Kugel-Denkmal

The Kugeldenkmal stands in Hamburg’s Wallanlagen, a small Schmuckgarten beside the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte. It is the last fragment of a monument raised to remember the city’s French siege in May 1813. The surviving piece is a cube of sandstone measuring about 132 by 133 centimetres, set into the ground with one large and three smaller cannonballs embedded in its face. The monument was designed by Johann Hinrich Martin Brekelbaum and paid for by private donations. When first unveiled on 19 May 1878 it rose like a church tower above a multi-tiered pedestal, surrounded by an iron fence. Sixty-five cannonballs came from the French bombardment of the Große Grasbrook and twenty-one more dated from a Danish siege in August 1686. The inscription on the pedestal quoted a translation of the Latin motto above the Rathaus portal. In 1883 the whole structure was moved to the Gertrudenkirchhof after houses were cleared for the Speicherstadt. War damage in the 1940s destroyed most of the original and only the surviving fragment was later placed near the museum. Today the sandstone cube with its cannonballs sits in a quiet corner of the Schmuckgarten. Visitors can walk around the small paved space and read the weathered inscription. The garden itself is planted with low hedges and seasonal flowers, offering a calm setting beside the larger museum building. From here it is easy to continue along the Wallanlagen paths or to enter the museum’s exhibitions on Hamburg’s history.