Schauspielhausbrunnen

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Märchenbrunnen (Fairy Tale Fountain) by Friedrich Christoph Hausmann, 1910
Untermainanlage
Frankfurt, September 2024

“The Fairytale Fountain or Schauspielhaus Fountain in Frankfurt am Main is located on the Untermainanlage next to the Frankfurt Municipal Theater. It is an Art Nouveau fountain that was completed in 1910. The construction of the fountain was initiated and financed by the art patron Leo Gans, who, as director of the Cassella works in Fechenheim, founded an art fund at the turn of the century and spent 150,000 marks (around 1.3 million euros in today's purchasing power) on the project. The sculptor Friedrich Christoph Hausmann was commissioned to create the fountain figure from white Tyrolean marble, a nymph (popularly known as the ‘Mainweibchen’). In the house of the city's well-known Jewish aristocratic family Carl and Arthur von Weinberg, where many social events took place, the choice fell on a young, pretty laundress from Niederrad who worked there: Margarete Endres, the later wife of the organist Eduard Gelbart. She was the daughter of a rubber mixer from Lower Franconia - not, as is often mistakenly believed, a baker. In 1906 (she was 19 years old at the time) she posed as a model for Städel professor Friedrich Hausmann.” (Märchenbrunnen, Wikipedia)