Obelisk (Traunstein)

 monument, place with historical importance, obelisk

The cast-iron war memorial in Traunstein had to be dismantled due to severe damage to its interior structure and completely restored at the Haber & Brandner workshops in Regensburg. The memorial to the Traunstein soldiers who fell during Napoleon's Russian campaign is one of the earliest Bavarian war memorials made of cast iron. It was cast in the royal Maxhütte iron foundry in Bergen, as the foundry signatures on several parts attest. The artistic models for this obelisk-shaped memorial are the cast-iron monuments designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel after Napoleon's Russian campaign in 1812 and the bronze obelisk on Munich's Karolinenplatz, cast in 1833. During the restoration, the interior structure of the memorial had to be completely replaced. The inscriptions and the trophies mounted on the obelisk were gilded. The color scheme was reconstructed using old photographs in consultation with the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments. On November 8, shortly before Remembrance Day, the monument was placed back on its stone base using a large mobile crane.