Monument of Adalbert Lanna the Elder

About

The Monument of Adalbert Lanna the Elder is a sculpture of Adalbert Lanna the Elder in České Budějovice in the Czech Republic. It is located in the Sady city park near the western end of Lannova třída Street. It was created between 1866 and 1879 in the Imperial-Royal Artistic Foundry in Vienna under the artistic direction of Franz Pönninger. It was paid for largely from a long-term public money collection, which was initiated by the city council of České Budějovice to honor the deceased Adalbert Lanna the Elder, who was a local native. In May 1945, it was torn down by a crowd, severely damaged and removed to a secluded place. Its partial restoration and re-erection took place in 1993.

After the death of Adalbert Lanna the Elder, prominent citizens of České Budějovice met in January 1866 and agreed to establish a Committee for the erection of a monument to A. Lanna in České Budějovice. The members of the ten-member Committee included, for example: industrialist Carl Hardtmuth, mayor Eduard Claudi, lawyer Wendelin Rziha, manufacturer Johann Stegmann, and chairman of the České Budějovice Chamber of Commerce and Industry Josef Schier. The Committee obtained permission for a public collection from the governor of the kingdom of Bohemia Richard Belcredi and sent out appeals to a number of newspapers. Vendelín Grünwald, Hynek Zátka, and the bishop of České Budějovice, Jan Valerián Jirsík, were later also invited to the process of creating the monument. Jirsík proposed building an orphanage instead of the monument, which, in his opinion, would be a more appropriate tribute to Lanna's memory, but he was not listened to.

As early as February 1866, the director of the Viennese Imperial-royal artistic foundry in Wieden, Anton Fernkorn, announced his offer to create the monument. The money collection was taking off, among the largest contributors was Lanna's friend, duke Johann Adolf II of Schwarzenberg of Hluboká nad Vltavou. After a break caused by the Austro-Prussian War and the cholera epidemic in České Budějovice, another meeting of the Committee was held. This meeting was also attended by Wenzel Rosenauer – deputy of the Imperial Council, who lived mostly in Vienna. There he managed to obtain promises of further significant financial resources, among others, from the procurator of the Lanna company, Moritz Gröbe, and Anton Banhans (the future Minister of Agriculture ). At that time, the Committee was still hesitant about who to entrust the creation of the monument to. In the end it was awarded to the Imperial-royal foundry in Wieden, which – in the meantime – had been taken over from Fernkorn by his successor Franz Pönninger. In July 1868, Pönninger sent his first proposal from Vienna, which already included the cylindrical pedestal covered by reliefs, on which the statue of Adalbert Lanna the Elder would stand. Further modifications were made during the course of the project, but finally in March 1874 Franz Pönninger committed to a final budget of 20,500 florins and the deadline for the erection of the monument was set on the autumn of the following year.

In August 1874, Pönninger visited Budějovice and agreed with the members of the Committee that the most appropriate place for the monument was in the newly created Sady city park that replaced the former city fortifications. Erhard Ackermann – an experienced stonemason working in the area of Fichtel Mountains, who had already collaborated with Pönninger on the monument of Archduke Johann in Graz – was chosen to create the stone parts of the Lanna monument. The autumn 1875 deadline was not met; in December, Pönninger ordered a painted portrait of Vojtěch Lanna the Elder by Bartoloměj Čurn to be sent from Budějovice to Vienna so that he could better model Lanna's head. The date of the ceremonial unveiling was repeatedly postponed. The final date was set on 24 May 1879, after the iron columns and chains surrounding the monument were symbolically cast in the "Adalbert's Smelter" ( Vojtěšská Huť in Czech) – a smelter which Adalbert Lanna the Elder himself founded.

The ceremony began with a catholic service in the monastery church of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary, celebrated by Bishop Jirsík of Budějovice. All the ceremonial guests then walked in a procession to the decorated area in front of the covered monument. The mayor and chairman of the Committee Eduard Claudi gave his speech, and the author of the work, Franz Pönninger, then unveiled the monument. Afterwards followed the performances of a number of choirs, the two main Budějovice choirs ( Liedertafel and Beseda ) even temporarily suspended their mutual boycott (because of nationalist division between the two) and both performed at the ceremony. These performances were followed by traditional wreath-laying. Among the participant who laid their wreath were, for example, railway manager Georg Löw, Prague politician Franz Schmeykal, Prague banker Karl Amadeus Ritter von Zdekauer, the Elbe Society ( Labský spolek in Czech) or the Ship Society ( Lodní spolek in Czech) from Ústí nad Labem. A narrow group of selected guests then went to a banquet hosted in the House of the German Society. A letter was sent from Würzburg by Dr. Friedrich Scanzoni von Lichtenfels – a member of the Bavarian Royal Secret Council – who apologized for his absence at the unveiling ceremony. He was a relative of Adalbert Lanna the Elder and spent part of his life in Budějovice. A series of toasts followed in honour of Lanna's memory. His son Adalbert Lanna the Younger was named an honorary citizen of České Budějovice, to which he responded by contributing 10,000 florins to the city's orphan fund.

