In 1985, i.e. 130 years after the erection of the monuments, experts from the Dresden Office for Monument Conservation (
VEB Denkmalpflege Dresden) questioned the structural stability of the columns during an inspection. Five years later, following an emergency meeting on 11 September 1990 in Putbus, a Berlin master stonemason and restorer was contracted to remove both monuments. In late November 1991, the monuments were dismantled and their drums, capitals and statues transported to the master stonemason's workshop in
Berlin-Pankow. Originally replicas of the drums, capitals and statues were to be made, because the advice had been not to repair them due to the severe damage to the original stone. The drums had once been joined together by means of iron pins. Serious corrosion of these jointing pins over many decades had caused the granite to split in places, which meant there had been a danger of the columns collapsing as result of the formation of cracks and fissures. The statues, too, were so badly eroded by weathering and lightning strikes, that their outline had been destroyed for ever. The material to be used for any replicas - i.e.
Elbe Sandstone for the capitals and statues and Bornholm granite, of which the Nardevitz Erratic was also made, for the column drums weighing six and five tons respectively - would be readily obtainable. Further damage occurred during disassembly. The commissioned stonemason used percussion drills to get the iron pins out that held the pieces of the granite together. In doing so, large pieces at the respective ends of the drums were broken off. The drilling holes at each end of the drums show this clearly. The journey to Berlin was did not go smoothly either. The statue of Frederick William I from Great Stresow broke off at the legs. The head came off and was glued back by the master stonemason. Due to the continuing shortage of money in the district of
Rügen, which was the owner of the monuments, little work was carried out in the following years, with the exception of the completion of a capital. One of the factors in this situation was, for example, the fact that in allocating funds, the making of replicas had a lower priority over the restoration of original monuments. A staged plan agreed in March 2003 by the Prussia Columns Working Group envisaged the following steps: First the pedestals of the two monuments should be returned to their rightful place, then the column drums and finally the statues by 2010. Because parts of the pedestals were and are still dotted randomly around the site of the monument in Neukamp (as at January 2007). The idea behind this phased plan was and is that a beginning must be made more visible to attract sponsors and increase donations. In seeking sponsors for this project, the president of the County Council even wrote, for example, to the royal houses of Denmark and Sweden. In April 2004 it was decided to return the original pieces of the first Prussia Column to the island by the time of the 150th anniversary of its inauguration, i.e. by 15 October 2004. Even this return journey failed thanks again to financial problems, because for the two monuments only a token amount of 500 euros was set aside in the county budget. In October 2004, the 3.30-metre-high pedestal of the Prussia Column at Groß Stresow was restored. As was suspected from the results of earlier soil investigations, the stability of this monument had been reinforced by the use of stones laid to a depth of 5.80 metres and which had been taken from a megalithic tomb that had formerly lain on the site. This was re-confirmed during work on the foundation. The necessary €20,000 were found from donations by the bank of
Kreissparkasse Rügen and the
German Foundation for Monument Conservation. On 2 September 2005, the original pieces were transported, unworked, from Berlin to Putbus and, since then have been displayed to the public in an open area on
Alleestraße road, near the roundabout. Here, too, an accident happened for the master stonemason. The already broken statue of Frederick William I fell over in the workshop. The plaits, the nose, part of the brim of the hat and the arm broke off. After almost 15 years, all the pieces were now back at Rügen, in order to enable an independent assessment by experts. An information board here gives the story of the two monuments and appeals for donations for their reconstruction. On 28 April 2006, a symposium on the recovery and restoration of both monuments was held in Putbus. The organizer of the symposium was the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania State Office for Culture and Heritage. They came up with the following option for rebuilding the monuments using the original parts: the original parts would first be pierced in the middle of their longitudinal axis. They would then be placed, piece by piece, on the column once the damage had been repaired, the loading on the individual sections being born by a solid
stainless steel tube bored through them. Thuse, each part of the column would only be carrying its own weight, the internal, invisible stainless steel pipe, with a new foundation, would bear the overall load. Although this solution is controversial, it would cost (only) €80,000 per column. But faced with a budget deficit of approximately €9.5 million in the district of Rügen by the end of 2007, the money was still not available in 2008. In summer 2008, at least the pedestal in Neukamp was finally completed - without taking account of the solution proposed by the symposium. == External links ==