Still waters and stormy waves

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The fountains of Still Water (front) and Stormy Waves (back) at night

Still water and stormy waves is a twin fountain on Albertplatz in Dresden . It was created by Robert Diez from 1883 to 1894 and is a listed building.

history

From competition to completion

The twin fountain on Albertplatz seen from the air

Around 1875 there were already two simple, round fountain basins with simple fountains on Albertplatz that ran for a few hours on rain-free days. In 1879, the city council announced a competition to submit designs for plastic jewelry for both fountain basins. The city council selected three designs from 20 submissions that received equal awards: the first was by Werner Stein and the second by Heinrich Bäumer and architect Ernst Hermann . In addition to the architects Ernst Giese and Paul Weidner , Robert Diez was the third winner.

Diez revised his designs and created models of the two fountain sculptures by 1883, which could be viewed in his studio on Zirkusstraße 24. After the city council had inspected the models, they gave their consent to the execution of the designs in October 1883. Finally, at Christmas 1883, Diez received the order from the Dresden city council to produce both monumental sculptures. For this, Diez received a fee of 60,000 to 80,000 marks from the Dr. Güntz Foundation; the cost of the wells was estimated at 225,000 marks.

The completion of both wells was delayed. The reason for this was, among other things, Diez's appointment as professor at the Dresden Art Academy and the associated obligations. In 1888, the first parts of the Stille Wasser fountain model were completed; as contractually stipulated, Diez completed the first fountain model by April 1892. The first fountain was cast in bronze by the art and bell foundry C. Albert Bierling in May 1892. The second model of the fountain was completed in 1893 and poured in March 1894. The granite fountain basins were also built in 1894, so the decision was made not to continue using the old basins, which were to be set up on Straßburger Platz instead . Clemens Grundig created the decoration of the water bowls above the Diez figure groups .

After their completion in 1894, both wells finally cost around 326,000 marks and thus significantly more than the funds made available. "As the city council of Dresden as administrator of the Dr. Güntz Foundation unreservedly agreed to the issue of this four times larger sum, it gave one of the rarest and most remarkable examples of artistic high spirits ”, according to the contemporary Deutsche Bauzeitung . In addition to assuming the additional costs of around 100,000 marks, the foundation also financed the higher fee set by Mayor Paul Alfred Stübel for Diez, who now received 132,000 marks instead of 60,000 to 80,000 marks.

On September 1, 1894, both fountains on Dresden's Albertplatz were put into operation for the first time and inaugurated informally in the presence of Mayor Stübel and various city councilors. There was no inauguration ceremony, among other things because Diez was in Tyrol at the time.

Two-part casting of the stormy waves in the park of Schloss Eckberg

A section of the Stormy Waves fountain was refilled in 1899 for the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 . It received a gold medal at the world exhibition. After the exhibition, the second cast was stored on private property not far from the Hygiene Museum , where it was only slightly damaged during the bombing of Dresden in February 1945. A meltdown ordered in 1951 was prevented by state curator Hans Nadler , who marked the group as a cultural asset. The second cast was placed on the base of the Mozart monument on the Bürgerwiese in July 1952 and came to the park of Eckberg Palace in 1989 as part of the reconstruction of the Mozart fountain .

Development after 1945

Cenotaph by Otto Rost on the site of the stormy waves in 1947

The Still Water fountain was not damaged in the bombing of Dresden ; Stormy waves were "largely preserved". Nevertheless, the fountain sculpture Stormy Waves was dismantled and its individual parts stored in various places in the city. In the course of this, there was major damage to the individual parts. At the place of the stormy waves , a Soviet memorial created by Otto Rost was inaugurated on November 25, 1945 ( Sunday of the Dead ) in the fountain bowl .

For many years, artists and conservationists endeavored to restore the Stormy Waves fountain . Plans included an installation in the garden of the Japanese Palace , but they were not implemented. In 1985 the city council commissioned the blacksmith's workshop Karl and Peter Bergmann to temporarily assemble part of the existing fountain elements. This started in 1986. However, since Bergmann had not received a restoration contract, the incompletely assembled fountain - Bergmann did not receive the parts of the upper fountain bowl until 1993 - for several years in Bergmann's workshop in Mickten . Lost pieces were finally remodeled by the sculptor Wilhelm Landgraf from 1988 to 1989 , but they were also stored.

