Terracotta fries at the Rotes Rathaus Berlin
The terracotta frieze at the Rotes Rathaus in Berlin is a circulating band of relief depictions with motifs from the history of the city of Berlin and the Mark Brandenburg from its beginnings to the time when the empire was founded in 1871.
history
The Berlin City Hall , a red brick building, was built from 1860 to 1869 based on a design by Hermann Friedrich Waesemann on the considerably expanded property of an older city hall. The mayor at the time saw it as “a monument to the independent strength of the bourgeoisie” . This idea should find its graphic expression in the “Stone Chronicle of Berlin”, a frieze of 36 reliefs that was subsequently attached to the building. The four sculptors Ludwig Gustav Eduard Brodwolf, Alexander Calandrelli , Otto Geyer and Rudolf Schweinitz worked on the clay tablets from 1877 to 1879 . Terracotta was chosen as the material , corresponding to the brick masonry of the building. Since the collaboration between the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the pottery manufacturer Tobias Feilner , there has been a tradition in Berlin of high-performance workshops for ceramic jewelry, which has been widely used. The material only lost its importance in the late 19th century, when other materials, especially stucco , were increasingly used for architectural forms of jewelry.
Eight reliefs on the Rotes Rathaus suffered severe damage in the Second World War in bombing raids in March 1945, but were restored by the sculptors Richard Schnauder and Hansfritz Werner between 1952 and 1954 , although they were poorly documented; Private photos provided by the population made up for the shortage. Another panel was completely destroyed; part of the relief from the stairwell of the Alte Nationalgalerie was inserted in its place .
Image examples
The 36 relief panels of different lengths are located on the balcony parapets on the first floor of the town hall. At the front they form a closed band, otherwise they are attached in the corner areas of the building and above the portals. The sequence of the sculptures begins chronologically at Gustav-Böß-Strasse / the corner of Spandauer Strasse and runs counterclockwise around the entire, free-standing block of the town hall with its dimensions of 100 × 90 m. The following texts on some of the picture examples provide brief information on the representations and their historical background.
(1) Christianization of the Slavs.
(2) Reclamation of the Mark.
(3) Foundation of the city of Berlin around 1230
(14) Commercial city of Berlin in the Middle Ages.
- Christianization of the Slavs (relief no. 1, Gustav-Böß-Straße). From left to right: Forced induction for baptism ; a monk at the baptism ceremony; two German knights hold the fallen statue of a Slavic god under their feet. - Slavs had settled between the Oder and Elbe since the 5th century. German princes conquered the area in the 12th century. Along with the conquest of the land, the Slavic inhabitants were violently Christianized according to the motto “baptism or death”.
- Reclamation of the Mark (relief no. 2, Gustav-Böß-Straße). From left to right: a monk is planting a fruit tree, a woodcutter is recovering, a farmer is plowing with his ox, and grain is being harvested. - Improved tools and cultivation techniques made clearing and arable farmingeasier, brought higher yields and led to the fact that since the 13th / 14th In the 19th century, several previously insignificant villages were able to develop into independent cities.
- Foundation of the city of Berlin around 1230 (relief no. 3, Gustav-Böß-Straße). In the middle a councilor with a chain of office and certificate, left and right scenes with carpentry and masonry work. - Cölln was first mentioned in documents in 1237 and Berlin in 1244 on contracts concluded in the Mark Brandenburg .
- Commercial city of Berlin in the Middle Ages (relief No. 14, Rathausstrasse). From left to right: unloading a transport ship; a merchant and his clerk supervise the work; Transport work with a hand truck and pulley . - At that time Berlin was part of the trading area of the German Hanseatic League . On Spree , Havel and Elbe grain, wool, hides, leather and wood were exported or imported cloth, spices, fish, and metals.
- The promo the Quitzows (Relief Nr. 16, Town Hall Street). From left to right: Masked knights steal cattle; a traveler on horseback defends himself against an attack; two citizens come to the rescue. - From the 13th to the beginning of the 15th century, Brandenburg nobles (the Quitzows, Bredows , Rochows and others) terrorized the population with mutual feuds and street robberies. Berlin, Cölln and other cities, on the other hand, formed a central market alliance . In 1414 the castle of the robber baron Quitzow was stormed, subjected to the Brandenburg robbery nobility and a state peace law was passed.
- Artists and scientists of the first half of the 19th century - detail. (Relief No. 33, Spandauer Strasse). From left to right: Alexander von Humboldt (natural scientist), Friedrich August Stüler (architect), King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia , Christian Daniel Rauch (sculptor), Peter von Cornelius (painter). - At that time, many scientists and artists who also had a name outside of Prussia lived and worked in Berlin. In addition, important societies were founded to promote the natural sciences, technology and the visual arts.
- Well-known scholars and researchers from the university and academy (relief no. 35, Spandauer Straße). From left to right: Friedrich Wilm (medic), Hermann Althoff (medic), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling ( philosopher ), Karl von Savigny (lawyer), Gustav Friedrich Waagen ( art historian ), Friedrich August Wolf ( philologist ), Carl Ritter ( geographer ). - On October 10, 1810, the Berlin University was opened in the street Unter den Linden , it developed into the center of the intellectual life of Berlin in the 19th century. In 1828 it was named "Friedrich Wilhelm University" and since 1949 it has been called " Humboldt University of Berlin ".
(16) The Quitzow feud.
(33) Artists and Scientists.
(35) Well-known scholars and researchers
Web links
- Official website of the Berlin Senate about the Red City Hall. ( Memento from April 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- S. Wallasch: Terracotta as building ceramics from the Middle Ages to modern times . International Building Repairs Journals , 1998. ISSN 0947-4498