Return of the Bröckemännche

There are some lovely, cheeky little statues around Cologne, Düsseldorf and Bonn, one of my favourites is the "Bröckemännche" which normally lives on the Kennedy Bridge in Bonn-Beuel.  I say normally because he's been taken down since the start of building works to the bridge, but he's due to be put back up later this year.  The Brückenmännche is a figure of a man pointing his bottom at Beuel.  The original Bröckemännche was put up as a kind of "up yours" gesture to Beuel.  When the bridge was built in the eighteen hundreds, the citizens of Beuel refused to pay their share so the angry Bonners erected the statue on the bridge in revenge.  The original Bröckemännche was rescued after the second world war, when the bridge was bombed, and can still be seen on the wall of Ristorante Rossi.  A copy was made of the original figure, but this time his bottom pointed towards Frankfurt instead of Beuel.  The message being "We got capital city status - not you!". 

Ristorante Rossi, Wilhelmstrasse 22, 53111 Bonn
Stadt Bonn Info