Kindlifresserbrunnen, Renaissance fountain in Granary Square, Switzerland
The Kindlifresserbrunnen is a painted stone fountain on Kornhausplatz in Bern, created by Hans Gieng in 1545–1546. Its sculpture shows a seated bearded ogre in a red hat, red jacket and green hose, biting the head of a naked child held to his mouth, with three more children in a brown sack on his lap. The figure leans on a Corinthian column hung with garlands, above a base carved with a procession of armed bears.
Hans Gieng created the fountain in 1545 to replace an older wooden structure at the same location. It emerged during the Renaissance as an expression of the city's artistic and engineering capabilities.
The name Kindlifresser means "child-eater" in Swiss German, first recorded in 1666; before that the fountain was called Platzbrunnen. The figure belongs to the medieval and early modern tradition of the Kinderschreck, a bogeyman used to frighten disobedient children, shown with a sack for misbehaving children. The pointed hat has been linked to a Jewish hat and to Georg Pencz's 1531 print of Saturn, and the figure appears in Jacques Chessex's 1973 novel L'Ogre.
The fountain stands on Kornhausplatz, not Kornmarkt, in Bern's Old Town, a short walk from the Zytglogge clock tower. It was shifted slightly in 1997 during tram-line renovation work on the square. Energie Wasser Bern supplies the basin with drinking water of regularly checked quality, so the spouts can be used to fill a bottle.
The eight children may stand for the eight cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy, with the ogre as an enemy trying to swallow them. This reading matches the base frieze of armed bears marching to war, with a piper and drummer, possibly designed by Hans Rudolf Manuel Deutsch.
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