Art and bell foundry Lauchhammer

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Art foundry Lauchhammer KG
legal form KG
founding July 1725
Seat Lauchhammer
management Maxim Engelmann
Branch Art cast
Website www.kunstguss.de

Bronze foundry

The art and bell foundry Lauchhammer is a Saxon company founded in 1725, Prussian since 1815 and now southern Brandenburg company, which is located in Lauchhammer in the Oberspreewald-Lausitz district.

history

18th century

The Lauchhammeraner art and bell foundry has its origins in the Lauchhammerwerk founded on July 17, 1725 by Baroness Benedicta Margareta von Löwendal . The wife of the Electorate Court Marshal Woldemar von Löwendal had an iron works built in the Mückenberg domain north of Naundorf after the discovery of extensive lawn iron stone deposits , which was soon expanded by several branches.

Detlev Carl von Einsiedel (bust at Wolkenburg Castle )

After she died in 1776, her universal heir, Detlev Carl von Einsiedel , took over the fate of the Mückenberg rulership and thus also of the Lauchhammer. Since the art-loving Einsiedel had his first attempts at iron art casting from 1781, he is considered the founder of the traditional art casting in Lauchhammer. Because in 1784 the two sculptors Joseph Mattersberger and Thaddäus Ignatius Wiskotschill , who were hired by Einsiedel, succeeded in casting an ancient bacchante for the first time in the Lauchhammerwerk . In the same year the large cast iron vase was created and in 1788 the monument to the wife of Herculaneum for Mückenberg Castle followed , of which a replica was created in 2000, which is now in the former castle park. In addition to works of art that Einsiedel had set up in the parks of his estates in Mückenberg and Wolkenburg, the iron foundry also produced very mundane utensils, cast iron and machine parts.

19th century

At the beginning of the 19th century, work on bronze casting began in the foundry . In 1841, the bronze statues of the first Christian Polish princes Mieczyslaw and Boleslaw in Poznan Cathedral, based on a model by Christian Daniel Rauch , attracted great attention . The art foundry was soon represented at numerous exhibitions around the world and won gold medals , as at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1855 .

Mückenberg Castle around 1860

From 1864 to 1867, the foundry workers, under the direction of the engineer Wilhelm Rose, produced a cast-iron columned hall for the Gezira Palace on the Nile island of Gezira in Cairo . The 400-ton building designed by the architect Carl von Diebitsch was 300 meters long and 15 meters high. In the 21st century, only a few parts of it have survived that are integrated into the Marriott hotel complex .

Around the same time, Ernst Rietschel's Luther monument for the city of Worms was created in the art foundry over a period of seven years . The monument consisting of twelve statues , eight relief busts, six reliefs and twenty-four city coats of arms was unveiled on June 25, 1868. It is considered to be one of the world's largest Reformation monuments and - often re-cast - it is probably the most famous work of art cast in Lauchhammer.

The first casting work for church bells took place sporadically in the 19th century .

20th century

After the First World War , the bronze bell foundry sector developed, which produced around 500 bells between 1920 and 1939 alone, which were sent all over the world. The production of bells was stopped in the GDR from the 1970s, but the company management concentrated on art casting. Monuments such as the group of figures created by Fritz Cremer for the memorial in the Buchenwald concentration camp , animal sculptures in the Berlin zoo and many other works of art reflecting the zeitgeist were created back then. Others like the Berlin Neptune Fountain or the Leipzig Mende Fountain have been restored in Lauchhammer.

After the political change, the traditional bell casting could be resumed in 1994 as a result of the privatization of the foundry the year before.

21st century

In April 2015, the 800th bell since the resumption was cast. The bells are sold worldwide, so they went to Chile , Indonesia , Japan and Tanzania . In June 2017, the bell casting was stopped.

Works (selection)

  • Otto von Bismarck medallion (1837) on the Bismarck Bridge in Dresden, replica 1988

  • Grave monument for Mieszko I and Bolesław Chrobry in the Poznan Cathedral

  • Luther Monument Worms

  • Buchenwald monument by Fritz Cremer

  • Bronze sculpture of a caster in front of the Art Casting Museum in Lauchhammer

  • Bell in the church of Val Gardena

  • Berlin Street Fountain (1895)

Exhibitions

The in 1993 Lauchhammer-Ost opened Kunstgussmuseum Lauchhammer is a permanent exhibition of the 200 year old history of the artistic cast in Lauchhammer. The museum contains, besides iron and bronze castings, as the most important part of comprehensive one about 2800 pieces of historical model fundus of the foundry. In addition to the permanent exhibition, various special exhibitions on the subject alternate in the facility.

Personalities

Detlev von Einsiedel around 1860

literature

  • Susanne Kähler, Karl Bertuch, Alexander von Gleichen-Rußwurm: Artificial casting in Lauchhammer: 1784 until today . Ed .: Martin H. Schmidt (=  Regardeur . No. 6 ). Norderstedt 2011, ISBN 978-3-8423-2727-6 .
  • Reinhard Köpping: ore and nobility - on the life and work of the Baroness von Löwendal . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 2010, ISBN 978-3-86530-140-6 .
  • Mückenberg and the Lauchhammer ironworks . In: The Black Magpie . No. 305 , 1925.
  • City administration Lauchhammer (ed.): Lauchhammer - stories of a city . Geiger Verlag, Horb am Neckar 2003, ISBN 3-89570-857-7 , p. 158-182 .
  • City administration Lauchhammer (ed.): Lauchhammer - stories of a city . Geiger Verlag, Horb am Neckar 2003, ISBN 3-89570-857-7 , p. 183-188 .
  • Barbara Müller: Art casting museum in Lauchhammer . In: Arbeitskreis für Heimatkunde e. V. Bad Liebenwerda (Ed.): Local calendar for the old district of Bad Liebenwerda, the Mückenberger Ländchen, outskirts on Schraden and Uebigau-Falkenberg 1995 . Bad Liebenwerda 1995, p. 182-186 .

Web links

Commons : Kunstguss Lauchhammer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 200th anniversary . Short message. In: Vossische Zeitung . Morning edition, July 28, 1925, p. 12.
  2. ↑ Glockengeschichte.pdf : Art and bell foundry Lauchhammer, over 275 years of tradition: bell history
  3. ↑ Heidrun Seidel: Each of the 800 bells is unique. In: Lausitzer Rundschau . April 18, 2015.
  4. ↑ Sebastian Wamsiedler: Bell casting stopped in Lauchhammer. 19th November 2017.

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 12.6 "  N , 13 ° 47 ′ 43.6"  E