Igel Column

The Igel Column in the village of hedgehogs on the Mosel is beside the Mainz Drususstein the only Roman tomb on its original site aboveground preserved since ancient times north of the Alps. The destruction after the fall of the Roman Empire it escaped by the fact that the main was held on the south side for a representation of the marriage of Constantius Chlorus with the sacred Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, in the Middle Ages.

Description

The 23 -meter-high pillar monument of red sandstone was built around 250 by the brothers Lucius and Lucius Secundinius Aventinus Secundinius Securus for themselves and their deceased relatives. It is richly decorated with reliefs. They show scenes from the everyday and professional life of a cloth merchant and from the mythology. The original monument was colorfully designed in addition to the memory of the dead of the family probably also the purpose to point campaigning on the cloth business of Secundinii in the city of Trier (Augusta Treverorum ). A reconstruction of the column faithful to the original painting is at the Rheinische Landesmuseum in Trier.

The pillar top is decorated with the sculpture of an eagle with outstretched wings. Today, it is very badly weathered and barely recognizable as an eagle. From the Latin word for eagle - Aquila - the place has hedgehog his name ( cf. the English word "eagle " and the name Eigelstein ).

History

The Bolognese nobleman Fulvio Ruggieri has the papal Sondernuntius Giovanni Francesco Commendone, Bishop of Zante, accompanied by Trier and visited the Igel column on 14 January 1562, he briefly describes in his travelogue.

The Igel Column and Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited on 26 August and on 22 or October 23, 1792 the Igel column; afterwards he described it and drawn. He expressed then still tend over the ancient monument. Among other things he wrote in the autobiographical writing campaign in France on 23 August:

" On the way from Trier to Luxembourg me soon enjoyed the monument near hedgehog. As I had known how happy the ancients knew to put their buildings and monuments, I threw in thought once all the village huts away, and now it stood at the worthiest place. The Moselle flows directly past with which opposite a handsome water, the Saar, combines; the curvature of the body of water that give getting on and off of the ground, a lush vegetation of the site loveliness and dignity. "

And on October 22:

"Maybe the power of the ancients had never felt so than in this contrast: a monument, even warlike times, but fortunately, victorious days and a lasting wellbeing rühriger people in this area. Although in later time, built under the Antonines, it always reserves of admirable art is so much properties left that it gracefully throughout the awards we are serious and of his, although very damaged parts notifies the feeling of an existence merry - making. "

The Sayner Lodge at Bendorf on the Rhine, which had specialized in imitation of ancient models in the art casting method, has created in 1829 a 19-inch replica of the Igel Column, designed by the Kunstformers Heinrich Zumpft and drawings by Carl Osterwald. One of the first bronze casts went in May 1829 Weimar Goethe.

Miscellaneous

Not far from the Igel Column in a vineyard slope is located to the Grutenhäuschen another, but reconstructed Roman tomb.

Conservation

The Igls column is a protected cultural monument after the Monument Protection Act ( DSchG ) and entered in the list of monuments of Rhineland- Palatinate. It lies in the Triererstraße.

Since 1986, the Igel column is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Roman Monuments, Cathedral and Church of Our Lady in Trier. In addition, it marked a cultural property protected under the Hague Convention and with the blue and white emblem.