Liberation Monument (Mainz)
The Liberation Monument (officially " Freedom ") was a memorial created by Benno Elkan that stood between 1930 and 1933 on Schillerplatz in Mainz . It was destroyed by the National Socialists in 1933.
history
On June 30, 1930, the French occupying forces withdrew from Mainz. This event should be celebrated with a memorial. The granite work created by the artist Benno Elkan, who was living in Frankfurt am Main at the time, showed a kneeling female figure almost four meters high with a bared upper body, who tilted her head to the left and held her right arm above her head. Elkan called the figure "The Awakening". The memorial was inaugurated on July 20, 1930 in the presence of President Paul von Hindenburg . It stood on the plinth of a former dance pavilion very close to the Osteiner Hof , where the French military administration had its headquarters. The Mainzer Anzeiger interpreted that the monument should symbolize the awakening from a difficult time and the view into a hopefully better future.
The bare breasted female figure caused offense in Mainz. On August 4, 1930, the Catholic Mainzer Journal published a declaration of protest by the Mainz pastors who allegedly felt that their religious and moral feelings had been injured. Because of the figure, the Catholic Church moved the Corpus Christi procession , which traditionally led across Schillerplatz , to a different route in June 1931 . After the government takeover of the Nazis in Hesse on March 6, 1933, the monument was first smeared and the end of March 1933 on operating the Acting Mayor Philipp Wilhelm Jung demolished.
The carnival fountain has been located here since 1967 . An information board reminds of the liberation monument.
See also
- The Stresemann memorial (1931–1935) in Mainz was also destroyed by the National Socialists.
Web links
- Regionalgeschichte.net: Mainz under National Socialism 1933-1945. Tour ( online ) (accessed November 21, 2014)
Coordinates: 49 ° 59 ′ 52.9 ″ N , 8 ° 16 ′ 5 ″ E