Bremen: Columbus Monument

COLUMBUS MONUMENTS PAGES

Place	Artist	Date	Type
Bremen (Deutschland) "Glockenspiel," Böttcherstrasse	Bernhard Hoetger	1934	Panel

Notes

A unique monument to the "Conquerers of the Ocean", consisting of ten carved panels, is hidden in the picturesque Böttcher Straße in Bremen. The whole street and its buildings, which belonged to the coffee merchant Ludwig Roselius, were designed by the German sculpturer, painter and self-educated architect Bernhard Hoetger between 1922 and 1931. Hoetger was an expressionistic artist who lived from 1874 to 1949.
The panels belong to a set of porcellain chimes and are hidden in a rotating tower. It opens every hour from 12 to 6 p, to show the panels while the chimes are playing (January-March only 12h, 3p, and 6pm).
Carved by Hoetger in 1934, the ten panels honor pioniers of navigation and aviation who crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

There are four panels which refer in their inscpriptions to the discovery of America. These three panels show the discoverers' faces painted in gold, faces of native inhabitants in dark red, and their ships in heavy sea, also painted in gold.

Columbus.	Pining, Pothorst: Didrik Pining and Hans Pothorst where two German mariners who in 1473 sailed beyond Iceland in behalf of the Danish king to rediscover Greenland. There are speculations whether the expedition reached North America.
Leif, Karlsefni: showing Leif Eriksson, the Viking explorer of North America, and Thorfinn Karlsefni, who belonged to the first Viking settlers there	Panel with a longer inscription, ascribed to Leif Eriksson: "Ihr kennt nur Kenntnis, ihr kennt nicht des Willens heißen Trieb, der Kenntnis erst gebiert." (You only know knowledge, you don't know the burning desire of will which only gives birth to knowledge).

The other panels are dedicated to

Paul König, captain of the German merchant-submarine "Deutschland" which made its maiden voyage in Juni 1916 from Bremerhaven to Baltimore
Arthur Whitten Brown and Capitain John Alcock, the crew of the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic in June 1919; Herbert Scott, commander of R 34, the first airship to cross the ocean only two weeks later
Charles A. Lindbergh, who made the first solo flight across the Atlantic in May 1927
Robert Fulton, engineer of the first steam ship
Hermann Köhl, James C. Fitzmaurice, and Ehrenfried-Günther Freiherr von Hünefeldt, the crew of the first direct flight across the Atlantic from East to West in April 1928
Ferdinand Graf Zeppelin and Hugo Eckener, German pioneers of aeronautics

Source(s):

Text and photos: Norbert Fiks, 2 September 2006. (Very coincidentally, my brother and I were in the Böttcherstrasse in Bremen the next day, 3 September, but we did not see the panels, since were too late for the 12 h show and our tourist guide said that the next one was at 3 pm).
Böttcherstrasse (PDF-file, in German).

Last update:

Introduction page