups of lions (two figures each), which, freed from the trophies, were relocated in a different formation and function in front of the predator house in Berlin Zoo . There is also one of August Gaul's eagle figures , which is owned by the Märkisches Museum and has been exhibited there in the courtyard since 2013. The remaining plastic parts of the monument were destroyed.

A bronze model of the Kaiser Wilhelm National Monument is in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe .

  • Bronze lions in front of the Alfred Brehm House in Berlin Zoo

  • Bronze eagle on the facade of the Märkisches Museum

  • Base of the national monument on the Spree Canal

  • Vault inside the national monument

future

Planned freedom and unity monument on the base of the national monument

According to resolutions of the Bundestag, the freedom and unity monument planned by the Milla & Partner office in the form of an accessible shell is to be built on the base of the Kaiser Wilhelm National Monument, which is controversial with regard to the location, design, monument and nature protection.

As an alternative, art historian Peter Stephan suggests reconstructing the original colonnades designed by the architect Gustav Halmhuber as a structural link between the palace and Museum Island , which, according to a survey by Infratest dimap, is also supported by 43% of Germans and 58% of Berliners.

See also

literature

  • Herbert Schwenk: Pathos and art in ore and stone . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 3, 1997, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 21–28 ( luise-berlin.de ).
  • Bodo Rollka, Klaus-Dieter Wille: The Berlin City Palace. History and Destruction , with an afterthought by Wolf Jobst Siedler . 2nd ext. Edition. 1993, ISBN 3-7759-0302-X (including pictures of the demolition of the monument).
  • Alfred Gotthold Meyer: Reinhold Begas , from the series: Artist Monographs , edited by H. Knackfuß, Berlin and Leipzig, 1897.
  • Reinhard Alings: Monument and Nation. The image of the nation state in the medium of the monument - the relationship between nation and state in the German Empire 1871–1918 . Berlin / New York 1996, here v. a. Pp. 105–128 and 212–223 (= contributions to the history of communication, 4).
  • Alfred Kerr : Where is Berlin? - Letters from the imperial capital 1895–1900 . Berlin 1997, pp. 253-258.
  • Eger: The foundation work for the construction of the national monument for Kaiser Wilhelm I at the Schloß Freiheit in Berlin . In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung , year 16 (1896), pp. 373–375 and 386–389. Digitized
  • Peter Bloch , Waldemar Grzimek : Classic Berlin. The Berlin School of Sculpture in the nineteenth century. Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 1978, ISBN 978-3-549-06631-7 , p. 168 ff.
  • Gustav Klitscher: The centenary in Berlin . In: The Gazebo . Issue 16, 1897, pp. 268–271 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Commons : Kaiser-Wilhelm-Nationaldenkmal  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Law concerning the preparatory work for the national monument of Kaiser Wilhelm I (1888)  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The monuments around the Berlin Palace (PDF) Gesellschaft Berliner Schloss e. V., portal historisches-stadtschloss.de ; accessed on May 31, 2014
  2. ^ A b c Architects Association of Berlin and Association of Berlin Architects [editor]: Berlin and his buildings , Volume II, Verlag Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1896, page 36ff.
  3. ^ Alfred Gotthold Meyer: Reinhold Begas . Velhangen & Klasing, Bielefeld / Leipzig 1901, p. 124 .
  4. ↑ Painting Daniel in the Lions' Den by Briton Rivière (version 1892; there was a forerunner as early as 1872)
  5. ↑ Gerhart Dörge: A proposal for the Werderschen market. Deutsche Bauzeitung, year 1935, issue 42.
  6. ^ Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin: The Restoration of the Eagle by August Gaul ( Memento from March 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.2 MB), accessed on January 11, 2013
  7. ↑ Peter Bloch, Waldemar Grzimek: The classic Berlin. The Berlin School of Sculpture in the nineteenth century. Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 1978, ISBN 978-3-549-06631-7 , pp. 168 ff .
  8. ↑ Peter Stephan: Virchow Colonnades instead of Wilhelm Monument. A new option for the Berlin Palace Freedom. In: Journal of the Baukammer Berlin. Issue 1/2018, pp. 17–33; baukammerberlin.de (PDF).
  9. ^ Rainer Haubrich: Current survey: Only 16 percent of citizens want the single seesaw . Welt Online , May 28, 2017; accessed on December 15, 2018.
Buildings of the Berlin Schloßplatz


Existing

Dom  • Liebknecht Bridge  • Lustgarten  • stables  • Rathausbrücke  • Schleusenbrücke  • Schloßbrücke  • Staatsratsgebäude

Former

Eagle Column  • Humboldt Box  • Kaiser Wilhelm National Monument  • Neptune Fountain  • Prince of Orange  • Palace of the Republic  • Equestrian statue of the Great Elector  • Equestrian statue of Friedrich Wilhelm III.  • Horse tamer  • Lock  • Freedom of lock

Under construction

Humboldt Forum

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 59 ″  N , 13 ° 24 ′ 0 ″  E