The Siegestor (English: Victory Gate) in Munich is a three-arched memorial arch, crowned with a statue of Bavaria with a lion-quadriga. The monument was originally dedicated to the glory of the Bavarian army. Since its restoration following World War II, it now stands as a reminder to peace.
The Siegestor is 21 meters high, 24 m wide, and 12 m deep. It is located between the Ludwig Maximilian University and the Ohmstraße, where the Ludwigstraße (south) ends and the Leopoldstraße (north) begins. It thus sits at the boundary between the two Munich districts of Maxvorstadt and Schwabing.
The arch was commissioned by King Ludwig I of Bavaria, [1] designed by Friedrich von Gärtner [1] and completed by Eduard Mezger in 1852. The marble quadriga was sculpted by Johann Martin von Wagner, [2] artistic advisor to Ludwig and a professor at the University of Würzburg. [3] Lions were likely used in the quadriga, instead of the horses, because the lion was a heraldic charge of the House of Wittelsbach, the ruling family of the Bavarian monarchy.[ citation needed ]
The arch was originally dedicated to the glory of the Bavarian army (Dem Bayerischen Heere). Today, the Siegestor is a monument and reminder to peace. After sustaining heavy damage in World War II it was to be demolished in July 1945, [1] however, the arch was reconstructed and restored only partially, [4] in a manner similar to the conservation of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche in Berlin. The new inscription on the back side by Wilhelm Hausenstein reads Dem Sieg geweiht, vom Krieg zerstört, zum Frieden mahnend, "Dedicated to victory, destroyed by war, urging peace". In the early 21st century, the remaining statues were meticulously cleaned and restored.
In the second of the German language film series, Heimat 2 by Edgar Reitz, Evelyne and Ansgar meet and talk by the monument, on which the inscription honoring peace may be seen.
In the ninth season of The Amazing Race , the final Pit Stop for the third leg (a double length leg) was in front of the monument, where the last team to arrive was eliminated from The Amazing Race. [5]
The Brandenburg Gate is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin. One of the best-known landmarks of Germany, it was erected on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to Brandenburg an der Havel, the former capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The current structure was built from 1788 to 1791 by orders of King Frederick William II of Prussia, based on designs by the royal architect Carl Gotthard Langhans. The bronze sculpture of the quadriga crowning the gate is a work by the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow.
A quadriga is a car or chariot drawn by four horses abreast and favoured for chariot racing in classical antiquity and the Roman Empire. The word derives from the Latin quadrigae, a contraction of quadriiugae, from quadri-: four, and iugum: yoke. In Latin the word quadrigae is almost always used in the plural and usually refers to the team of four horses rather than the chariot they pull. In Greek, a four-horse chariot was known as τέθριππον téthrippon.
The Walhalla is a hall of fame Monument that honours laudable and distinguished people in German history – "politicians, sovereigns, scientists and artists of the German tongue"; thus the celebrities honoured are drawn from Greater Germany, a wider area than today's Germany, and even as far away as Britain in the case of several Anglo-Saxon figures. The hall is a neo-classical building above the Danube River, in Donaustauf, east of Regensburg in Bavaria, the exterior modelled on the Parthenon in Athens.
The Feldherrnhalle is a monumental loggia on the Odeonsplatz in Munich, Germany. Modelled after the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, it was commissioned in 1841 by King Ludwig I of Bavaria to honour the tradition of the Bavarian Army.
Bavaria is the name given to a monumental, bronze sand-cast 19th-century statue in Munich, southern Germany. It is a female personification of the Bavarian homeland, and by extension its strength and glory.
The Kingdom of Bavaria was a German state that succeeded the former Electorate of Bavaria in 1806 and continued to exist until 1918. With the unification of Germany into the German Empire in 1871, the kingdom became a federated state of the new empire and was second in size, power, and wealth only to the leading state, the Kingdom of Prussia.
The Befreiungshalle is a neoclassical monument on the Michelsberg hill above the town of Kelheim in Bavaria, Germany. It stands upstream of Regensburg on the river Danube at the confluence of the Danube and the Altmühl, i.e. the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal. It is just downstream of the Danube Gorge, towering above its lower end. It was commissioned by King Ludwig I of Bavaria to commemorate the victory over Napoleon in the Befreiungskriege of 1813–1815.
St. Michael's is a Jesuit church in Munich, capital city of the state of Bavaria, Germany. It is the largest Renaissance church north of the Alps. The style of the building had an enormous influence on Southern German early Baroque architecture.
Johann Halbig was a German sculptor of the Classicism school.
This article gives an overview about the architecture of Munich, Germany.
The Ludwigstraße in Munich is one of the city's four royal avenues next to the Brienner Straße, the Maximilianstraße and the Prinzregentenstraße. The avenue is named after King Ludwig I of Bavaria. The city's grandest boulevard still maintains its architectural uniformity envisioned as a grand street "worthy the kingdom" as requested by the king. The Ludwigstraße has served for state parades and funeral processions.
The Odeonsplatz is a large square in central Munich which was developed in the early 19th century by Leo von Klenze and is at the southern end of the Ludwigstraße, developed at the same time. The square is named for the former concert hall, the Odeon, on its northwestern side. The name Odeonsplatz has come to be extended to the parvis (forecourt) of the Residenz, in front of the Theatine Church and terminated by the Feldherrnhalle, which lies to the south of it. The square was the scene of a fatal gun battle which ended the march on the Feldherrnhalle during the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.
Memorial gates and arches are architectural monuments in the form of gates and arches or other entrances, constructed as a memorial, often dedicated to a particular war though some are dedicated to individuals. The function, and very often the architectural form, is similar to that of a Roman triumphal arch, with the emphasis on remembrance and commemoration of war casualties, on marking a civil event, or on providing a monumental entrance to a city, as opposed to celebrating a military success or general, though some memorial arches perform both functions. They can vary in size, but are commonly monumental stone structures combining features of both an archway and a gate, often forming an entrance or straddling a roadway, but sometimes constructed in isolation as a standalone structure, or on a smaller scale as a local memorial to war dead. Although they can share architectural features with triumphal arches, memorial arches and gates constructed from the 20th century onwards often have the names of the dead inscribed on them as an act of commemoration.
The Angel of Peace is a monument in the Bogenhausen district of Munich. The architects were Heinrich Düll, Georg Pezold and Max Heilmaier.
The National Kaiser Wilhelm Monument (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Nationaldenkmal) was a memorial structure in Berlin dedicated to Wilhelm I, first Emperor of Imperial Germany. It stood in front of the Berlin Palace from 1897 to 1950, when both structures were demolished by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) government.
Ferdinand Miller, from 1875 von Miller and from 1912 Freiherr von Miller was an ore caster, sculptor and director of the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He also held a seat in the Royal Bavarian House of Lords, the Reichsrat.
Max von Widnmann was a German sculptor and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Many of his works were commissioned by King Ludwig I of Bavaria.
Wilhelm von Rümann was a prominent German sculptor, based in Munich.
Friedrich Brugger, was a German sculptor.
Bavaria is the female symbolic figure and secular patron of Bavaria and appears as a personified allegory for the state of Bavaria in various forms and manifestations. She thus represents the secular counterpart to Mary as the religious Patrona Bavariae.