Richard Wagner Grove

In the western part of the Richard-Wagner-Grove

The Richard-Wagner-Hain is a park in Leipzig that goes back to a formerly planned monument for Richard Wagner .

location

The Richard-Wagner-Hain extends on both sides of the Elster basin between the Jahnallee or the Zeppelin Bridge and the Elsterwehr. The length of the plant is about 450 meters, its width 90 meters and the total area about eight hectares.

history

Eastern part with dry stone wall and columns of the former flower hall

The first plans to erect a memorial for the Leipzig-born composer Richard Wagner in the bank area of the Elster Basin, which was created for flood control, were dated back to 1932. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Wagner's death on February 13, 1933, Leipzig's Lord Mayor Carl Goerdeler launched an international ideas competition. In April 1933, the jury decided from more than 600 submissions in favor of the monument design by the sculptor Emil Hipp , who was also commissioned with the execution.

The landscape architect Gustav Allinger was entrusted with the creation of a park surrounding the monument . He designed a strictly geometric, terrace-like facility, which was aligned with the planned location of the monument in the northern part on the eastern bank of the Elster basin. The southern end of the eastern bank was an elevated open garden hall. Between the monument site and the garden hall, a 225-meter-long dry stone wall extended to terracing the site with a twelve-meter-wide flower bed above it. On the west bank, a flight of stairs between two terraces led from the water to another terraced flower garden with a water basin and fountain, surrounded by a spacious pergola .

After the seizure of power , the National Socialists exploited the plans to erect a Wagner monument for their own purposes. On March 6, 1934, Adolf Hitler personally laid the foundation stone for the "Richard Wagner National Monument". By 1942, the facilities were completed except for the monument square. Because of the Nazi seizure of Wagner, the city of Leipzig decided not to accept the monument, which was ideologically burdened but had already been paid for. This was finally sold in individual parts (west) throughout Germany to reduce and cover storage costs.

Parts of the park and the monument foundations were removed in the 1950s. The dry stone wall, the columns of the former garden hall and the western flower terrace with the water basin and the pergola have been preserved to this day; the latter was renewed in 1992.

In 1955, by resolution of the city council, the Richard-Wagner-Hain and other parks were combined to form the "Central Clara Zetkin Culture Park". Colloquially, soon only the eastern part of the Richard-Wagner-Grove was referred to as such. With a resolution of April 2011, the Richard-Wagner-Hain was separated from the Clara-Zetkin-Park and got the old name back for both parts.

In 1998 the two bank areas were added to the list of cultural monuments in the Free State of Saxony as "Richard Wagner Grove" (OBJ-Dok-Nr. 09286411).

The Richard-Wagner-Hain has been the venue for the annual Leipzig radio play summer since 2003 .