The Neptune fountain was commissioned by Kaiser Wilhelm II, made more than a hundred years ago (1886-91) by Reinhold Begas, and originally placed on the south side of the Berlin City Palace, the former Royal Palace. It was severely damaged during the War, thoroughly restored, and re-erected at its current location in 1969.

You can see the Neptune fountain in the center of East Berlin if you walk from Alexanderplatz through the windswept square between the TV Tower (Fernsehturm), the Red City Hall (Rotes Rathaus), and the Palace of the Republic (Palast der Republik). Surrounded by faceless socialist architecture, the baroque fountain in bronze and granite seems slightly out of place here, yet this simply adds to its fascination.

Neptune is the Roman name for Poseidon, the Greek god of the Sea. When Begas made the Neptune fountain over 100 years ago, the Kaiser was interested in turning Germany into a sea power. Kaiser Wilhelm II is conventionally portrayed as an anti-Semite and a reactionary whose policies, particularly the buildup of the German navy, inevitably led to World War I.

"In the first biography of the last kaiser in over 30 years, Giles MacDonogh describes a more complex man with far more in common with his English mother, Queen Victoria's daughter Vicky, than is usually acknowledged. 'He had inherited her memory, her lack of snobbery, openness, vivacity, moodiness, over-estimation of her own importance, her cleverness without wisdom,' writes MacDonogh, characteristically listing both good and bad traits without moralizing" (amazon.com).

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Weichsel III

According to classical mythology, Poseidon was swallowed by his father Cronos. Cronos was the son of Uranus who was the first ruler of the universe.

It is told that Uranus hated his own children and kept them imprisoned underground. This grieved their mother Gaia who encouraged a revolt against him. Uranus was overthrown. However, the new ruler Cronos shut his siblings up in the same dark depth again. His parents prophesized that he would be dethroned by his own son. In order to escape his fate, Cronos began to swallow his children at birth. This enraged his wife Rhea because she was always pregnant and never a mother.

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Oder II

There are different versions of these classical myths. Sometimes it is told that Cronos did not swallow Poseidon, that Cronos cast Poseidon under the sea or that Rhea told Cronos that she had given birth to a horse and gave him a foal to swallow instead of the child. When Zeus was born, she prevented him from being swallowed by giving Cronos a stone wrapped in clothes instead, as if it were the newborn child.

Metis, the goddess of all wisdom and knowledge, is rarely mentioned although she plays a very important role in classical mythology. After she helped Zeus against his father, he forced her to become his first wife. Zeus became concerned over prophecies that their child would replace him when she was pregnant with Athena and swallowed Metis to prevent this. It is rarely recognized that Metis was the mother of Athena because the Greeks discounted the women´s role and because Zeus swallowed Metis before Athena was born. The Greeks used to believe that children evolve from their fathers sperm and women were nothing more than a vessel for the fetus to grow in.

The bronze sculptures are covered with green patina and highlighted by the red clinker brick from the mark Brandenburg that was used to build the City Hall in the background. Their charisma, openness, and transparency is magnified by the closed dealings that are associated with the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall) where the East Berlin SED top mayor resided until 1990.

Reinhold Begas was born in 1831 in Berlin and studied sculpture in Italy (1856-1858). After 1870, Begas dominated the plastic art in Prussia, especially in Berlin. The Neptune fountain belongs to his major works during this period.

In the midst of sculptures and water cascades, the ten meter high god Neptune, trident in hand, reigns supreme in a huge shell carried by tritons and surrounded by ocean nymphs. Denizens of the deep (a seal, an alligator, snakes and turtles) are spraying water while four female figures which represent the four rivers that once ran through Prussian territory (the Rhine, the Weichsel, the Oder, and the Elbe) are pouring water into the fountain.