Heinrich Heine Monument (Bronx)
The Heinrich Heine Monument in the Bronx district of New York, known in English as the Loreley Fountain , is a Loreley fountain created by Ernst Herter from white marble from Lasa and dedicated to the memory of the German poet and writer Heinrich Heine . The memorial should originally have been erected in Heine's hometown of Düsseldorf . However, anti-Semitic and nationalist agitation in the German Reich prevented it from being completed and inaugurated on Heine's 100th birthday in 1897. Instead, it was unveiled in the presence of the sculptor on July 8, 1899 in the Bronx , New York .
Design and location
A plinth on which a life-size Loreley figure sits rises from a fountain bowl several meters wide. As in Heine's poem about the Loreley, this figure combs “her golden hair”. Unlike in the poem, she does not sing a “wonderful, powerful melody”, but looks down, lost in thought. Three mermaids (naked female figures with fish tails) are seated in the fountain bowl and lean against the base, which is supported by three volutes . On the front of the base, a relief of a profile portrait of Heine is attached between two volutes . Below is the name of the poet. The figure to the left of the relief represents the lyric , to the right of it sits the “ satire ”, on the back there is the “ melancholy ”. Between the three figures, three dolphin heads spew water into mussel shells. In addition to the Heine portrait, there are two other reliefs between the volutes of the base: A naked boy in a fool's cap is aiming his pen at a dragon, symbolizing humor. A sphinx (half woman, half lioness) embraces on a third relief “a naked young man kissing death”.
On the left is the artist's signature "Professor / E. Herter, Berlin / fecit / 1897 · Marmorwerke Laas , Tirol", on the right the dedication "YOUR GREAT POET THE GERMANS IN AMERICA".
The memorial stands at the south end of Joyce Kilmer Park at 161st Street and Grand Concourse across from a District Court.
The Loreley
The Loreley is dressed biographer Herter Brigitte Hüfler in a "not contemporary clothes" in the opinion of. In her cleavage she wears a necklace, her embroidered coat is pulled over her hips. According to Hüfler, Herter “decorated his maiden splendidly for the program. The lips are slightly parted, the gaze is focused on something in depth and by no means concentrated on combing. "
The lyric
The “lyric” is the only one of the three figures that faces the Heine relief. She also suffices a rose, which is supposed to express a particularly intimate relationship between poetry and Heine.
“[Her hair] is adorned with reeds, a cloth falls down from the left shoulder and embraces the left thigh, but leaves all the nakedness exposed. At her side is the attribute of lyric poetry, the lyre. They are surrounded by a pair of beaking pigeons, also a traditional symbol of poetry, grass and other plants, water lilies even wrap around the left thigh. "
The satire
From the observer to the right of the Heine relief is the figure of satire, who turns her upper body towards Heine.
“[It appears] far less lovely than the lyric and the melancholy, especially the plump, without scales, but with jagged tails, like thick decorative seams, indicate the danger. This aggressive impression is underlined by the scourge, which is expressed as irony in satire [...]. She is encircled by her with her right hand, while she puts the other on her hip. Two ropes run across the chest that hold the net in the back, which stretches over the body from the front below the hips. She wears her hair decorated with henbane, animals and plants such as the polyp and the devil's claw are further attributes of her malevolence. "
The melancholy
In the back of the monument, Herter has positioned “melancholy”, which, according to Hüfler, represents the essence of the poet. The figure's hair is long and unadorned, she looks down sadly. In Hüfler's description, a cloth drapes softly “over her hips, which she holds with her left hand, while the right is supported by a stone that is surrounded by lotus flowers and ferns. Following your gaze, you will find thistles and a snake-shrouded skull on the left, symbols of death. "
The reliefs
The reliefs on the shaft bridge the space between the assistant figures and the Loreley.
The Sphinx is holding a naked youth and is probably kissing him death because he has not solved the world riddle . According to Hüfler, this representation symbolizes “Heine's urge to want to solve the world puzzle to the point of self-abandonment”.
The humor is supposed to kill a dragon that could be interpreted as prejudice and public opinion, which Heine wanted to fight with his satirical, critical humor.
The profile relief Heine is surrounded by a palm and a spruce branch, according to Hüfler a "well-known, compositional accessory of the arts and crafts".
