Lessing Monument (Hamburg)

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Coordinates: 53 ° 33 ′ 18.1 ″  N , 9 ° 59 ′ 19.8 ″  E

The Lessing monument on the Gänsemarkt (2018)

The Lessing monument on the Gänsemarkt in Hamburg is a work of art created by the Berlin sculptor Fritz Schaper . It was erected in 1881 on the 100th anniversary of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's death .

Location and monument protection

The monument is located in the middle of the goose market. It is under monument protection according to § 6 paragraph 1 Hamburg Monument Protection Act . The protected ensemble also includes the buildings Gänsemarkt 13, 21, 22, 23, 30/31, 33, 35 (Lessing-Haus), 36, 44, Gerhofstraße 29 and Neue ABC-Straße 11, 13.

description

Bronze figure Lessing

The Lessing monument consists of a 2.20 meter high bronze figure on a 2.50 meter high granite plinth . It weighs around 4.5 tons.

figure

Lessing is shown larger than life and sitting on a chair. He wears an 18th century costume consisting of a skirt, frilly jabot , waistcoat, breeches, silk stockings and buckled shoes . His clothing has many details, including the folds of the stockings and the seams of the trousers.

Lessing's facial features are represented in a slightly idealized way. In contrast to realistic portraits, the eyes are slightly smaller, the forehead less high, and the cheekbones more pronounced. This can be interpreted as Schaper's attempt to give Lessing's face the expression of energy and intellectual boldness. The two halves of the face express different sensations, the right one looks a bit melancholy, the left one suggests a smile.

The chair on which Lessing is sitting is curtained by his folded travel coat. Lessing's sitting posture is described as casual. His body is turned a little to the side and backwards, the head turned opposite to the right. His right arm rests on his thigh, while the left rests on the back of the chair. Lessing holds a closed book in his left hand, using his index finger as a bookmark. Lessing's right leg is angled back, while the left leg is pushed forward, a position that is similar to that of stage actors and orchestral musicians.

A round bronze plate with the signatures of Fritz Schaper and the foundry H. Gladenbeck und Sohn serves as the base for the chair and Lessing's feet.

base

The base is made of polished red granite. It has three sides that are slightly convex. There is a bronze plaque on each side. The front one shows an inscription with Lessing's life data, the other two portrait reliefs depict Hamburg personalities. A portrait shows the actor Conrad Ekhof , who worked with dramaturge Lessing at the Hamburg National Theater . The second portrait shows the enlightener Hermann Samuel Reimarus , whose work “Apologie” Lessing published posthumously, which led to the fragmentation dispute. The profiles of the two men appear in the form of coin-like plaques that are hung from branches of laurel and oak leaves.

The three volutes of the base are relatively wide. In their throats there are narrow bronze tablets with allegorical motifs. The two in front show a gorgon and a satyr mask as symbols for the tragic and comic muse. The rear bronze relief shows a scroll on which the abbreviated titles of some of Lessing's important works are written: Hamburg Dramaturgy , Nathan the Wise , Laokoon as well as Ernst and Falk .

history

Lessing in Hamburg

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing lived in Hamburg from 1767 to 1770. In April 1767 he came to the city to work as a dramaturge and advisor at the newly opened Hamburg National Theater . His play Minna von Barnhelm was premiered there and shown 16 times, making it the most successful piece in the theater. Two years later, however, the Hamburg National Theater had to close again for financial reasons.

Lessing made various acquaintances in Hamburg, including Johann Gottfried Herder , Matthias Claudius and Philipp Emanuel Bach . He met his future wife Eva König and Johann Melchior Goeze , with whom he later led the fragments dispute.

Lessing worked with Johann Joachim Christoph Bode during his time in Hamburg and took part in his printing and publishing house, in which his Hamburg Dramaturgy was published. However, the companies made losses, so that Lessing ran into financial difficulties. When he was offered a position as a librarian in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel in 1770 , he left Hamburg.

When Lessing died in Braunschweig in 1781, the fragmentation dispute continued to have an impact. Although the Hamburg theater was allowed to hold a celebration in his memory, the Hamburg Senate forbade newspaper reports about the honor and decided at a meeting that no notice should be taken of it.

Origin of the monument

The Lessing memorial when it was unveiled in 1881 in the center of the Gänsemarkt

In 1876, the Society for Art and Science applied to the Hamburg Senate for the erection of a Lessing monument. This agreed, whereupon an artist competition was announced. Seven sculptors were asked to draft the memorial, and six did so. Schaper was the only competitor who wanted to depict Lessing seated, while his competitors suggested standing figures or colossal busts. A five-person jury, including Anton von Werner and Albert Wolff , awarded his design first prize in November 1878. The second prize went to Erdmann Encke , the third to Hermann Volz .

The winning design sparked controversy. Above all, Lessing's seated position found criticism. So sat Georg Karl deer , senior pastor at St. Nikolai , strongly for a still image instead of a seat image one. He initiated a petition to the Monument Committee and gave a lecture on the subject, which was published by Hoffmann & Campe in 1879 in a 123-page publication . Schaper's first draft also envisaged a Lessing that crossed its legs with self-confident nonchalance. However, after criticism from the client, who saw it as a contradiction to Lessing's character and dignity, he changed this detail. His original idea for the execution of the base, which included three relief figures “Hammonia”, “Poetry” and “Criticism” as well as pilasters with portrait medallions of Eva König , Johann Friedrich Löwen and Reimarus, was also rejected.

On May 10, 1879, Schaper was commissioned to build the monument, subject to changes. In March of the following year a contract was signed with him that provided a fee of 30,000 marks and also entrusted him with the supervision of the casting. Altogether, the monument construction resulted in costs of over 70,000 marks, financed by donations.

