Frauenbrunnen

The Women's Fountain was created by sculptor Anneliese Langenbach together with her son Claus. The commissioner was the urban development company moderne Stadt, while the thematic suggestions came from the Cologne City Museum (Kölnisches Stadtmuseum). The sculpture was unveiled on 7 May 1987 at a celebration marking the completion of the „An Farina“ building complex.

On a round base about 1.35 metres high stand ten female figures, each roughly 1.20 metres tall, in chronological order: a Ubian woman and a Roman woman (50 AD), a Frankish woman (around 400), Saint Ursula, a Cologne woman (around 1400), a Jewish woman (1424), a Dutch woman (around 1600), an Italian woman (around 1750), a Prussian woman (1832) and a Cologne woman of 1987. They are distinguished mainly by differently coloured clothing and hairstyles modelled on their respective epoch.

The portrayal has been viewed critically. According to KuLaDig, the figures are arranged frontally, impassively and without any relation to one another. Irene Franken, founder of the Cologne Women's History Association, complains that the women – apart from the city's patron saint Ursula – remain nameless and that formative figures are missing, such as the guildswomen, the women's rights activist Mathilde Franziska Anneke or the local character Bolze Lott. The 1987 Cologne woman was also contentious: originally Langenbach wanted to show her in jeans, but the commissioner wished for a conservative depiction with a knee-length dress, flat shoes and a small girl at her side.

In 1999, on the occasion of the World Economic Summit, the fountain was fitted with a fence and a metal cover to protect the participants – among them US President Bill Clinton. Since then it has carried no water. The sculpture shows heavy signs of weathering, and its colours have faded (as of 2023).