The basin
“The monument presents itself to the beholder as a connection between the monument and the fountain, the three free-floating mussel shells of which open over a stepped, hexagonal base, which at the same time forms the basin. The polygonal develops out of an oval, in that rectangular basin protrusions slide outwards at 120 °. Those rectangular protrusions offer additional space for the three allegorical assistance figures that they need to unfold. "
Emergence
The erection of the monument in the Bronx was preceded by a long-term debate in the German Empire about Heine's “monument worthiness”. Anti-Semitic and nationalist circles succeeded in preventing the memorial from being erected in Düsseldorf or in any other German city.
First suggestions
A Heine renaissance in the 1880s led in the autumn of 1887 to the fact that a “Comité for the erection of a Heine monument” was formed in Heine's hometown of Düsseldorf . The aim of the initiative was to be able to unveil the monument on the 100th birthday of the poet in 1897. The Munich poet Paul Heyse took part in an appeal by the committee that appeared on November 2, 1887, among others in the Düsseldorfer Anzeiger. In the text Heyse deliberately ignored Heine's political convictions:
“ For us, Heinrich Heine is only the immortal song writer whom a Goethe and Walther von der Vogelweide greet over in the other world with outstretched singing hands. "
Following the call from Düsseldorf, committees were formed in other German cities to support the project. Even in New York there was interest in the project and support was promised. It was also important that the Austro-Hungarian Empress and Heine admirer Elisabeth ( Sissi ) join the Düsseldorf committee. On condition that the Berlin sculptor Ernst Herter execute the memorial, she promised the sum of 50,000 marks. In December 1887, she commissioned Herter to provide drafts for the memorial.
Efforts also made progress in Düsseldorf. On March 6, 1888, the city council decided to erect a Heine monument. The Hofgarten on the way to the Ananasberg and the eastern end of the Botanical Garden were promised as possible locations. The vote, however, was very close. In the event of a tie of eleven to eleven votes, the vote of the mayor Ernst Heinrich Lindemann , who was also a member of the memorial committee, decided. The city council was just as divided as the German public, in which a heated debate has raged since the memorial plans were announced.
At the time of the successful vote, Herter's first draft was already available: a monument with a canopy. Since the Empress did not like this design, the artist submitted two further proposals by May 1888: on the one hand a Heine figure sitting on a pedestal, on the other hand the Loreley fountain described above. The designs were on view from June 30, 1888 in the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle . While Elisabeth preferred the Heine figure, the people of Düsseldorf preferred the Loreley fountain. This was obviously not just for aesthetic reasons. The Loreley was a popular figure who distracted from the political, anti-Prussian Heine. The decision in favor of the Loreley fountain was justified by the fact that “the poet statue, which should be understood as a glorification of Heine, was dropped because of the fierce opposition in order to make the opponents more inclined”.
Resistance to the monument
This violent opposition to the memorial had already formed immediately after the plans became known in autumn 1887. It came from the nationalist and anti-Semitic side. In the same year two pamphlets directed against Heine appeared. In his work Why we don't want a Heine monument , for example, pastor Friedrich Frey rejected the poet as an opponent of the church and Christianity. "Many patriotic students" at the University of Bonn demonstratively refused to support the monument plans in November 1887.
“ Since the beginning of our decade, a powerful, Christian-German movement has been going through the German student body. Academic youth enthusiastically stand up for every national enterprise. (...) But she will never, ever sacrifice a penny in honor of Heinrich Heine. "
The positions taken on the dispute in the newly founded journal Der Kunstwart were important for the further course of the debate . In an article, Franz Sandvoss sharply opposed the plans and condemned the attempt to compare Heine with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He praised two contemporary poets for no longer supporting the monument,
“ (...) because their good German conscience did not allow them to praise the advocate and disseminator of all shamelessness and licentiousness as the greatest poet after God. "
The Wiener Zeitung Unadulterated German Words by the anti-Semite Georg von Schönerer also attacked the monument plans with blatantly anti-Semitic tones:
" Heine, who insulted and mocked the German people, should a memorial be erected ?! (...) In order to erect a memorial to this man for the lasting shame of the German people, German singers want to form their own committee in Vienna !? Has the German people already paid their debt of honor to all of their great, deserving men? Do the Jewish world vampires, Rothschild and comrades, not have enough money to erect a memorial to their tribal brother? "
After the decision of the Düsseldorf city council in March 1888 to erect the memorial, the attacks on Heine increased. Under the pseudonym Xanthippos, Sandvoss wrote a pamphlet with the title What do you think about Heine? A confession in which Heine was attacked as a Jew.
