Belgium: Anglo-Belgium War Memorial

 

Brussels, Belgium Anglo-Belgium War Memorial.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2009)

Belgium: Anglo-Belgium War Memorial (1923)

Europe is covered with war monuments like a measles patient has spots.  You can find them in every village and town, in every country.  Big cities have big monuments, and small ones tucked away in small parks and on street corners.  These vary tremendously in their effect as vessels of memory, as works of at and as urban decoration and the backdrop for public ceremony.  

I am partial to the monuments of World War I.  It was a big war with terrible consequences, and many of the memorials are big monuments with bold forms in striking postures - though few if any were allowed to depict scenes of suffering and death.  A good example of this is the Anglo-Belgian War Memorial in Brussels, Belgium, commissioned by the British Imperial War Graves Commission and designed by the British sculptor Charles Sargeant Jagger (1885–1934).  In Belgium it is known as the Brits Oorlogsmonument in Dutch and the Monument Britannique in French.  It is built as a wide wall-like cenotaph.

 

Brussels, Belgium Anglo-Belgium War Memorial.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2009)

Unlike many monuments, it does not commemorate a heroic battle, but rather the support given by the Belgian people to British prisoners of war.  The tall central figures in high relief represent a British and a Belgian soldier.  On wither side are low reliefs depicting wounded British soldiers aided by Belgian peasants.  It was unveiled by the Prince of Wales in 1923.  The monument is carved from Brainvilliers stone.  Casts of the reliefs are at the Imperial War Museum, London.  A plaster cast of the Belgian soldier is held in the Army Museum in Brussels.

Strength and nobility of purpose were the overriding themes of World War I monuments  - as if the posture of these monuments could make the population forget the immeasurable and often pointless suffering and destruction of the war.  For those memories one needs to turn to post-war literature and art. Still, the bold and sometimes heavy-handed imagery of these monuments endured, and Jagger's sculptures for the Brussels monument foreshadows the public sculptural style favored by the 1930s by powerful image-conscious states - whether Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia or the democratic but capitalist United States.

 

 Brussels, Belgium Anglo-Belgium War Memorial.  A pedestrian hurries past the monument, without considering its purpose.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2009)

This type of war monument is very different in form and purpose to many earlier war memorials - such as those American Civil War monuments in Detroit, Michigan (1872) and Troy, New York (1891) I have written about, and the contemporary and nearby Infantry Soldiers Monument in Brussels at place Poelaert (1935), that served as central organizing points in the urban plan, punctuating an important intersection, and often serving as a visual focal point for long street vistas. Such monuments often include tall columns or obelisks.  

This Brussels monument is a wall to be passed by, but become animated when it serves as the backdrop to commemorative ceremonies.  When used like the scaenae frons of a theater, in front of which the appropriate - but varied activities take place, memory can be triggered, reformulated and invigorated.  Or, it may more resemble in purpose a temple front - before which the same activity takes place year after year following a remembered but formulaic liturgy, important to those who have first-hand experience of the event commemorated, but entirely foreign to all others.  For all such monuments deciding how they will be used determines how they will be understood.

The resemblance to a giant gravestone encourages the placement of wreaths and flowers upon the projecting ledge at the base. There are many examples of this type of monument.  One of the best known is the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument, dedicated in 1948.

For Veterans / Armistice Day: More Monuments of Jews who Died in World War I

For Veterans / Armistice Day: More Monuments of Jews who Died in World War I  
by Samuel D. Gruber (all photos Samuel D. Gruber 2011)

(cross-posted from Samuel Gruber's Jewish Art & Monuments)

Today is Veterans' Day - originally  Armistice Day - celebrating the end of the First World War - the War to End all Wars (that didn't).  In honor of all Veterans, but especially Jews who fought and died on both sides in World War I, I refer you to some images of Jewish war memorials from Italy, Hungary and the Czech Republic that I first put only line in May 2009.

I am also adding a new one from the New Jewish Cemetery in Worms, Germany that I visited in 2011. worms, is much better know for its Old Jewish Cemetery and medieval synagogue and Judengasse, but it had a prosperous Jewish community until the rise of Hitler.

The Jewish community had been trying since the late 19th century to establish a new burial ground, since the old Jewish cemetery was filled.  In 1910 the community was able to establish the Hochheim cemetery, right next to the Hauptfriedhof Worms (Friedhof Hochheimer Höhe), with a separate entrance. The new cemetery was inaugurated in 1911, just a few years before the war.  

 

Inscribed in gold letters over a triumphal archway is the phrase "Unsern Henden" (Our Heroes). 

 Nineteen of Worms' Jews were killed in the war, their names are listed on the monument.

  

The monument was restored in 2006 with help from the Rotary Club Worms.

