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Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) club

Posted: 15 Jul 2015

Taken: 27 Apr 2015

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Berlin Arnswalder Platz fertility fountain (#2698)

Berlin Arnswalder Platz fertility fountain (#2698)
I was on the tram and saw this bulky looking statuary fountain out the window, so had to check. The fountain (see also later picture) is the Fruchtbarkeitsbrunnen (fertility fountain) in Arnswalder Platz; due to the prominence of very large bulls it is popularly known as the bull fountain.

The fountain was commissioned by the Weimar Republic and finished in 1934. It had originally been intended for another park, but due to the weight of the statues (they're solid stone) another location had to be found and they ended up here. The fountain in the middle reportedly works, but isn't turned on.

I saw no comment as to why there was an assumed need for a fertility fountain. The Wikipedi page is in German: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnswalder_Platz
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 slgwv
slgwv club
IIRC the Nazis were very interested in boosting fertility, e.g. in discouraging women from working outside the home, and with the notorious Lebensborn (sp?) program, but maybe worries about German demographic decline antedated them--
8 years ago.
Don Barrett (aka DBs… club has replied to slgwv club
I don't know enough about the early post WWI era, but there were massive casualties and thus the Weimar policy may have seen a need to rebuild the population. What I didn't know about the subsequent Nazi regime but picked up in the travels was that the expansionism was about "Germanizing" larger portions of Europe and was based on assumptions that there wasn't enough space in Germany, which would suggest concerns about too much, not too little population. Of course, the only fertility the Nazis were interested in was Aryan fertility. I'm actually surprised that the sculpture made it through the Third Reich given that the humans depicted in it are not Aryan in appearance.
8 years ago.

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