Prussian Madonna

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Queen Luise with Prince Wilhelm , also called the Prussian Madonna , was a statue of the Prussian Queen Luise von Mecklenburg-Strelitz by Fritz Schaper (1841-1919), which was destroyed in World War II.

history

On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm I on March 22, 1897, the Academy of Arts in Berlin was given a new facade. There was also an exhibition opened by Kaiser Wilhelm II . The monarch noticed a statue of his great-grandmother Luise. The sculptor Fritz Schaper initially only executed them in plaster. It showed Luise how she demonstratively holds up the child - Wilhelm I. - and steps down a staircase.

The artist was commissioned by the emperor to execute the statue in marble. The commission was completed in 1901 and the statue was unveiled on November 10th. For the larger-than-life marble statue, Schaper was awarded the Great Golden Medal at the Berlin art exhibition in 1901. It was set up in the stairwell of the Pestalozzi-Froebel-Haus in Berlin-Schöneberg and destroyed in the chaos of war in 1945.

The Berliners called the representation, because of its strong resemblance to a Madonna statue , as early as 1897 the "Prussian Madonna". Schaper portrayed the queen as "Prussia's Mater Dolorosa ", as a personification of the painful German nation building, as the "ideal of German women and a model of female national identity".

The statue was very well received in Wilhelmine society and stood as a scaled-down cast made of bronze or plaster, made of ivory or marble, in numerous houses.

literature

  • Jürgen Schütte, Peter Sprengel (ed.): The Berlin Modernism 1885–1914. Reclam-Verlag, Ditzingen 2000, UB 8359, ISBN 978-3-15-008359-8 .
  • Otto Nagel : H. Zille . Publication by the German Academy of the Arts, Henschelverlag Berlin 1970.
  • Max Osborn : Berlin . With 179 illustrations. In the series: Famous Art Places. Volume 43. Verlag von Seemann, Leipzig 1909.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jutta von Simson: Fritz Schaper. 1841-1919. Prestel, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-7913-0090-3 , p. 84.
  2. ^ Günter de Bruyn: Preussens Luise. About the creation and decay of a legend. Siedler, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-88680-718-5 , p. 61.
  3. ↑ Uwe Hinkfoth (Ed.): Fritz Schaper, the rediscovery of the monument. Catalog book for the exhibition at Museum Goch, July 30 to September 3, 2000, Goch 2000, ISBN 3-926245-47-6 , p. 116.
  4. ^ Statue of Queen Luise, "Prussian Madonna" (destroyed), 1897-1901, Fritz Schaper ( Memento from June 15, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) with illustration, on bildhauerei-in-berlin.de.
  5. ↑ Edgar Wolfrum : History as a weapon. From the empire to reunification. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-34028-1 , p. 18.
  6. ^ Günter de Bruyn : Queen Luise. In: Etienne François, Hagen Schulze (ed.): German places of memory . Volume 2, Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50988-6 , pp. 286-298, here: p. 294.