Ruth Ellen Gruber has posted more examples of Jewish War Monuments on her blog. Click here.

Troy, New York's Towering Civil War Monument at the Center of Renewed City Life

Troy, New York's Towering Civil War Monument at the Center of Renewed City Life
by Samuel D. Gruber

Troy, New York. Monument Square (formerly Washington Square).  Historic postcard and contemporary view.

I love looking at Civil War monuments, in part for the story they tell about the war and those who served, fought and died, but also because more than any other group of American public artworks they are also often integral elements in the cityscape, or sometimes in a cemetery landscape.  This is especially the case in Troy, New York where the 90-foot tall Soldiers and Sailors Monument at Monument Square, with its bronze statue "Call to Arms" perched atop its summit, sits at an intersection of River Street, 2nd Street and Broadway at the heart of a revived and increasingly vibrant downtown.  The Saturday Farmers' Market spreads out on all ides of the triangular "square" and north on River Street.  

Troy, NY. Soldiers and Sailors Monument.  Fuller & Wheller, archs.; John E. Kelly, sculptor (1890-91). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber

The Square is now part of the Central Troy Historic District, the largest urban National Register Historic district in the United States. 

The hey-day of Civil War monuments also corresponds to the greatest period of American, figural and monumental sculpture, that era we now refer to as the American Renaissance, dominated by sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907), Frederick William MacMonnies (1863-1937) and John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910), but also graced with many other fine (though now largely forgotten) artists. 

 

Troy, NY. Soldiers and Sailors Monument.  Fuller & Wheeler, archs.; John E. Kelly, sculptor (1890-91). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber

The use of a tall column for a military monument is ancient in origin, and Trajan's column in Rome is the best known example.  But tall columns as monuments were popular in the United States in the 19th century, the best known being Robert Mills' Washington Monument in Baltimore (1815-29).  The Troy monument was erected in 1890-91 and dedicated in September 1891.  The design is by  Albany architects (Albert W.) Fuller & (William Arthur) Wheeler. The construction contract was awarded Frederick & Field, of Quincy, Mass.

The cornerstone was laid on Decoration Day, Friday, May 30th, 1890.  In addition to the usual laudatory speeches, there was "a large procession of veteran soldiers and the military organizations the city, under the direction of Major-General Joseph B. Carr, chief marshal, and the singing of dedicatory and patriotic hymns by five hundred school children."  Even more lavish celebrations, as described in the New York Times, marked the completion and dedication of the monument the following year.

The robust tri-partite base of the monument is one of the last full-blown examples of a medieval style made more muscular and angular, pioneered by Philadelphia architect (and Civil War veteran) Frank Furness.  The style that was popular in American after the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial exposition (and Furness's Provident Life and Trust Building of the same year), but was replaced in most public buildings and monuments by Roman-inspired classicism after the success of the "White City"of the 1893 Chicago Colombian Exposition.

The base supports four bronze relief plaques representating the cavalry, infantry and artillery branches of the Union military service and a fourth plaque representing the naval battle between the Monitor and Merrimac.  Atop the tall granite shaft is the bronze statue titled " Call to Arms" by New York sculptor James E. Kelly (1855-1933). Kelly was a leading illustrator and sculptor of Civil War scenes and the creator of many monuments throughout the country. 

Troy, NY. Soldier and Sailors Monument.  John E. Kelly, sculptor (1890-91). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber

Kelly's bronze reliefs revive the lively style of Civil War illustration popularized in magazines such as Harper's during the war, but they also draw from classical Greek and Roman sources; casts and engravings of which were plentifully available in late-19th century America.  But it is also likely the Kelly was aware of the Edward Muybridge's studies of animal locomotion widely presented since 1878. The composition of Kelly's cavalry charge brings to mind the famous Parthenon frieze, but the lively movement of the horses suggests Muybridge's motion studies. 

Troy, NY  "Calvary" from Soldier and Sailors Monument.  John E. Kelly, sculptor (1890-91). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber

 

 

Athens, Greece. Detail of the Parthenon frieze.

 

"The Horse in Motion" by Edward Muybridge (1878)

Kelley also provided a bronze panel celebrating the Union artillery in which the big wheel of the cannon takes central place in high relief. 

 

 Troy, NY.  "Artillery" from Soldiers and Sailors Monument.  John E. Kelly, sculptor (1890-91). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber

 

  

 Troy, NY. Soldiers and Sailors Monument.  Fuller & Wheeler, archs.; John E. Kelly, sculptor (1890-91). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber

Troy, NY. Soldiers and Sailors Monument.  Fuller & Wheller, archs.; John E. Kelly, sculptor (1890-91). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber

 

 Troy, NY. Soldiers and Sailors Monument.  Fuller & Wheeler, archs.; John E. Kelly, sculptor (1890-91). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber