Congressional Memorial

Rose garden of the city garden

The Congress monument is on the Monarch Congress 1818 in Aachen reminiscent city monument, designed by the agriculture inspector Johann Peter Cremer of 1822 and Schinkel built / Cremers 1837 1836-1844 historical area on Adalbertsteinweg and dismantled in 1914 and in the 1928 city garden Aachen was transferred.

The trigger for the construction of the monument was a meeting of the rulers King Friedrich Wilhelm III. von Prussia , Tsar Alexander of Russia and Emperor Franz I of Austria on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig on October 18, 1818 during the Aachen Congress, "in front of the Adalbertstor " at which they commemorated the event with a military service and then their Leipzig Renewed vows to work “for the salvation of the peoples, for the establishment of justice and truth”.

Impressed by this, the decision was made in Aachen to erect a monument on site. In 1822 Cremer presented a draft for this, which was taken up again during a visit to the Rhineland by Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, who later became King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The prince laid the foundation stone for the memorial on October 5, 1836 during his stay in Aachen. The work came to a standstill, however, until the following year an Aachen delegation, who were in Berlin because of the railway construction, approached the Crown Prince about the monument. This prompted Schinkel to draw up a sketch. Since this was "to a certain extent intended to perpetuate a religious act", Schinkel considered the "shape of a temple or a chapel". Cremer implemented this in a draft that included an estimate of 11,600 thalers . In 1839 the Aachen city master builder Friedrich Joseph Ark was commissioned with the continuation, who finally had the monument at the historic place of pledge erected from Carrara marble by the Aachen builder Andreas Hansen in the years 1841–1844 . The Liège master Ballat took over the marble work. The bronzes depicting the heads of the monarchs in the ridge of the monument were created by the sculptor Friedrich Porcher based on a design by the teacher Nikolaus Salms. The monument was inaugurated on October 15, 1844.

Between July 27th and August 28th 1914 it was dismantled to make room for the first extension of the neighboring courthouse to Adalbertsteinweg. According to the original plan, it was to be rebuilt in the courtyard of the judicial building to be constructed and was initially stored in the northern half of the courtyard of the old courthouse. However, the plan was discarded in favor of rebuilding the city garden to make the memorial more accessible to the public.

During the reconstruction of the monument in the rose garden of the Stadtgarten by the Aachen stonemason August Laschet, led by the Aachen government master builder Karl Josef Frank, individual damaged parts were replaced, including the marble pedestal with bluestone . The damaged columns were shortened by 80 cm and topped up with new drums . The reconstruction was completed on June 15, 1928.

The congress memorial is one of the architectural monuments of the city of Aachen.

In Aachen's memory of the congress, there are also the Kongreßstraße near the old square of the congress monument, the Alexanderstraße on the Hotmannspiif , in whose house 36, the Hotel Zur Kaiserliche Krone Alexander lived, the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz am Elisenbrunnen , whose house no. 7 Friedrich Wilhelm was available and named the Franzstraße leading to the Marschiertor , in whose house No. 3 Emperor Franz stayed.

literature

Peter Hermann Loosen: From old Aachen. Historical sketches or Aachen history in stories. 3rd expanded edition. Aquensia-Klette-Verlag, Aachen 1978, pp. 176-178.
Albert Huyskens: The Aachen Congress of 1818 and Schinkel's Congress Memorial . In: Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsverein 43 (1921), pp. 195-227 Internet Archive .