Ship of Fools

Brief information

Nuremberg’s “Ship of Fools” is called a fountain, but it stands without a basin: the water feature that was planned remained a bronze sculpture on the pavement of the pedestrian zone. Because of this, the place reads with a slight dissonance. What stands before the viewer is not a working fountain, but a ship that was never “launched.”

Jürgen Weber’s sculpture was installed in 1988 on an unnamed square between Museumsbrücke, Spitalgasse, and Plobenhofgasse. Its source is Sebastian Brant’s “Ship of Fools” and Albrecht Dürer’s engravings for that text. So the boat here is not decoration, but an image of a world under threat: a satirical book turned into urban bronze.

What to notice first

It is worth comparing three things: the shape of the boat, the absence of a basin, and the details from which, according to the design, water was supposed to flow. In the completed version, the ship would have overflowed like a fountain bowl, and water would have poured from the figures of the galleon, the crow, and the wine glass. Now these elements help one see not only the sculpture, but also the unrealized mechanics of the fountain.

The figures on the bronze boat are connected not by a common decorative quality, but by the theme of human folly and violence. Here there is the expulsion of Adam and Eve, Adam with the little murderer Cain, an allegory of violence, and other scenes from Brant’s book. Two banners translate the old satire into a modern meaning: they sound like a call against environmental destruction, war, and violence.