Siegesallee
The Siegesallee (German:
About 750m in length, it ran northwards through the Tiergarten park from Kemperplatz (a road junction on the southern edge of the park near Potsdamer Platz), to the former site of the Victory Column at the Königsplatz, close to the Reichstag. Along its length the Siegesallee cut across the Charlottenburger Chaussee (today's Straße des 17. Juni, the main avenue that runs east–west through the park and leads to the Brandenburg Gate).
The marble monuments and the neobaroque ensemble were ridiculed even by its contemporaries. Berlin folklore dubbed the Kaiser Denkmalwilly (Monument Billy) for his excessive historicism.[1] Moves to have the statues demolished were thwarted after the end of the monarchy in 1919.
The Siegessäule and the figures were moved by the Nazi government to the Großer Stern in 1939 to allow for larger military parades[citation needed].
Some of the monuments were lost in the aftermath of the
History
Contemporary reaction
On 27 January 1895, the 36th birthday of
The whole construction was widely derided by art critics, and regarded by many Berliners as grossly over-indulgent and a vulgar show of strength. It was dubbed the ″Puppenallee″ (Avenue of the Dolls), as well as the Avenue of the Puppets, Plaster Avenue, and other unsavoury titles. Even the Emperor's own wife
Some of the protests turned on the fact that Italian artisans in Berlin did the actual sculpting while artists of the Berliner Bildhauerschule just provided models in plaster or clay. Wilhelm's opening speech, the infamous Rinnsteinrede, portrayed Modernism and Impressionism as a descent of art into the gutter (Rinnstein).
Karl Scheffler wrote a devastating criticism in 1907, comparing the Siegesallee to an overly patriotic out-of-tune amateur brassband concerto.[4] The Siegesallee was still a popular place to stroll or relax, however.
The figures were used to teach the history of
After the monarchy
In 1918 and 1919, among other occasions, Hans Paasche asked to have the statues destroyed. The soldiers' and workers' council of Berlin decided to keep them. Kurt Tucholsky had written a poem, asking to keep the figures silent, as monuments of a great era.[6]
The statues remained in place until 1938, when they got in the way of the grand plan by
Many of the statues were damaged in World War II, while a few were smashed completely. Generally though, the avenue survived, more or less, while all around was a scene of devastation. Most of the Tiergarten's 200,000 trees were shattered by bombs and artillery shells and finally cut down for fuel by desperate Berliners. In the 1948 movie The Ballad of Berlin "Berliner Ballade" (film), Otto Normalverbraucher (″Otto Average-Consumer″), played by Gert Fröbe, as a former German soldier returning to civilian life, gives an ironic salute to the figures.[7]
However, the statues were seen by the Allied powers as a symbol of Imperial Germany, and in 1947 the British Occupation Forces dismantled the Siegesallee remains, these apparently being bound for the Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain), the largest of the eight huge rubble mountains around Berlin's perimeter.
State curator Hinnerk Schaper intervened, however, and buried most of the statues in the grounds of the nearby
Sculptors who worked on the project
- Max Baumbach
- Karl Begas
- Reinhold Begas
- Eugen Boermel
- Johannes Boese
- Peter Breuer
- Adolf Brütt
- Alexander Calandrelli
- Ludwig Cauer
- Gustav Eberlein
- Reinhold Felderhoff
- Fritz Gerth
- Johannes Götz
- Ernst Herter
- August Kraus
- Otto Lessing
- Harro Magnussen
- Albert Manthe
- Ludwig Manzel
- Norbert Pfretzschner
- Fritz Schaper
- Emil von Schlitz
- Walter Schott
- Rudolf Siemering
- Cuno von Uechtritz-Steinkirch
- Max Unger
- Joseph Uphues
- Martin Wolff
See also
Further reading
- Helmut Caspar (ed.): Die Beine der Hohenzollern, interpretiert an Standbildern der Siegesallee in Primaneraufsätzen aus dem Jahre 1901, versehen mit Randbemerkungen Seiner Majestät Kaiser Wilhelm II.. Berlin Edition, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-8148-0086-9.
- Die Berliner Moderne 1885–1914. Hrsg. Jürgen Schütte, Peter Sprengel, Reclam Verlag, Ditzingen 2000, UB 8359, ISBN 978-3-15-008359-8.
- Jan von Flocken: Die Siegesallee. Auf den Spuren der brandenburgisch-preußischen Geschichte. Kai Homilius Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89706-899-0.
- Richard George (Ed..): Hie gut Brandenburg alleweg! Geschichts- und Kulturbilder aus der Vergangenheit der Mark und aus Alt-Berlin bis zum Tode des Großen Kurfürsten. Verlag von W. Pauli's Nachf., Berlin 1900
- Uta Lehnert: Der Kaiser und die Siegesallee. Réclame Royale. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-496-01189-0.
- Otto Nagel: H. Zille. Veröffentlichung der Deutschen Akademie der Künste. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1970.
- Max Osborn: Berlin. Mit 179 Abbildungen. In der Reihe: Berühmte Kunststätten Band 43, Verlag von E. A. Seemann, Leipzig 1909.
- Die Siegesallee, Amtlicher Führer durch die Standbildgruppen. Mit Situationsplan und einem Vorwort von Kaiser Wilhelm II. Text von Koser unter Mitwirkung von Sternfeld. Herausgegeben auf Veranlassung des Königlichen Unterrichtsministeriums, Berlin, Oldenbourg um 1900.
- Cornelius Steckner: Die Sparsamkeit der Alten. Kultureller und technologischer Wandel zwischen 1871 und 1914 in seiner Auswirkung auf die Formgebung des Bildhauers Adolf Brütt. Verlag Peter D. Lang, Frankfurt/M und Bern, 1981, S. 47–52, ISBN 3-8204-6897-8
- Cornelius Steckner: Der Bildhauer Adolf Brütt. Schleswig-Holstein. Berlin. Weimar. Autobiografie und Werkverzeichnis. (Schriften der Schleswig-Holsteinischen Landesbibliothek. Hrsg. Dieter Lohmeier. Band 9), Westholsteinische Verlagsanstalt Boyens & Co., Heide 1989. ISBN 3-8042-0479-1(S. 182–191; S. 172–176).
- Peter Hahn & Jürgen Stich, Friedenau-Geschichte & Geschichten, Oase Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-88922-107-0.
References
- ISBN 3-8148-0086-9, 128 S., p.22
- ^ "Unveiled". 11 April 2016.
- ^ "Die Männergeschichte der Siegesallee. Dynastische Selbstdarstellung im wilhelminischen Deutschland | L.I.S.A. - Das Wissenschaftsportal der Gerda Henkel Stiftung". L.I.S.A. - Das Wissenschaftsportal der Gerda Henkel Stiftung. Retrieved 24 November 2015.
- ^ Karl Scheffler: Moderne Baukunst. Leipzig 1907. Quoted in Helmut Caspar Die Beine der Hohenzollern …, p. 103
- ^ Originally R.E. Hardt: Die Beine der Hohenzollern. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1960, see the edition of Caspar 2001
- ^ "Ulk. Wochenbeilage zum Berliner Tageblatt (47.1918)". digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de. Retrieved 24 November 2015.
- ^ "The Ballad of Berlin (1948)". imdb.com. Retrieved 19 June 2022.
External links
- List on de-wp List with all Siegesallee-monument-groups and detailed information (German)