{"product_id":"hanover-kings-german-legion-cast-iron-plaque-wedemeyer-nec-aspera-terrent","title":"Hanover Kings German Legion Cast Iron Plaque Wedemeyer Nec Aspera Terrent","description":"\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eOriginal cast iron commemorative plaque honoring \u003cem\u003eDes Königs Deutsche Legion\u003c\/em\u003e (the King's German Legion), the Hanoverian formation that served in British pay against Napoleon from 1803 to 1816. The plaque takes the form of an elongated heraldic shield with a pointed base, cast in iron with a dark, near-black patinated finish. It measures 4.5 by 7 inches (approximately 11.4 by 17.8 cm) and weighs 13 ounces (approximately 369 grams).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eThe central relief renders the rearing \u003cem\u003eSachsenross\u003c\/em\u003e (Saxon Steed), the white horse of Lower Saxony and heraldic emblem of the House of Welf, mounted atop a plinth and trampling a fallen, vanquished figure beneath its forehooves. The modeling is vigorous and fully three-dimensional, the horse's flying mane, straining musculature, and open-mouthed defiance caught at the apex of its rear. The plinth below carries the raised Latin motto NEC ASPERA TERRENT (\"Nor do hardships deter [them]\"), the historic motto of the House of Hanover and of the units that bore its emblem, together with the dates 1803–1816 that bracket the Legion's existence from founding to disbandment. A smaller recessed frieze of marching soldiers occupies the panel below the inscription, reproducing in miniature one of the sculptural base reliefs designed for the monument. The lower edge of the field carries the incised signature H. WEDEMEYER. A second incised mark accompanied by a date appears within the face of the relief; it is not fully legible and likely represents a foundry or modeler's notation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eThe signature identifies the sculptor as Caspar Friedrich Heinrich Wedemeyer (1867–1941), a Lower Saxon-born artist who spent his career in Dresden. He trained at the Königliche Kunstakademie there from 1888, studying under Ernst Julius Hähnel and becoming a master pupil of Robert Diez in 1891, and worked as an independent sculptor in the city from 1902. He belonged to the Dresden artists' group Grün-Weiß, exhibited regularly at the city's national and international art shows from 1897, and was appointed professor at the Dresden Academy around 1928. His documented works include the bronze figure of the König-Albert monument at Radeberg, stucco reliefs for the festival halls of Schloss Waldenburg, and sculptures on equestrian themes such as his plaster \u003cem\u003ePferd und Reiter\u003c\/em\u003e (Horse and Rider) and \u003cem\u003eRossbändiger\u003c\/em\u003e (Horse-Tamer) — subjects that align closely with the rearing-horse composition seen on this plaque.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eThe design originates in one of the more poignant unrealized public monuments of Imperial Germany. In 1913, on the approach of the centenary of the Battle of Waterloo, a committee formed in Hanover to raise funds for a monument to the King's German Legion, to be erected at the Königsworther Platz with the support of the city administration. In February 1914 the memorial committee opened an artistic competition, and Wedemeyer — a Hanoverian working in Dresden — won first prize with an entry submitted under the title \u003cem\u003eBefreiung\u003c\/em\u003e (Liberation). The planned monument was colossal, intended to reach a total height of 15.30 meters (just over fifty feet). Its base was to carry the dedication \u003cem\u003eDer Königlich Deutschen Legion 1803–1816 das dankbare Volk\u003c\/em\u003e (\"To the King's German Legion 1803–1816, the grateful people\") together with the names of all forty-one battles and engagements in which the Legion had fought. Within weeks of the competition result, the First World War broke out and the project was suspended. It was never resumed: full-size plaster models of the figural group and the base reliefs were produced in 1923 at the Lauchhammer art foundry in the Niederlausitz, but the monument was never cast in permanent form. Those plaster models survived a remarkable odyssey — rescued from destruction after the Second World War, carried to the Nationalgalerie in Berlin where they lay for decades as unidentified holdings, and finally returned to Hanover's Historisches Museum, where they are preserved today. This small cast plaque reproduces Wedemeyer's central sculptural group and one of the base reliefs from that lost design, making it a tangible fragment of a monument that existed only on paper and in plaster.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eThe formation the plaque commemorates holds an exceptional place in both German and British military history. When French troops occupied the Electorate of Hanover in 1803 and the Convention of Artlenburg forced the dissolution of its army, thousands of Hanoverian officers and soldiers refused French service and crossed the North Sea to Britain, whose king George III was simultaneously Elector of Hanover. There they were reconstituted, by the end of 1803, as the King's German Legion — a complete combined-arms corps of dragoons, hussars, light and line infantry, and horse and foot artillery, all German-speaking volunteers fighting for a sovereign who was at once their king and their elector. It became the only German formation to fight without interruption against Napoleon throughout the wars. The Legion served at Copenhagen in 1807, in Pomerania and Sicily, and won its greatest renown in the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal, where its cavalry earned a reputation as among the finest in the British army — at García Hernández in 1812 its dragoons achieved the rare feat of breaking formed French infantry squares. It shared in the liberation of northern Germany in 1813–14 and stood on the field at Waterloo in 1815, where the Legion's 2nd Light Battalion under Major Georg Baring defended the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte through the afternoon in one of the battle's decisive holding actions. Disbanded in 1816, its veterans formed the nucleus of the new Kingdom of Hanover's army, whose successor regiments were absorbed into the Imperial German Army after unification in 1871. The plaque's imagery — the trampled foe crushed beneath the defiant Welfenross — gives visual form to the Legion's self-understanding as an exiled force that never ceased resisting the occupier, and the motto \u003cem\u003eNec aspera terrent\u003c\/em\u003e frames that endurance in a single line.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eCondition is very good and consistent with an original period casting. The relief detail is crisp and complete, the patina even and undisturbed, and the raised lettering fully legible across the motto and dates. There is no cracking, no active corrosion, and no evident repair. The reverse is plain, carrying the negative impression of the relief and the normal surface texture of the casting. No wall-mounting hardware is present.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eFor the collector, the plaque brings together several strands of interest that rarely coincide in a single small object. It is a signed work by an identifiable academic sculptor, a professor of the Dresden Academy whose larger commissions are documented and preserved. It commemorates a formation of the first rank in the shared military history of Hanover and Britain, from the exile of 1803 to the ridge at Mont-Saint-Jean. And it is a surviving relic of an ambitious Hanoverian monument that the First World War prevented from ever being built — the design known otherwise chiefly through the plaster models now in a museum. That combination of secure attribution, deep historical resonance, and connection to a lost public monument sets it well apart from anonymous decorative iron castings of the period. Signed Wedemeyer plaques of this design are seldom encountered on the collector market.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Derrittmeister Militaria Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50141737550063,"sku":"18-106","price":372.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/9169\/5855\/files\/18-106_1.jpg?v=1783362209","url":"https:\/\/derrittmeister.com\/products\/hanover-kings-german-legion-cast-iron-plaque-wedemeyer-nec-aspera-terrent","provider":"Derrittmeister Militaria Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}