The six stages
Six bronze groups tracing a marriage from beginning to end, read as a story running round the fountain.
W. Bulach — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Creando — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 3.0
Ten minutes is enough to walk round it and see all six groups. It is a brief stop on the way rather than a destination, sitting between the station and the old town so you pass it anyway.
Because the artist did not prettify the subject: some figures show quarrelling, jealousy, ageing and death harshly and directly, rather than marriage as pleasant pictures present it. Many in Nuremberg found it ugly and unfitting for a public square when it went up.
Small children will see funny, strange statues without grasping the meaning, which is fine. Older ones may ask about some of the blunter scenes. There is no reason to avoid it, but be ready for the question.
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The Ehekarussell is a strange modern fountain on Ludwigsplatz, near the Frauentor gate. The sculptor Jürgen Weber made it in 1984, taking his subject from a sixteenth-century poem about married life by the Nuremberg poet Hans Sachs. The fountain sets out six stages of marriage in large bronze figures: from first love and joy, through quarrelling and boredom, to old age and death. Some figures are beautiful and some deliberately ugly and disturbing, which is why it caused considerable argument when it was installed. It is free and out in the open on the square, and visitors usually stop for only a few minutes — but they do not forget it.
Six bronze groups tracing a marriage from beginning to end, read as a story running round the fountain.
It caused a wide argument in the city when it was installed in 1984, and some locals still dislike it.
Taken from a poem by Hans Sachs, Nuremberg's best-known sixteenth-century poet.
Ludwigsplatz, 90403 Nürnberg