Memorial plaque at the former position of the Soviet memorial

Only after the fall of the Wall was it decided to re-erect the Stormy Waves fountain . As early as 1990 a brewery had donated the money for a restoration of the fountain in the amount of around DM 550,000. The restoration work on the fountain finally began in May 1993, whereby further casting models of missing parts of the fountain had to be made. The second cast from 1899 in the park of Schloss Eckberg served as a template.

Relocating the Soviet memorial turned out to be complicated because it was Soviet property. It was not until 1993 that Moscow approved the relocation of the monument: on March 22, 1994, the Soviet memorial was demolished and rebuilt in a small park in May 1994 not far from the Military History Museum in Dresden's Albertstadt. A memorial plaque not far from the fountain reminds of the monument. Since the memorial was only placed on the base of the fountain and therefore the base for the sculpture was preserved, the fountain sculpture Stormy Waves was installed on Albertplatz in July 1994 . On August 31, 1994, the fountain finally went back into operation.

The basin and water system of the Still Waters fountain had already been renewed between 1992 and 1993. The fountain sculpture was renovated in 2008.

description

overall view

The well construction

Still water is on the east side of Albertplatz, while stormy waves are on the west side. Both wells are identical in their basic structure:

The round granite pool has a diameter of 18 meters. In it there is a stone bowl with a diameter of 7.20 meters, which in turn contains the fountain sculpture on a raised base. A fountain bowl with a diameter of around five meters rises above a short shaft in the middle at a height of around five meters. The shaft is provided with figurative, larger-than-life jewelry, which Diez "created in the finest naturalism of choice ". The underside of the upper fountain bowl also bears rich artistic jewelry.

The fountains are made of bronze that has been covered with a green patina . The fountain basin was made of granite.

The fountain sculpture

Group pearl and nymph at the fountain of still water
Group of engravers at the fountain Stormy waves
quiet waters

Still water shows eleven larger-than-life figures. The figures are divided into four groups (clockwise):

  • Loreley with lyre
  • Pearl and nymph - a nymph carries a young girl out of the water as a pearl of the sea, a nymph with a lily sits by it
  • Sea woman and mermaid (Naiad group) - a sea woman jokes with a mermaid
  • Water rose and sleeping boy (group of sleep) - a sleeping nymph is ensnared by a girl (as a dragonfly) and a boy (as a butterfly), a sleeping boy at her feet

The groups that are “casually related to each other” are supplemented by putti and (slow) aquatic animals such as turtles , frogs and small fish.

Stormy waves

The Stormy Waves fountain also consists of different groups of figures (clockwise):

  • Sturmgruppe - Storm with a snake whip races across the sea on his horse
  • Triton group - battle of tritons against sea monsters (howl of the surf)
  • Fight between two fish people over a starfish, which as a young boy is carried up by the waves
  • Stechergruppe - a mermaid attacks a catfish with a pointed shell

The groups are supplemented with small details, including fleeing lizards.

The water feature

Still waters at night

Both fountains offer a diverse water feature. A fountain rises around two meters from the top water bowl - when it was commissioned, the fountain was significantly higher at around seven meters - and pours into the water bowl. From here the water runs into the central fountain bowl, with the groups of figures on the shaft being wrapped in a water veil or lying behind a water curtain. From the edge of the main pool, 56 evenly spaced jets of water go into the middle pool. “The effect was surprisingly beautiful,” wrote newspapers on the occasion of the inauguration of the fountain. Other sheets pointed to the large water consumption of the wells, which amount to 250 cubic meters per hour. Both fountains are illuminated at night.

meaning

The contemporary press equated the twin fountains with the four times of day by Johannes Schilling on Brühl's terrace and described the sculptures as "important works of monumental sculpture":

"With this fountain, Dresden has been enriched by two works of art, which give loud testimony to the end of the period of artistic stagnation in which Saxony's Florence on the Elbe was trapped for a long time, despite its great artistic past."