Johann Rundensteiner, one of the first professional photographers settled in České Budějovice, was also present at the festive events, and captured them in his photographs. High-quality photographs of the newly unveiled monument were also taken by another photographer Josef Woldan.

After only three months after the unveiling of the monument, Franz Pönninger had to respond to the city council's complaints about rust stains that had formed on the monument. The mutual correspondence regarding technical defects then continued for at least another four years. During this time, other sculptural works were added to the Sady city park – a statue of the goddess Diana (1881) and then a monument with a bust of the Emperor Joseph II by Viktor Oskar Tilgner (1883) – one of the reactions to the proclamation of the Stremayr language decrees, that improved the position of Czech language in Bohemia.

The monument to Joseph II was torn down and thrown into the Mill ditch ( Mlýnská stoka in Czech) after the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, while the Lanna monument remained unharmed. It even survived World War II, during which almost all large metal objects in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were put on a list, collected and melted down for military purposes. The monument to Adalbert Lanna the Elder was the only bronze monument in the district to be removed from the list, thanks to the intervention by Bureau of Monuments in Prague and Fridrich David – Government Commissioner for České Budějovice.

Although the monument survived both World wars, it was torn down 16 days after the German surrender in May 1945. During the night, surrounded by a crowd, the monument was tied to a tractor with chains and ropes and pulled to the ground with the assistance of Soviet army sappers. The post-war renovation of the entire Sady city park started in September 1946 and was completed only two years later. Originally, the work was to be carried out by German prisoners from concentration camp who were awaiting mass deportation, but in the end it was decided to assign the work to regular prisoners held in the České Budějovice prison in the Palace of Justice. The statue of the goddess Diana disappeared and the classicist gazebo called the Templ was torn down after almost 130 years of existence.

The damaged Lanna monument was moved to the Lanna shipyard, then it was moved to the school yard of the Dukelská primary school and it was eventually placed in the Bavorovice depository of the South Bohemian Museum.

In 1963, Karel Kakuška, a worker of the České Budějovice branch of the State Institute of Historic and Natural Preservation, began working on a proposal for the restoration of the monument. The entire long process was not completed until the events of 1968, after which the restoration of a monument dedicated to the České Budějovice businessman and industrialist was once again out of the question.

In 1991, the South Bohemian Museum transferred the property rights to the damaged monument to the city. It was subsequently transported to the garden of the house of academic sculptor Ivan Tlášek in Libníč, who restored it. New, thinner columns and chains were also cast and the entire monument was newly erected deeper in the park than its original location and slightly rotated so that its front edge is no longer parallel to the edge of the street. The entire monument was ceremonially re-unveiled on 2 October 1993.

After the death of Adalbert Lanna the Elder, prominent citizens of České Budějovice met in January 1866 and agreed to establish a Committee for the erection of a monument to A. Lanna in České Budějovice. The members of the ten-member Committee included, for example: industrialist Carl Hardtmuth, mayor Eduard Claudi, lawyer Wendelin Rziha, manufacturer Johann Stegmann, and chairman of the České Budějovice Chamber of Commerce and Industry Josef Schier. The Committee obtained permission for a public collection from the governor of the kingdom of Bohemia Richard Belcredi and sent out appeals to a number of newspapers. Vendelín Grünwald, Hynek Zátka, and the bishop of České Budějovice, Jan Valerián Jirsík, were later also invited to the process of creating the monument. Jirsík proposed building an orphanage instead of the monument, which, in his opinion, would be a more appropriate tribute to Lanna's memory, but he was not listened to.

As early as February 1866, the director of the Viennese Imperial-royal artistic foundry in Wieden, Anton Fernkorn, announced his offer to create the monument. The money collection was taking off, among the largest contributors was Lanna's friend, duke Johann Adolf II of Schwarzenberg of Hluboká nad Vltavou. After a break caused by the Austro-Prussian War and the cholera epidemic in České Budějovice, another meeting of the Committee was held. This meeting was also attended by Wenzel Rosenauer – deputy of the Imperial Council, who lived mostly in Vienna. There he managed to obtain promises of further significant financial resources, among others, from the procurator of the Lanna company, Moritz Gröbe, and Anton Banhans (the future Minister of Agriculture ). At that time, the Committee was still hesitant about who to entrust the creation of the monument to. In the end it was awarded to the Imperial-royal foundry in Wieden, which – in the meantime – had been taken over from Fernkorn by his successor Franz Pönninger. In July 1868, Pönninger sent his first proposal from Vienna, which already included the cylindrical pedestal covered by reliefs, on which the statue of Adalbert Lanna the Elder would stand. Further modifications were made during the course of the project, but finally in March 1874 Franz Pönninger committed to a final budget of 20,500 florins and the deadline for the erection of the monument was set on the autumn of the following year.

