Heinrich Heine Monument (Leipzig)
The Heinrich Heine Monument in Leipzig is one of the first monuments to be erected in the city after the Second World War . It was inaugurated on the poet's 150th birthday. The material comes from the base of the victory monument on the market, which was dismantled in 1946 .
Location and shape
The Heinrich Heine monument is located in the garden area behind the Volkshaus in Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 30/32 in Leipzig. This garden was part of a now closed kindergarten.
The simple monument, designed as a stele , is a two meter high flat column with a rectangular cross-section made of reddish granite . The front is polished and bears the inscription HEINRICH HEINE on the top and 1947 on the bottom, the year of construction. The column is slightly stepped at the top. It rests on a concrete base about a square meter.
history
As early as the 1920s, the idea of erecting a memorial stone for Heinrich Heine at the Volkshaus was born among young workers who attended the educational courses in the Volkshaus . Erich Schilling , who was imprisoned in Buchenwald during the Nazi era and was entrusted with the reconstruction of the Volkshaus as a union official after the Second World War, took up the idea of commemorating the poet ostracized during the Nazi era.
He initiated the erection of the monument and financed it from private funds. The design comes from the Leipzig sculptor Wilhelm Andreas and the architect Walter Beyer. The stone carving was done by Arno Scheunert. The inauguration took place on December 13, 1947, Heine's 150th birthday. Schilling soon found himself at odds with the communist rulers. For example , he had spoken out against the forced unification of the SPD , to which he belonged, with the KPD . After the popular uprising of 1953 he had to flee and went to West Berlin .
His memorial had to "suffer" as a result. It was negated for the public, soon stood in the middle of a kindergarten that was built behind the Volkshaus, and was temporarily also planked in. It was not on the GDR's list of monuments. The stone has been a listed building since 1996.
literature
- Markus Cottin, Gina Klank, Karl-Heinz Kretzschmar, Dieter Kürschner, Ilona Petzold: Leipzig monuments . Sax-Verlag Beucha 1998, ISBN 3-930076-71-3 , Volume 1 p. 31
Web links
- Ralf Julke: "Spiritual border posts": Erich Schilling and the Heinrich Heine monument in Leipzig ( Memento from March 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- Leipzig Lexicon
Coordinates: 51 ° 19 ′ 39 ″ N , 12 ° 22 ′ 20 ″ E