“ Blood is indeed a very special juice. (...) Heine is a Jew through and through, not a real German. (...) Heine is the prototype of modern, degenerate Judaism. That (...) nowhere in the world thrives more happily than in Germany. "
If the monument is erected in Düsseldorf, it will be “a pillar of shame for the German people”.
However, it was not that Heine found no support from the German journalists and writers. While conservative papers like The Reichsbote , the new Prussian newspaper (Kreuzzeitung) and the Daily Rundschau turned against the monument, which supported Frankfurt newspaper , the Börsen-Courier , the Berliner Tageblatt and the Wiener Neue Freie Presse plans. Heine also found a prominent advocate in the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche . Disgusted by the discussion in the magazine Der Kunstwart , Nietzsche angrily canceled the paper in the summer of 1888. The editor Ferdinand Avenarius had definitely allowed pro-Heine voices to have their say. In a letter of July 20, 1888 to his friend Franz Overbeck , Nietzsche nevertheless wrote:
" (...) I have also done away with the sheet: on a recently received letter from Mr. Avenarius, who complained painfully about the de-registration, I told him the truth vigorously (- the paper blows the German-drummed horn and, for example, has given Heinrich Heine in the most disgraceful manner - Mr. Avenarius, this Jew !!!) "
However, the opponents of the monument were able to achieve an important partial success towards the end of 1888: Empress Elisabeth withdrew from the project together with the promised 50,000 marks. Officially, it was said that Heine had insulted the Hohenzollern and Wittelsbachers . The financing of the monument was completely open again.
More modest plans
In January 1889, the empress's withdrawal was also made public. The project was temporarily on hold, because only 15,000 marks had been received in public donations. However, since Herter estimated a fee of 32,000 to 40,000 marks, the artist began to collect donations for the memorial on his own initiative. He hoped to be able to win prominent professors and writers for a new assignment. But his efforts were unsuccessful. Important supporters also resigned from the Düsseldorf Monument Committee, including Paul Heyse and Lord Mayor Lindemann. Due to the limited resources, the committee decided to commission Herter for another design. In December 1892 a contract was signed between the committee and the sculptor for the delivery of a bronze portrait bust on a pedestal. The agreement stated:
“ Herter takes on the erection, delivery and manufacture of a monument, consisting of granite pedestal with a colossal bust of the poet in bronze, along with two female figures, emblems, etc., also in bronze - total height approx. 4 m (version based on the present photograph). "
Final failure in Germany
Based on the city council resolution of March 1888, the committee informed Mayor Lindemann on January 5, 1893 that the Heine monument should be completed by 1895 and erected in the courtyard garden. But from the committee's point of view, the city council reacted completely unexpectedly: on January 24, 1893, it withdrew its previous building permit, as it had now expired. Under the given circumstances, the council found "the creation of a Heine monument in the city's public facilities for not appropriate". The committee found a trial against the city inappropriate. After further submissions, the city pointed out that a war memorial had meanwhile been erected at the intended location in the courtyard garden to commemorate the fallen in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. This monument by the sculptor Karl Hilgers was unveiled on October 10, 1892.
After the failure of the Düsseldorf plans, the cities of Mainz and Frankfurt am Main took action to take over the monument. Above all, the Mayor of Mainz, Georg Oechsner , a freedom fighter from 1848 , campaigned for the Loreley Fountain to be erected in Mainz. A corresponding application in the city council was rejected on April 17, 1893 and the topic was passed on to an "Aesthetic Commission". This recommended to the city council on July 10, 1893, to approve the erection of the monument. The conservative Kreuzzeitung saw it as a “triumph of world Jewry ”: the erection of this “monument to German shame” was “an insult to the Hohenzollern”. In the period that followed, attempts were made to influence the Mainz city council in their decision with journalistic means. Violence was even threatened. "Murder and manslaughter would break out, revolution would threaten" if the memorial was erected, wrote the Mainz Journal. However, the fact that Lord Mayor Oechsner fell ill in the course of 1893 and was finally replaced was of great significance for the debate. After the new election of the city council with changed majorities, the final decision was made on October 31, 1894: The monument was rejected by a clear majority. Since the installation plans in Frankfurt had also failed, a solution outside Germany was now emerging. It was not until 1913 that the first Heine monument in Germany was erected in Frankfurt am Main.
