Youth Monument

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The youth monument

The youth monument in Leipzig was a bronze sculpture that was dedicated to the Nazi youth organization Hitler Youth .

It was set up in 1938 on the green space at the fork in the road Reitzenhainer (today Prager) and Naunhofer Strasse in the Thonberg district . Its creator was the sculptor Walter Zschorsch (1888-1965), who had studied at the Leipzig Art Academy with Max Klinger , among others . From 1863 onwards, a stone block designated as the foundation stone of a Völkerschlachtdenkmal, which was concreted into the foundation of the Völkerschlachtdenkmal during the construction of the Völkerschlachtdenkmal , had been located at the monument site .

The youth memorial consisted of a group of three teenagers, two boys and one girl, on a stone base. They were dressed in uniform. The larger of the boys raised her hand in the Hitler salute , the girl was playing a wandering bird sound . The smaller of the boys wore a knife and the bigger one a canteen on his belt.

Obviously, the three should represent the three branches of the Hitler Youth: the actual Hitler Youth (HJ) for boys from 14 to 18 years, the Deutscher Jungvolks (DJ) for boys from 10 to 14 years and the Association of German Girls (BDM) for girls from 10 to 18 years.

Despite its ideological orientation, the youth memorial also fell victim to the call for metal donations by the German people in 1940 for the procurement of raw materials essential to the war effort. It was dismantled to melt down together with 29 other Leipzig monuments in 1942. One last photograph exists of the assembly point for the dismantled monuments in Dauthestrasse.

  • The location of the monument on a city map from 1940

  • The assembly point for the dismantled monuments, on the right the youth memorial

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ City map Leipzig 1940, SLUB Dresden (online)
  2. ^ Peter Schwarz: The millennial Leipzig. Volume 3. ProLeipzig 2015, ISBN 978-3-945027-13-4 , p. 149
  3. ↑ karl-may-wiki.de
  4. ↑ Claus Uhlrich: Gone - fates Leipzig monuments, memorials and sculptures. Verlagbuchhandlung Bachmann Leipzig 1994, pp. 25/26
  5. ↑ Obtainable from further pictures in the Leipzig City History Museum.
  6. ↑ Urban Planning Office, 6.X.42: Report on the acceptance of the monuments for the City History Museum. In: Claus Uhlrich: Disappeared - ... , p. 89

Coordinates: 51 ° 19 ′ 5.3 "  N , 12 ° 24 ′ 29.1"  E