In August 1874, Pönninger visited Budějovice and agreed with the members of the Committee that the most appropriate place for the monument was in the newly created Sady city park that replaced the former city fortifications. Erhard Ackermann – an experienced stonemason working in the area of Fichtel Mountains, who had already collaborated with Pönninger on the monument of Archduke Johann in Graz – was chosen to create the stone parts of the Lanna monument. The autumn 1875 deadline was not met; in December, Pönninger ordered a painted portrait of Vojtěch Lanna the Elder by Bartoloměj Čurn to be sent from Budějovice to Vienna so that he could better model Lanna's head. The date of the ceremonial unveiling was repeatedly postponed. The final date was set on 24 May 1879, after the iron columns and chains surrounding the monument were symbolically cast in the "Adalbert's Smelter" ( Vojtěšská Huť in Czech) – a smelter which Adalbert Lanna the Elder himself founded.

The ceremony began with a catholic service in the monastery church of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary, celebrated by Bishop Jirsík of Budějovice. All the ceremonial guests then walked in a procession to the decorated area in front of the covered monument. The mayor and chairman of the Committee Eduard Claudi gave his speech, and the author of the work, Franz Pönninger, then unveiled the monument. Afterwards followed the performances of a number of choirs, the two main Budějovice choirs ( Liedertafel and Beseda ) even temporarily suspended their mutual boycott (because of nationalist division between the two) and both performed at the ceremony. These performances were followed by traditional wreath-laying. Among the participant who laid their wreath were, for example, railway manager Georg Löw, Prague politician Franz Schmeykal, Prague banker Karl Amadeus Ritter von Zdekauer, the Elbe Society ( Labský spolek in Czech) or the Ship Society ( Lodní spolek in Czech) from Ústí nad Labem. A narrow group of selected guests then went to a banquet hosted in the House of the German Society. A letter was sent from Würzburg by Dr. Friedrich Scanzoni von Lichtenfels – a member of the Bavarian Royal Secret Council – who apologized for his absence at the unveiling ceremony. He was a relative of Adalbert Lanna the Elder and spent part of his life in Budějovice. A series of toasts followed in honour of Lanna's memory. His son Adalbert Lanna the Younger was named an honorary citizen of České Budějovice, to which he responded by contributing 10,000 florins to the city's orphan fund.

Johann Rundensteiner, one of the first professional photographers settled in České Budějovice, was also present at the festive events, and captured them in his photographs. High-quality photographs of the newly unveiled monument were also taken by another photographer Josef Woldan.

After only three months after the unveiling of the monument, Franz Pönninger had to respond to the city council's complaints about rust stains that had formed on the monument. The mutual correspondence regarding technical defects then continued for at least another four years. During this time, other sculptural works were added to the Sady city park – a statue of the goddess Diana (1881) and then a monument with a bust of the Emperor Joseph II by Viktor Oskar Tilgner (1883) – one of the reactions to the proclamation of the Stremayr language decrees, that improved the position of Czech language in Bohemia.

The monument to Joseph II was torn down and thrown into the Mill ditch ( Mlýnská stoka in Czech) after the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, while the Lanna monument remained unharmed. It even survived World War II, during which almost all large metal objects in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were put on a list, collected and melted down for military purposes. The monument to Adalbert Lanna the Elder was the only bronze monument in the district to be removed from the list, thanks to the intervention by Bureau of Monuments in Prague and Fridrich David – Government Commissioner for České Budějovice.

Although the monument survived both World wars, it was torn down 16 days after the German surrender in May 1945. During the night, surrounded by a crowd, the monument was tied to a tractor with chains and ropes and pulled to the ground with the assistance of Soviet army sappers. The post-war renovation of the entire Sady city park started in September 1946 and was completed only two years later. Originally, the work was to be carried out by German prisoners from concentration camp who were awaiting mass deportation, but in the end it was decided to assign the work to regular prisoners held in the České Budějovice prison in the Palace of Justice. The statue of the goddess Diana disappeared and the classicist gazebo called the Templ was torn down after almost 130 years of existence.