Monument to the Göttingen Seven (Göttingen)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sculpture donated by Günter Grass and Gerhard Steidl in 2011 for the campus of the University of Göttingen
Inscription plate with a quote from the protest of November 18, 1837

The monument to the Göttingen Seven in Göttingen is a sculpture donated by the writer and sculptor Günter Grass and his publisher Gerhard Steidl to commemorate the Göttingen Seven . The memorial was deliberately placed on the campus of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen , the place of work of the seven professors who maintained their democratic stance during the Hanoverian constitutional conflict at the time of the Kingdom of Hanover . The location of the sculpture is the place of the Göttinger Sieben in Göttingen.

History and description

The reason for the erection of the monument was the displeasure of the two donors that previously only the Hanoverian monument to the Göttingen Seven was erected near the building of the Lower Saxony state parliament in the state capital Hanover , but not at the place where the seven professors actually worked, namely at from the Georg-August University of Göttingen.

However, a memorial plaque had already been placed in the auditorium of Göttingen University in 1987 .

Günter Grass, however, designed a 1.70 m high sculpture for Göttingen made of around five centimeter wide strips of COR-TEN steel , which represent the letter “G” and the number “7”. After the company Metallbau Senge from Weende had made the sculpture based on Grass' design in 2010, it was installed on a 1.20 m high sandstone base. In addition, a bronze plate was attached to the base with a quote from the protestation of the Göttingen Seven on November 18, 1837:

“If the undersigned undersigned, after serious consideration of the importance of the case, cannot convince themselves otherwise than that the state law is valid according to its establishment and its contents, then they cannot, without offending their conscience, allow it to happen tacitly, the same thing without further investigation and defense on the part of those entitled, would perish on the path of power alone. Rather, your inevitable duty remains, as you are doing herewith, to openly declare that you must keep yourself continuously committed to the principle of the state by your oath. "

The memorial was finally opened to the public on April 28, 2011. When the simple , alphanumeric work of art was unveiled , which, when viewed from a distance, gave rise to the association with an “unsuccessful euro sign”, a belated listener was asked whether it should actually be called G8 .

Media coverage (selection)

  • Henryk M. Broder : Culture / Gift / Grass honors "Göttingen Seven" with a strange sculpture / Democracy is not a sausage for the Nobel Prize winner for literature: Günter Grass donates a memorial to the University of Göttingen. The work arouses all sorts of associations. In: Die Welt from April 28, 2011; last accessed online on November 17, 2014
  • Russian: Monument for the "Göttingen Seven" / Eastern bloc-like atrocity / Martyrs of freedom of the spirit, rebels against the spirit of the subject: Günter Grass gave Göttingen a monument. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of April 29, 2011; last accessed online on November 17, 2014

Web links

Commons : Monument of the Göttingen Seven  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f Hilmar Beck (responsible): Brunnen-Denkmale-Kunst ... (see under the section Web Links )
  2. Helmut Knocke : Göttinger Sieben. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , pp. 224f.
  3. NN : The state monument "The Göttinger Sieben" in front of the state parliament building , ed. by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament, Department for Public Relations, Minutes, December 2005, new edition January 20, 2009; downloadable as a PDF document
  4. Henryk M. Broder: Culture / Gift Grass honors "Göttinger Sieben" with a strange sculpture ... online

Coordinates: 51 ° 32'26.1 "  N , 9 ° 56'8.2"  E.