Swan pond (Leipzig)

The swan pond with opera and city skyscraper (2013)

The Schwanenteich in Leipzig is a body of water with a surrounding park on the edge of Leipzig city center. The park is part of the oldest urban landscape park in Germany. The official name of the park, derived from history, is Oberer Park .

Location and shape

The Overturning Cascade (2013)
Gray heron in the reeds of the swan pond (2013)

The swan pond with its park is the northeastern part of the promenade ring surrounding the entire city center . The area is bounded in the east by the Georgiring, in the south by the opera house , in the west by Goethestrasse and in the north by Willy-Brandt-Platz. The almost rectangular area covers an area of 2.40 hectares . 0.335 hectares of which are accounted for by the water surface of the pond. The pond is 120 meters long, the largest width is almost 40 meters.

Since the terrain rises to the south, there are steeper bank areas than in the north, where there is a larger meadow area. In the southern part of the pond, its banks are made of reeds. Since the pond has no inflows and outflows, the water is circulated via a cascade on the southern bank wall to improve the water quality . In the northwest, one of the park paths leads directly to the water along an approximately eight-meter-long bank wall with a railing. The pond is animated by water birds.

history

The northeast corner of Leipzig before and after the dismantling of the city fortifications

After the experience of the Seven Years' War , the demolition of the city fortifications, which had become useless due to the development of weapons technology, began in the 1770s. In 1784, the art-loving Leipzig mayor Carl Wilhelm Müller (1728–1801) commissioned the building director Johann Carl Friedrich Dauthe (1746–1818) to create a park for the space that had become vacant when the city fortifications on the northeast corner were demolished. The artist and director of the Leipzig Art Academy Adam Friedrich Oeser (1717–1799), the lawyer and architectural theorist Christian Ludwig Stieglitz (1756–1836) and the landscape gardener Ludwig Christian Mansa also played a key role in the design of the English layout .

Dauthe laid out the park on the model of the English landscape gardens with winding paths and irregular views. A part of the old, wide moat was turned into a pond. This initially had a connection to a narrow moat that remained at the city limits. A viewing hill, the Schneckenberg , was raised in the south of the park . A small waterfall splashed at its foot. The Gothic Gate designed by Stieglitz stood as a decorative element in the northern part of the park . From the Schneckenberg you could see the Gothic Gate and the Christ Church in the village of Eutritzsch to the north. In 1842, the Gellert monument (1774) created by Oeser was erected on the top of the mountain . In memory of the creator of the facilities, the Mayor Müller Memorial , which still exists today, was erected in the westward part of the park in 1819 . The name Unterer Park became established for this part of the park, and for the one around Schwanenteich and Schneckenberg Oberer Park . When in 1865 Goethestrasse was pulled through to the Dresden and Magdeburg train stations, the two parts of the park were separated by them.

When the construction of the New Theater on Augustusplatz began in 1864 , the Schneckenberg had to be removed. The swan pond now reached as far as the theater, and the waterfall now poured out of an opening in the pond boundary wall. A large fountain was installed in the middle of the swan pond .

The swan pond with the Georgenhaus in 1796
The waterfall at the foot of the Schneckenberg
The Gothic Gate around 1820
Schwanenteich and Schneckenberg around 1860
Schwanenteich, New Theater and Fountain 1920
Opera house and new swan pond in 1965

With the construction of the opera house and the four-lane expansion of the Georgiring, the swan pond and the park were redesigned in a slightly different form in 1960. This particularly affected the southern part with regard to the connection to the opera house. The northern area of the park is still reminiscent of the basic structure around 1800. Part of the large meadow area and the historical route have been preserved here. In 1996 the park was renovated.

Monuments

Railway Monument (2013)
Richard Wagner bust (2013)
Sinti and Roma Memorial (2013)

There are three monuments in the park at the Schwanenteich:

Railway monument : The obelisk from 1878 belongs to the Leipzig-Dresden Railway , which was opened as the first German long-distance railway line in 1839.
Wagner bust : The bust of Richard Wagner , based on a design by Max Klinger , was erected in 1983 on the 170th birthday and 100th anniversary of the death of the Leipzig-born composer.

Memorial to the Sinti and Roma : Since 2003, the sculpture reminds Beaten by Wieland Förster on by the Nazis deported from Leipzig and the Leipzig through forced labor died-down Sinti and Roma .

The List-Harkort memorial, dedicated to the pioneers of railway construction, was located in the north-eastern part of the facility from 1927 to 1960. The memorial was made by Adolf Lehnert (1862–1948) using a bust from Harkort from 1878. The bronze plates of the Lehnert monument had already been removed during World War II . The busts of Friedrich List and Gustav Harkort have stood at the western end of the cross-platform of the main station since 1999 .

Drug trafficking

The area around the Schwanenteich is one of the largest drug handling centers in Leipzig. After the reunification of Germany, this was the only open provider scene in the new federal states according to the state criminal investigation offices. In 2016 and 2017, there were more large-scale raids by the police, drug depots were found and arrests took place. The regular raids are coordinated by the Joint Investigation Group Station / Center. The service dog squadron, the bicycle squadron, the patrol duty of the police station center as well as investigators of the Kripo and the Revierkriminaldienst Zentrum are involved. However, the problems persisted. In addition to drug offenses, physical injuries and theft are increasing at the swan pond. When the swan pond itself is examined, identification documents that have been reported as stolen come to light.

literature

Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z . PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , p. 542.
Martin Moresco, Isabelle Schön: The landscaping of the public green in Leipzig. From the regular avenue to the English layout. In: Nadja Horsch, Simone Tübbecke (ed.): Citizens' gardens promenades. Leipzig garden culture in the 18th and 19th centuries . Passage Verlag, Leipzig 2018, pp. 148–163.