Installation in New York
As early as April 14, 1893, the Mainz Latest Anzeiger reported that the New York-based German choral society Arion had expressed interest in the memorial. After the defeat in the vote in Mainz, the sculptor Herter received an official request from New York and stated that he “happily accepted and went to work straight away”.
But the line-up did not go smoothly in New York either. This was not only due to the monument as such, but also to the fact that the German immigrants wanted to erect it in a very prominent place: at the entrance to Central Park , at the corner of 5th Avenue and 59th Street. Although prominent German-Americans such as former US government member Carl Schurz supported the project, the National Sculpture Society rejected the monument supporters' request at the end of 1895. The society described the draft as "dry, weak and conventional", one of its members called it a "two-penny affair" ("two-penny affair"). The New York park administration also asked Düsseldorf whether the memorial there had only been rejected for political and not also for artistic reasons, to which the city replied that “no artistic value test had preceded”.
The New York Times also cared little for the fountain, describing it as "an example of academic mediocrity worth setting up, but not our greatest urban ornament." Annoyed by the rejection, the Heine admirers considered erecting the memorial in the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens or even in distant Baltimore . At the beginning of 1896, members of the Democratic Party introduced the project directly to the city council, which on March 10, 1896 approved the erection of the monument - albeit without specifying an exact location. At the suggestion of the Republicans , however, a law was passed in New York State on March 4, 1896, which provided for the establishment of an Art Commission, which should decide in future in such cases. Apparently an agreement was reached in the course of 1898 to erect the memorial in the Bronx district, in what was then Franz Sigel Park. The monument was unveiled on July 8, 1899 in the presence of Ernst Herter. Herter wrote about the "impressive rally":
“ All German associations with their flags stood around the memorial of the poet they most knew and honored and expressed their gratitude for his work. It must have been a satisfaction to his friends that he, who was heralded as unpatriotic and un-German in his fatherland, united the Germans abroad in a common commitment to their convictions. "
According to the New York Times, 4,000 to 6,000 people were present at the unveiling , including the prominent German-American Carl Schurz . According to the report, the speakers of German origin attacked the “narrow-minded people” who continued to attack Heine in his home country. The newspaper pointed out that not a single German flag could be seen during the ceremony, while the Lorelei figure was adorned with two American flags.
Vandalism and redevelopment
Despite the official placement by the city, the memorial in the Bronx was the subject of abuse and vandalism from the start. Although the fountain was guarded by the police, on January 29, 1900, a man cut off the head of one of the female characters, the embodiment of lyric poetry. In the subsequent court process, women from the Christian Abstinence Association described the memorial as "indecent", according to other sources as a "pornographic spectacle".
In 1940 the fountain was moved to the northern end of the park and partially repaired. In the decades that followed, vandalism was apparently no longer stopped. The heads of the female figures were cut off again, the memorial was sprayed all over with graffiti . In the 1970s, the fountain was considered the statue in New York that was hardest hit by vandalism and destruction. The Düsseldorf dentist Hermann Klaas became known as the “Heine scrubber” for regularly removing graffiti from the memorial during his vacation.
Plans to completely restore the monument and move it back to its original location arose in 1987. The Municipal Art Society of New York started an “Adopt a Monument” program to restore 20 monuments. The renewal was delayed because of the initially estimated cost of $ 275,000. Only after a visit by the then North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Johannes Rau in September 1989, during which 50,000 marks were donated, did the project move again. Ultimately, around $ 700,000 could be raised through private donations to rehabilitate the well. The district had the area around the park redesigned for the same amount. A hundred years after its first installation, the fountain was inaugurated a second time on July 8, 1999.
See also
literature
- Michele Bogart: The Politics of Urban Beauty , Chicago 2006.
- Christopher Gray: "Storm and Drang Over a Memorial to Heinrich Heine", in: New York Times issue of May 27, 2007.
- Brigitte Hüfler: Ernst Herter 1846–1917, work and portrait by a Berlin sculptor, Berlin 1978.
