Otto Mantzel

Relief in the closed corridor between the town hall and the Lübeck office building

Otto Adolf Wilhelm Georg Mantzel (born July 9, 1882 in Zarrentin , † 1968 in Lübeck ) was a German sculptor and ceramist who worked primarily in Lübeck.

Life

Atelierhaus Mantzels, Kleine Burgstrasse 11 (2013)

(first) Brunswick lion in the garden of the museum at the cathedral

In October 1917 he was accepted as a citizen of Lübeck and opened his sculptor's studio in Kleine Burgstrasse 11. From the beginning of the 1930s, he was increasingly receiving public contracts. In the 1950s he traded as a stone, stucco and wood sculptor ; he advertised wood, stone and stucco work, models for ceramics and bronze . He also worked as a restorer, for example on the portal of the Füchtingshof and on the stucco reliefs in the house of the merchant youth at Mengstrasse 25.

From 1926 Erich Prüßing (1911–1943) was one of Mantzel's apprentices .

plant

Mantzel has had factories in Lübeck since the 1920s.

In 1928 he created from the wood of old Jahn oak in Lauerholz a lectern and three candlesticks, "powerful Turner figures representing" the 75th anniversary of Lübeck Turnerschaft For the same year comes figurative terracotta architectural decoration: mason, architect and carpenter at the block of flats corner Falkenstraße / Reiherstieg as well as the brass door handle designed as a Lübeck eagle at the building authority. For the St. Lorenz Church in Travemünde he created the memorial for the fallen of the First World War .

One of his most famous works is the combat relief in the closed corridor between the town hall and the office building . The fighters of this arch are adorned with figural reliefs of the buttressing cat , flanked by the heads of a lawyer and a fool, which Otto Mantzel made in 1930.

At the instigation of the director of the Museum am Dom , Prof. v. Lütgendorff , he worked from an artificial basalt block a free copy of about ¾ the original size of the Braunschweig lion. Consequently it was to be regarded as an original work piece. The pedestal was made of artificial Odenwald sandstone . The unveiling took place on October 9, 1930 at the point in the museum garden that the Duke is likely to have entered first when the cathedral was founded on the wooded hill near the Trave. During the celebration, the memorial was presented to the director of the non-profit society , Dr. Ihde , passed. The memorial was destroyed in 1942 . In 1975 the Elfriede Dräger Memorial Foundation donated a new copy of the lion. However, since there is no reference to the Lübeck previous version on it, this is almost unknown today.

In 1934 Mantzel created his most monumental work, a memorial for Carl Hans Lody at the castle gate . The monument, a standing knight made of terracotta in full armor, who is trampling a snake, set into a wall niche next to the gate, was removed in 1946 except for the memorial plaque. A terracotta depiction of Hell can be found at the entrance to the courtyard of the same name at 23 Purgatory .

In 1938, as part of the expansion of Travemünder Allee, he designed a transformer house on Travemünder Allee with wooden figural gable decorations. This brick-built transformer building was also used as a waiting room for tram users at the “Kreuzweg” stop. Mantzel's gable decoration is no longer completely preserved. On the top level there is a single image field in which a figure can be seen in a wide robe. Below that, three image fields are flanked by two gussets, the left gusset contains the figure of a deer, the right one is empty. The three fields in the middle show a man sowing seeds, a woman with a child and a farmer carrying a scythe. The series below includes depictions of a woman with a tray, a carpenter, a hiker, a postman and a hunter. The year of origin 1938 can be read on a beam under the gable. The gable decorations were changed after 1945 in order to remove the National Socialist symbols and representations. The depiction of the mother with the child, which was used to replace the bearer of a swastika flag, and the depiction of the wanderer who replaced a marching soldier are not original from the time of creation. A swastika in the middle of the year has also been removed. The woman with the tray was inserted as a replacement for a carpenter with a saw and an ax, the wandering carpenter was originally shown in a slightly different pose, the hunter originally had two dachshunds with him, the postman a stretcher with packages on his back. The now empty upper right gusset was originally decorated with a representation of a cat, in the row below a boy playing the flute was shown in the right gusset. The upper left gusset, now empty, probably also contained a figure. While the National Socialist symbols were removed for political reasons after the end of the Third Reich , other changes are likely due to damage caused by the war. The transformer house including the gable decoration is designated as a simple cultural monument.

See also

• Sculptures and objects in Lübeck # Otto Mantzel

Web links

Commons : Otto Mantzel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Otto Mantzel. kunst-im-oefflichen-raum-luebeck.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Zarrentin was only renamed in 2004 to Zarrentin am Schaalsee .
2. ↑ Bürger-Matrikel, Lübeck, Innere Stadt, 1911–1919, accessed on ancestry.com on October 15, 2018
3. ↑ Address and Phone Books, accessed on ancestry.com on October 15, 2018
4. ↑ Günter Kohlmorgen: Johann Füchting and Füchtingshof in Luebeck. Lübeck 1982, p. 131
5. ^ Journal of the Association for Lübeck History and Antiquity, 1967, p. 115
6. ↑ U. Graetz, Portrait Erich Prüßing at www.gvt-info.de , accessed on October 14, 2018.
7. ↑ The statement on www.kunst-im-oefflichen-raum-luebeck.de that Mantzel was the author of the monument to Carl von Großheim (1912) is based on a confusion with Ludwig Manzel .
8. ↑ Vaterstädtische Blätter 1928 ( digitized version , p. 15 with ill.)
9. ↑ Vaterstädtische Blätter 1928 ( digitized version , p. 15)
10. ↑ Vaterstädtische Blätter 1928 ( digitized , p. 26 with ill.)
11. ↑ Monument to Heinrich the Lion, the second founder of Lübeck. In: Lübeckische advertisements , year 1930, no.237, issue of October 10, 1930.
12. ↑ ^{a b} Forgotten "art" on the outskirts of Lübeck , in: Stadtanzeiger Lübeck from January 1, 1970, to be read online at 130.73.201.133/son/verkehr/pressenotizen , accessed on October 14, 2018.
13. ↑ Giebelschmuck Trafo-Haus at www.kunst-im-oefflichen-raum-luebeck.de , accessed on October 14, 2018.