- German construction newspaper 1894

The twin fountains were therefore of decisive importance for the artistic development of Dresden. Through her, Robert Diez had in turn "grown into an artist of the highest rank of his time". According to an art critic in 1921, his work had "reached its last expansion and full height" in both fountains, which in the 19th century represented a counterpart to the baroque Neptune Fountain .

See also

literature

  • New Monumental Fountain in Dresden . In: Deutsche Bauzeitung , 28th year, Ernst Toeche, Berlin 1894, p. 500.
  • Eberhard Engel, Jochen Hänsch: Stormy waves and still water. In memory of the first commissioning of the two fountains on Albertplatz on September 1, 1894 . Pressmedia, Dresden 1994
  • Jochen Hänsch: The stormy and the quiet . In: Sächsische Zeitung , August 31, 2009, p. 20.

Web links

Commons : Still Waters and Stormy Waves  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Handbook of German Art Monuments, Dresden . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich and Berlin 2005, p. 121.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Eberhard Engel, Jochen Hänsch: Stormy waves and still water. In memory of the first commissioning of the two fountains on Albertplatz on September 1, 1894 . Pressmedia, Dresden 1994, p. 4.
  3. ↑ Jochen Hänsch: The stormy and the quiet . In: Sächsische Zeitung , August 31, 2009, p. 20.
  4. ↑ a b Eberhard Engel, Jochen Hänsch: Stormy waves and still water. In memory of the first commissioning of the two fountains on Albertplatz on September 1, 1894 . Pressmedia, Dresden 1994, p. 5.
  5. ↑ The Bauzeitung mixes the sum of the original fee for Diez with the funds for creating the wells.
  6. ↑ a b c d e New Monumental Fountain in Dresden . In: Deutsche Bauzeitung , 28th year, Ernst Toeche, Berlin 1894, p. 500.
  7. ↑ a b Ernst-Günter Knüppel: Robert Diez. Sculpture between Romanticism and Art Nouveau . Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2009, p. 61.
  8. ^ Ernst-Günter Knüppel: Robert Diez. Sculpture between Romanticism and Art Nouveau . Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2009, p. 258.
  9. ↑ Eberhard Engel, Jochen Hänsch: Stormy waves and still water. In memory of the first commissioning of the two fountains on Albertplatz on September 1, 1894 . Pressmedia, Dresden 1994, p. 9.
  10. ↑ Eberhard Engel, Jochen Hänsch: Stormy waves and still water. In memory of the first commissioning of the two fountains on Albertplatz on September 1, 1894 . Pressmedia, Dresden 1994, p. 10.
  11. ↑ Eberhard Engel, Jochen Hänsch: Stormy waves and still water. In memory of the first commissioning of the two fountains on Albertplatz on September 1, 1894 . Pressmedia, Dresden 1994, p. 12.
  12. ^ Ernst-Günter Knüppel: Robert Diez. Sculpture between Romanticism and Art Nouveau . Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2009, p. 246.
  13. ↑ Name after Paul Schumann 1922. Quoted from Ernst-Günter Knüppel: Robert Diez. Sculpture between Romanticism and Art Nouveau . Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2009, p. 249.
  14. ^ Paul Schumann 1894. Quoted from Ernst-Günter Knüppel: Robert Diez. Sculpture between Romanticism and Art Nouveau . Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2009, p. 248.
  15. ↑ According to Schumann 1922. Knüppel wrongly assigns the groups based on Schumann, so the starfish and youth become two groups, while the surf group is omitted. See Schumann 1922 in Ernst-Günter Knüppel: Robert Diez. Sculpture between Romanticism and Art Nouveau . Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2009, p. 253.
  16. ↑ Quoted from Jochen Hänsch: The stormy and the calm . In: Sächsische Zeitung , August 31, 2009, p. 20.
  17. ^ Friedrich Schäfer: Germany's urban development - Dresden . Deutscher Architektur- und Industrie-Verlag , Berlin 1921, p. 36 ff.

Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 46.6 ″  N , 13 ° 44 ′ 45.2 ″  E