Pferdetränkbrunnen

The Pferdetränkbrunnen stands in Dresden’s Äußere Neustadt, near the corner of Bautzner Straße and the former Goldener Löwe inn. Created in 1921 by Paul Polte, a master student of Georg Wrba, it replaced an earlier pump-brunnnen first recorded in 1836. The old inn served travellers on the road to the Elbe valley and beyond, where horse-drawn carts paused to water their animals. In 1920 the local animal-protection society proposed a grand drinking fountain for horses, and the city agreed to cover pipe-laying costs. Two separate water sources were installed: one from the Oberfischmannsteich spring line, the other from the drinking-water network, each marked by signs.

The winning design, titled ‘Zweigespann’, shows a rectangular trough with a central column crowned by two cast-concrete horse heads joined by a collar like a horse’s harness. Below, two smaller bowls serve dogs. After wartime damage to the inn, the fountain survived and was restored in 1991 with timed computer-controlled jets. A second renovation in 2013–14 added a green plaza of ten Japanese flowering cherries, a small plant room housing pumps, filters and UV disinfection, and a buffer tank for continuous circulation.

Visitors today find a quiet square framed by cherry trees and a low hedge, with the fountain’s horse heads rising above the trough. The inscription reads ‘Errichtet vom alten Tierschutzverein 1921’. Behind stands a modern apartment building completed in 2015, while the plant room sits discreetly to one side. Water still flows from both marked outlets, and at set times the jets rise and fall in the basin.