Lost, empty, and painful are words to describe the history of Die Wasserschöpferin Sculpture. This is no ordinary fountain. It’s a powerful memorial in Kassel with a story etched in loss.
In 1908, Sigmund Aschrott, a Jewish businessman, funded a beautiful fountain for Kassel’s City Hall. It was a gift to the city he loved. The fountain, designed in renaissance revival style, featured a 12-meter-high pyramid made of sandstone.
But with the rise of German fascism, things changed. The fountain became known as the “Judenbrunnen” or Jewish fountain. In 1939, Kassel citizens destroyed it. They even created a false justification claiming it contained Jewish symbols.
After World War II, the fountain’s site was simply covered with flowers. The history was being forgotten.
In the 1980s, a movement began to restore a fountain that would memorialize Aschrott. Artist Horst Hoheisel won the commission. He grappled with the fountain’s history. He also considered what a new monument should represent.
Hoheisel’s idea was daring. He recreated the original fountain as a hollow concrete shell. It was displayed upright briefly. Then it was buried upside down. This inverted fountain was covered with glass and a grate. People could walk over it. They could look into its emptiness. The sound of falling water echoed from 12 meters below.
Hoheisel wanted to recreate the fountain. But he wanted to emphasize loss and forgotten history. A perfect replica would have been too comforting.
For Hoheisel, the sunken fountain is not the memorial itself. It is history turned into a pedestal. It invites people to search for the memorial in their own minds. That’s the only place it can truly be found.
The empty space represents what was lost. Instead of explaining the loss, he preferred facing it. He invites us to listen to the void. It is a negative of an irretrievable form. Here, the memory of what vanished resounds. It is better than numbly enduring the facts.
Die Wasserschöpferin stands as a counter-memorial. It marks the spot where a majestic fountain once stood, destroyed by hate. Since 1998, a model of this fountain can be found at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel. The Aschrottbrunnen is a place to remember, to reflect, and to never forget.