Fountain of Neptune (Saint Petersburg)
The St. Petersburg Neptune Fountain is a large garden fountain at Peterhof Palace , the summer residence of Tsar Peter the Great , which goes back to an older baroque city fountain for Nuremberg . It is considered to be the largest baroque fountain north of the Alps.
history
In 1797, Tsar Paul I bought the figures of the baroque fountain originally designed in 1656 by Georg Schweigger and Christoph Ritter for the Nuremberg main market as "monumentum pacis" as a memorial for the Thirty Years War for 66,000 guilders from the city of Nuremberg, and had them shipped to Peterhof near Saint Petersburg and set up frontally in front of the 'Great Palace' in the 'Upper Garden' in the park of his summer residence. According to the location and the changed taste of the time, the arrangement was changed significantly compared to the original design (which was conceived as a baroque architectural fountain in an urban context) when it was installed in Peterhof according to the plans of the classical court architect Franz Brauer . The groups of figures, now centrally positioned in a newly created large octagonal basin (92 × 33 m), were pulled further apart and the new central plinth (pedestal of the Neptune statue) was significantly reduced in height. Later additions were made to include other smaller figures (fish). It corresponds to the oak fountain , the indefinable fountain and the square fountain and is thus an integral part of a spacious water garden.
Negotiations by the imperial foreign ministry started in 1895 about the repurchase of the well to Germany, which had meanwhile been recognized as a valuable testimony to the German early baroque, failed. As a gesture of reconciliation and understanding, however, the tsar allowed the impression to be taken. With the impressions taken directly in Peterhof by the plaster sculptor Ludwig Leichmann in 1896, a second cast of the sold fountain was created, which in its original baroque composition (based on research by Friedrich Wanderer ) was placed on the main market in Nuremberg in 1902. (This resulted in the curious situation that in Peterhof figures cast in the baroque period were in a composition from the early 19th century and in Nuremberg figures cast in the late 19th century were in the composition of the baroque period.)
In 1941 the Neptune Fountain was captured by members of the " Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg " and later dismantled as spoils of war, brought to Nuremberg and stored there in the pannier bunker . Curiously, he survived the war unscathed because he was not exposed to artillery fire in the context of the retreat. Two years after the end of the Second World War , the original, which had never been displayed in Nuremberg, was returned to Russia (in the original art theft boxes from 1942) and initially stored in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) then in Peterhof. For political reasons, it was initially not possible to re-erect it, as the Soviet cultural authorities regarded the fountain as a fascist cultural asset or as bourgeois. When the well was returned, a nereid was also lost (a captured motorcycle was transported in the box with this label instead). After the end of the Stalin era, the fountain was rebuilt in its original location in 1956, initially without the missing nereid. Silicone casts on the Petershofer original and the Nuremberg second cast made it possible to restore lost and destroyed parts of both fountains. In 1970, within the framework of the cultural agreement concluded between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet Union (annex to the treaty on the improvement of bilateral relations), the restoration of the lost nereid was made possible. The Russian sculptor VI Tatarowitsch made the lost figure again based on the Nuremberg second cast. In 1996 the fountain was restored again. In the process, several details that had been lost over the centuries (due to the chaos of war, or due to removal during the classical reinterpretation) (reins, whips, bundles of rods, shell horns, etc.) were reconstructed based on the model of the Nuremberg second cast. On this occasion, the originally intended coat of arms with the Habsburg double-headed eagle was attached.
