Hermann Joseph Fountain

After the Jan von Werth Fountain on Alter Markt, this was the second fountain the Cologne Beautification Society gave to the city. The civic association had set out to redesign Cologne's squares and improve the look of the city. In 1889 it invited designs for a "monumental running fountain" that would form an eye-catcher at the entrance to Waidmarkt. The brief set a budget of 15,000 marks, the materials sandstone and basalt lava, and a shortlist of figures: Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus or Hermann Joseph, who at the time was venerated only as a blessed.

The jury included Arthur Pabst, director of the museum of applied arts, city building councillor Josef Stübben, banker Eduard von Oppenheim, and architect and building councillor Hermann Otto Pflaume — the latter on the society's board and a close friend of Albermann's. The choice fell on Albermann and, as with Jan von Werth before, on the most popular of the motifs. Because the money had to be raised and the society had to negotiate with the city, the commission was only awarded in 1893. Albermann handed the fountain over to the society in September 1894; the society gave it to the city, which connected it to the water mains that October, and it began operating in spring 1895.

The basin, enclosed at roughly knee height, was originally cloverleaf-shaped. From it rises a square plinth with two side water bowls, columns and capitals at its corners and a cornice on top. Below the cornice, two dolphin heads spout water into the side basins, from where it flows through five dolphin masks each into the lower basin.

On the four corners of the cornice stand small figure groups: two boys apiece scuffling over an animal — a dog, a fish, an eagle and a crab. Above them rises a richly moulded octagonal column crowned by a seated Madonna with the Christ Child and the blessed Hermann Joseph as a boy, offering the Child an apple — which, as the legend goes, the Child accepts.

The plinth bears the signature "Albermann fec.", the central structure carries "Verschönerungsverein 1894" on the front, and the lettering "S. Hermann Joseph Köln 150" runs around the octagonal upper section at the Madonna's feet.

The fountain is regarded as the high point of Wilhelm Albermann's work; ten years earlier he had created the Jan von Werth Fountain on Alter Markt. The animal-head spouts echo the Renaissance and Mannerism, the four supporting columns with cushion capitals are Romanesque in flavour, and the tall octagonal plinth recalls the crossing tower of a Hohenstaufen church.

Several original details never returned: there were once additional lion's-head spouts at the front and back, four small pillars shaped like pine cones, and a trough at the rear. None were rebuilt — the running fountain became a purely ornamental one.