Moreau memorial
The Moreau Monument (also written Moreaudenkmal , also known as Moreau's Monument on old maps ) is a classical monument to the French general Jean-Victor Moreau (1763-1813) in Dresden , who was an opponent and rival of Napoleon Bonaparte . During the Battle of Dresden in 1813, both legs were shattered at the place where the monument stands today. He died as a result of this wound. The simple monument was created in 1814 by Christian Gottlieb Kühn based on a design by Gottlob Friedrich Thormeyer .
history
General Jean-Victor Moreau, cast out by Napoleon in 1804 because of an alleged conspiracy, changed sides after several years of exile and went into Russian service. He was appointed adjutant general by Alexander I. Against Moreau's will , the attack on Dresden took place in the wars of liberation at the end of August 1813 . When Moreau spoke to the Tsar during the Battle of Dresden on August 27, 1813 on the (today's) Räcknitzhöhe south of the city, a cannonball smashed both legs. Despite immediate medical care (amputation of both legs by the Tsar's personal physician, James Wylie ) in the Palitzsch estate in Kleinpestitz , Moreau died a few days later in a Bohemian mood on September 2, 1813 as a result of his wounding. His body was transferred to Saint Petersburg and buried there, while his heart was buried in Paris.
Because of his position was during the subsequent Russian occupation of Dresden by General Prince Repnin-Volkonsky has, at the height of Räcknitz in Dresden - the area belonged as Stadtgut always the city of Dresden, in the 20th century it became the district assigned Räcknitz - a Erecting memorial to Moreau. He commissioned Gottlob Friedrich Thormeyer to do this, but he only provided the draft, so that Christian Gottlieb Kühn realized it sculpturally.
Description
Thormeyer's design is iconographically cautious: a Greek caterpillar helmet , a sword and a laurel wreath made of cast iron , made by the Saxon art and bell foundry Lauchhammer , were arranged on a syenite block with a square iron plate . On the front of the syenite block the inscription was placed: Moreau / The hero / fell here on the side / Alexander / August XXVII / MDCCCXIII The block was lined with rubble stones. The area was fenced in and three oaks were planted in honor of the three allies, which are now among the oldest memorial trees in Dresden . On November 4, 1814, Moreau's amputated legs were buried in an urn under the memorial as part of a small memorial service.
The monument is one of the few artistic testimonies of classicism in Dresden and has been restored several times: a small plaque on the fence around the monument reminds us that the monument was restored in 2002 with funds from the estate of Ms. Aloisa Sterath.
reception
The iconographic type of the monument was repeated in the Hauptmann Hirsch monument in Dresden in 1822 and can also be found in a monument to Karl Christian Erdmann by Le Coq in Brig (Switzerland) from 1830.
Unlike other memorials, the Moreau memorial was spared from the scrap collecting actions in the GDR in the 1950s. Drawn in on city maps of the city of Dresden in the 1970s and 1980s, visitors who were not familiar with the area were often confused with the Bismarckian Column 150 meters away , which was ignored in the Dresden city maps of that time.
literature
- Alexander Querengässer: More than a battlefield hike - Warlike traces of the Middle Ages and early modern times in Dresden's monument landscape. In: Dresdner Geschichtsverein (Hrsg.): "... what one hardly notices ..." - Dresden monuments in the changing times (= Dresdner Hefte - contributions to cultural history. No. 132, 4/2017). Dresden 2017, ISBN 978-3-944019-21-5 , pp. 11–18, here: pp. 16–17.
- Folke Stimmel, Reinhardt Eigenwill a. A .: Stadtlexikon Dresden A-Z . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden / Basel 1994, ISBN 3-364-00300-9 , p. 281.
Web links
- The Moreau monument on dresdner-stadtteile.de
Coordinates: 51 ° 1 ′ 23.3 " N , 13 ° 44 ′ 8.8" E