Appearance
In the middle of the fountain stands the bronze statue of the Roman god Neptune , at his feet two riders on winged horses and two nymphs with oars, which overlook the Rednitz rivers , on two stacked cubic marble blocks (instead of the high bronze pedestal planned by Georg Schweigger ) Nuremberg's neighboring cities of Fürth and Pegnitz , which flows through Nuremberg, symbolize. The ensemble is surrounded on four sides by tritons , nereids and groups of putti riding a dragon , dolphins and a sea lion , all of them allegorical sea figures. The entire arrangement stands on a base plate that rises a little above the water level of the large basin and is (in relation to the original baroque design) drawn far apart. Two added mermaids symbolically represent the Russian freshwater rivers in the general sense. On the front of the pedestal, the tsar's eagle of the Romanov ruling house is emblazoned instead of the Habsburg double eagle intended for installation in Nuremberg. On the back of the base, the Nuremberg city coat of arms has been preserved as a reminiscence of the origin of the fountain. All allegorical figures are shown in extreme movement according to their 140 years older origin (typical of the Baroque), which gives the concert of figures a dynamic that is unusual for classicism .
Not necessarily typical of the early Baroque era, the arrangement only used figures and symbols from Greek mythology and allegories of water; the imagery of the fountain is devoid of Christian symbolism. It is thus also an expression and testimony to the secularization of life in Nuremberg in the 16th century, which progressed more than 130 years after the Reformation was implemented and under the strong influence of humanism (Melanchthon). The figure program was therefore well suited for a new arrangement in the sense of representative classicism of the early 18th century.
Movie
The film by Emmanuel Descombes Magical Gardens - Peterhof shows the palace, the park (based on an animated park plan) and its water art and the fountain from different perspectives in the summer of 2016. Those responsible for the museums there will be interviewed.
literature
- VE Ardikuza: Pedrodvorec, parky, fontany, dvorcy , Lenizdat 1968
- Ruth Bach-Damaskinos: Neptune Fountain . In: Michael Diefenbacher , Rudolf Endres (Hrsg.): Stadtlexikon Nürnberg . 2nd, improved edition. W. Tümmels Verlag, Nuremberg 2000, ISBN 3-921590-69-8 ( online ).
- Helmut Beer: The Neptune Fountain - an almost never-ending story . NZ series: 200 years of Franconia in Bavaria. Nürnberger Zeitung No. 27 of February 2, 2006, p. 18
- Anton Bosch Two Nuremberg Neptune Fountains make history . In Russia-German Contemporary History Volume 4, ISBN 3-9809613-2-X , there p. 14.
- Ernst Mummenhoff: The Neptune Fountain in Nuremberg, its origin and history , Nuremberg 1902.
- Erich Mulzer: Neptune's odyssey (history of the Neptune fountain). In: Nürnberger Altstadtberichte, Ed .: Altstadtfreunde Nürnberg eV, Issue 13 (1988)
- Nürnberger Zeitung (NZ): Well offside. How Nuremberg dealt with a large plant. , NZ of February 18, 2003, p. 13.
- Friedrich Wanderer: The history of the Nuremberg Peunt Fountain, communications of the Association for the History of Nuremberg, Vol. 3, 1881 (see below web link)
- Hans Robert Weihrauch: Georg Schweigger (1613-1690) and his Neptune Fountain for Nuremberg , Anzeiger des Germanisches Nationalmuseum 1940–1953, Berlin, 1954, pp. 87–143
Web links
- Friedrich Wanderer: The history of the Nuremberg Peunt Fountain, communications from the Association for the History of Nuremberg, Vol. 3, 1881
- Joachim Thiel: The Neptune Fountain in Nuremberg - Stations on an odyssey
swell
- ↑ a b Anton Bosch Two Nuremberg Neptune Fountains make history , Nuremberg / Munich 2004
- ↑ a b V.E. Ardikuza: Pedrodvorec, parky, fontany, dvorcy , Lenizdat 1968
- ^ Breschniew-Brandt Agreement, szt. generally titled "Eastern Contracts".
- ↑ Director: Emmanuel Descombes (* May 8, 1966), France, 2016, 27 min. Information from the broadcaster arte (F) on the film, May 2018 ( Memento of the original from May 25, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 59 ° 52 ′ 56.7 " N , 29 ° 54 ′ 27.7" E