Mozart Fountain (Dresden)
The Mozart Fountain is a fountain in the Bürgerwiese landscape garden in Dresden 's Seevorstadt-Ost / Großer Garten district . It is a listed building .
Appearance
The fountain consists of two parts. A small column made of Tyrolean marble stands like an altar on a round sandstone pedestal . On the front, the name " Mozart " is affixed in golden letters , bordered by tendrils. Around the altar, three larger-than-life female figures made of bronze , covered with gold leaf, dance . They symbolize the deep, devout-pious seriousness, the graceful grace and the sunny, laughing serenity and should thus embody the essence of Mozart's music.
Behind the monument is a water basin, surrounded by a three-sided waist-high wall made of shell limestone . The top of the wall is decorated with a frieze with a fish motif. The flow of water in the middle of the wall is inconspicuous. Originally, a plaque was attached to the left wall with the inscription "Erected by the Mozart Society in Dresden 1907 at the suggestion of its first artistic director Alois Schmitt". The board disappeared in 1923.
On the left side of the fountain, a plaque reminds of the construction of the fountain. A plaque on the right-hand side of the fountain gives the date of destruction and restoration. The lighting of the fountain that was installed after the renovation was destroyed several times and is no longer available today.
history
Since the beginning of the 19th century, the up to then rather rural-suburban development of the lakeside suburb has been replaced by upper-class residential buildings. This created the need for an appropriate design of the large green area Bürgerwiese. Between 1838 and 1850 the meadow was redesigned into a public park, followed by two extensions by 1869.
In April 1902, the Dresden Mozart Society asked the City Council to provide it with a free space for a Mozart memorial that had yet to be procured: “In honor and memory of the composer Amadeus Mozart, who has probably always been valued by our people”. The association wanted to invest 25,000 marks in the monument itself. Mozart had stayed in Dresden only once, in April 1789. Heinrich Epler , Richard König , Heinrich Wedemeyer and Hans Hartmann-MacLean took part in the competition for the design of the monument with a total of eight designs. Epler later withdrew his application. The designs were exhibited in the Saxon Art Association and all rejected.
Unsolicited, the sculptor Hermann Hosaeus , who lives in Berlin-Charlottenburg, submitted a design in which he wanted to reflect the music, embodied by the dance of three larger-than-life gilded figures around an "altar dedicated to the genius of the master". This draft was approved by the experts. The decision was criticized because not every artist was considered in the application and the name composition of the jury was not known. In addition, the winning design was not on public display.
Hosaeus writes in his memoirs about the recognition by the city: “A large, thick gold medal was the external recognition. Said medal was so unattractive that I carried it to the dentist spur of the moment, melted it down with my own hands and contented myself with the fact that the gold that was left at the dentist meant that many people kept my appreciation on their lips. "
As a result of the discussions and after the death of the club manager, the construction of the fountain stalled in 1904. Three years later, on June 16, the fountain was finally handed over to Dresden's Mayor Otto Beutler by the new head of the Mozart Association, the Privy Councilor von Meyer . Also present were members of the Saxon royal family, including Princess Mathilde of Saxony and Prince Johann Georg of Saxony .
The fountain was badly damaged during the air raids on Dresden in February 1945. The damaged original figure "Ernst" is now kept in the lapidarium in the ruins of the Zionskirche .
Efforts by the Institute for Monument Preservation in the 1950s to restore the fountain were unsuccessful. The sculptor of the original monument, Professor Hosaeus, provided a small plaster model and the remaining plaster cast of the most severely damaged figure “Ernst” on a one-to-one scale. Nothing else happened for the time being. The remains fell into disrepair like the surrounding green area by the mid-1980s.
From 1987, preparations were made to re-erect the fountain, and in 1988 the reconstruction was commissioned. Two of the graces were largely preserved. In 1991 the Dresden sculptor Eberhard Wolf added missing parts based on photos. The casting of the third female figure, "serious music", was done by the Lauchhammer art and bell foundry . The stone carving was carried out by Christian Hempel , the technical part of the fountain was in the hands of the Lingrön company. With the help of photogrammetry , the original location of the figures could be determined. On September 24, 1991 the three gilded bronze figures were erected. On December 5, 1991, the bicentenary of Mozart's death, the inauguration of the fountain by Reinhard Keller , the 1st Mayor of Dresden, took place. Among others, the daughter of the sculptor Hermann Hosaeus, Lizzie Hosaeus, was present .
criticism
The criticism of the fountain was different. It is said that the massive, ostentatious gold-plated figures lack a symbolism corresponding to Mozart's music. The connection between the altar, the fountain basin and the surrounding edge of fish is also difficult to convey.
The visual artist and lecturer Werner Pinkert remarks that the monument resembles “a great architectural plan analogous to a musical scene”. It is "admirable how the sculptor Hosaeus combines the sculptures created in the Art Nouveau period with the forms of classical sensation and the light, lively and agile of the Rococo".
gallery
detail
pillar
Water outlet
Fish frieze
Information board
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Detlef Eilfeld and Jochen Hänsch: Das Dresdner Brunnenbuch . 1st edition. tape 2 . SV SAXONIA, Dresden 2015, ISBN 978-3-944210-75-9 , p. 88-94 .
- ↑ a b c d Jochen Hänsch: Mozartbrunnen is 100 years old . In: Saxon newspaper . June 14, 2007 ( paid online [accessed on September 20, 2016]).
- ↑ a b Dresden has another Mozart monument . In: New Time . December 6, 1991 ( online [accessed September 20, 2016]).
- ↑ a b Jochen Hänsch: The Mozart fountain was handed over 90 years ago . In: Dresdner Latest News . June 23, 1997.
- ↑ The Mozart year came to an end . In: Berliner Zeitung . December 6, 1991 ( online [accessed September 20, 2016]).
- ↑ Werner Pinkert: Dancing with a fluttering robe . In: Saxon newspaper . March 25, 2004 ( paid online [accessed March 11, 2016]).
Coordinates: 51 ° 2 ′ 37 " N , 13 ° 44 ′ 31.5" E