- Paul Reitter: "Heine in the Bronx", in: The Germanic Review 74 (4), 1999, pp. 327–336.
- Jeffrey L. Sammons, "The Restoration of the Heine Monument in the Bronx"; in: The Germanic Review 74 (4), 1999, pp. 337-339.
- Wolfgang Schedelberger: Heinrich Heine in the Bronx , in: Extra (weekend supplement to the Wiener Zeitung), 11./12. December 1998, page 5
- Dietrich Schubert: “ The fight for the first Heine monument. Düsseldorf 1887–1893, Mainz 1893–1894, New York 1899 ”, in: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch: Westdeutsches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 51, 1990, pp. 241–272.
- Dietrich Schubert: “Now where?” Heinrich Heine in his prevented and erected monuments , Cologne 1999.
- Franz Sandvoss: What do you think about Heine? A commitment . Grunow, Leipzig 1888 digitized
Web links
- Christopher Gray: "Sturm und Drang Over a Memorial to Heinrich Heine", in: New York Times, May 27, 2007
- Artwork in Joyce Kilmer Park ( Memento from August 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- Friedhelm Greis: "Heine in the Bronx", in: Netzeitung, February 17, 2006 ( Memento from July 6, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dietrich Schubert: “The fight for the first Heine monument. Düsseldorf 1887–1893, Mainz 1893–1894, New York 1899 ”, in: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch: Westdeutsches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 51 (1990), pp. 241–272, here p. 248. The comments on the debate in Germany are based essentially based on Schubert's account.
- ↑ Schubert (1990), p. 267.
- ↑ Brigitte Hüfler: Ernst Herter 1846–1917, work and portrait of a Berlin sculptor, Berlin 1982, p. 253
- ↑ p. 249
- ↑ p. 251
- ↑ Hüfler, p. 250
- ↑ a b Hüfler, p. 252
- ↑ p. 247f.
- ^ Rudolf Kahn: The fight for the Heine monument, Leipzig 1911, p. 21.
- ↑ Hüfler p. 243.
- ↑ Kahn, p. 22. Schubert (1990), p. 243, incorrectly speaks of “corporate students”.
- ↑ Franz Sandvoss, in: Der Kunstwart, 1. Jg., 1887/1888, p. 117. Quoted from Schubert, p. 244.
- ↑ FK, in: Unverfälsche Deutsche Zeiten, 6th vol., No. 4 (February 15, 1888), p. 44. Quoted from Schubert, p. 245.
- ↑ Xanthippus: What do you think about Heine? A confession, Leipzig 1888. Quoted from Schubert, p. 251.
- ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Works in three volumes. Published by Karl Schlechta. Munich 1954. Vol. 3, p. 1304.
- ↑ Schubert (1990), p. 254.
- ↑ Ibid. P. 256.
- ↑ Kahn, p. 30.
- ↑ Schubert (1990), p. 261.
- ↑ Schubert (1990), p. 262.
- ^ G. Malkowsky: Ernst Herter, Berlin 1906, p. 103. Quoted from Schubert.
- ↑ Cf. Christopher Gray: "Sturm und Drang Over a Memorial to Heinrich Heine", in: New York Times, May 27, 2007.
- ^ Schubert, p. 265.
- ↑ Gray. In the original: "In 1895, The Times, until then a supporter of the monument, described it as 'an example of academic mediocrity, worthy of erection, but not worthy of erection as our chief municipal ornament.'"
- ↑ See Michele Bogart: The Politics of Urban Beauty, Chicago 2006.
- ↑ Malkowsky, p. 104. Quoted from Schubert, p. 267.
- ↑ Heine Monument Unveiled, July 9, 1899, p. 10 (PDF)
- ↑ "The New York Heine Memorial in Court"; in: Berliner Tageblatt, No. 92, February 20, 1900. Quoted from Schubert, p. 268.
- ^ Reitter, Paul: "Heine in the Bronx", in: The Germanic review, New York, 74 (4), 1999, pp. 327–336, here p. 330.
- ↑ Sammons, Jeffrey L .: "The Restoration of the Heine Monument in the Bronx"; in: The Germanic review, New York, 74 (4), 1999, pp. 337-339, here p. 337.
Coordinates: 40 ° 49 ′ 39 " N , 73 ° 55 ′ 23.5" W.