On February 15, 1881, the 100th anniversary of Lessing's death, the foundation stone of the monument was laid. The choice of location in Gänsemarkt was obvious, as Lessing's place of work, the Hamburg National Theater, was located there. A cassette was embedded in the floor, which contained, among other things, donation lists, coins and daily papers (today in the Hamburg State Archives ).

Schaper created the Lessing monument in Berlin, where the bronze parts were cast by H. Gladenbeck and Son and the base was worked on by Kessel & Röhl . The finished work was then transported to the Gänsemarkt by train and horse-drawn carriage.

The ceremonial unveiling of the monument took place on September 8, 1881. There was great interest in the event, so grandstands were set up for the spectators and tickets were sold. Mayor Gustav Heinrich Kirchenpauer gave a speech, followed by Pastor Rode , President of the Construction Deputation . On the occasion of the inauguration of the monument, a commemorative sheet that was available for purchase was published.

The monument in the war and post-war period

The Lessing memorial on the Gänsemarkt in front of the junction with Gerhofstrasse (2003)

During the period of National Socialism , the survival of the monument was in danger several times. The National Socialists demanded that the base reliefs with symbols of the Freemasons be removed. However, the monument conservation office was able to avert this. The plan put forward in 1940 to melt the figure down and make grenades out of it also failed.

During an air raid on June 18, 1944, the figure fell from its pedestal onto the pavement. To avoid further damage, the monument was dismantled and dug into the Heiligengeistfeld . After the end of the Second World War, it was brought to the Museum of Art and Industry for safekeeping . In 1950 the Senate decided to renovate and re-erect it on Gänsemarkt. The resolution was implemented on May 28, 1955. A cassette containing information about the history of the monument, newspapers and commemorative coins was placed in the base.

In 1985 the memorial was dismantled and stored in Billstedt for a few months . In the meantime it was also located in front of the Museum of Hamburg History . In 1986 it was moved from the middle of the square in the direction of Gerhofstraße as part of a redesign of the Gänsemarkt. Thirty years later, in October 2016, the monument was relocated back to the center of the square as part of a further redesign and paving of the Gänsemarkt. The foundation was provided with all-round benches and the figure of Lessing was set up so that it looks in the direction where the National Theater used to be.

Classification in Fritz Schaper's complete works

Fritz Schaper was already well known at the time of the artist competition for the Hamburg monument, which is also indicated by his selection as one of seven candidates. Since 1873 he received increasingly large commissions, including for a Goethe monument in Berlin (the unveiling of which was to give him the final breakthrough in 1880) and a monumental sculpture by Otto von Bismarck in Cologne. His work as a teacher in the nude hall for sculptors under director Anton von Werner , which he began in 1875, also earned him greater reputation .

Schaper's Lessing monument, unveiled in 1881, contributed to the sculptor's growing success. His friend, the painter Otto Seeck , created a painting in 1905 that shows Schaper working in his studio. The Lessing monument can be seen in the background, which suggests that the work is of particular importance to Schaper. There are some replicas of the figure. Small bronze replicas were exhibited in the Goch Museum in 2000 ; a marble replica made by Schaper himself in 1881 is now in the stairwell of the Berlin State Library .

Schaper's oeuvre includes numerous works in public spaces, including a number of poet monuments and portraits. In addition to Goethe and Lessing, he portrayed Novalis , whose grave bust in Weißenfels was made by Schaper. A statue by Gustav Freytag (1905) is in Wiesbaden . Like Lessing, Freytag is also shown with a book in hand, with the index finger inserted as a bookmark. Schaper had already considered this motif in a preliminary draft of the Goethe monument, but then rejected it.

33 years after the monument in Hamburg, Schaper created another three-dimensional representation of Lessing. This is a bust that he made in 1915/16 for the Deutsche Bücherei in Leipzig. A work based on the Hamburg model was requested. While Schaper still idealized Lessing's facial features there, the bust depicts the sitter more realistically.

literature

  • Jan Philipp Reemtsma : Lessing in Hamburg: 1766-1770 , CH Beck Verlag, Munich, 2007, p. 101 ff.
  • Rolf Appel: Lessing at the Gänsemarkt. The story of a monument. Lessing Gesellschaft eV, rest printing, Barsbüttel 2004.
  • Angela Graf: Review of Rolf Appel: Lessing am Gänsemarkt, the story of a monument , Barsbüttel, Ruhe, 2004, Volume 90, 2004, p. 344, Journal of the Association for Hamburg History , ( online ).
  • Wilhelm Haumann: Schapers Lessing. In: Uwe Honkfoth (Ed.): Fritz Schaper. The rediscovery of the monument. Catalog book for the exhibition at Museum Goch, Goch 2000, ISBN 3-926245-47-6 , pp. 55–61.
  • Jutta von Simson: Fritz Schaper. 1841-1919. Prestel, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-7913-0090-3 , pp. 120-122.
  • Georg Karl Hirsche: The projected Lessing monument on the Hamburg Gänsemarkt. Should it be a genre-like seat by the Hamburg dramaturge or a monumental statue of the German spiritual hero? : an art-critical time study on Professor Schaper's monument design. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg, 1879, ( online , State and University Library.).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hamburg-Mitte Monument List p. 362, hamburg.de, accessed on February 8, 2014.
  2. ↑ Fritz Schaper. The rediscovery of the monument. Goch 2000, p. 128.
  3. ^ A b c Rolf Appel: Lessing on the Gänsemarkt. Barsbüttel 2004, p. 66.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Wilhelm Haumann: Schapers Lessing. Goch 2000, p. 56.
  5. ↑ a b c Jutta von Simson: Fritz Schaper. 1841-1919. Prestel, Munich 1976, p. 122.
  6. ↑ a b Jutta von Simson: Fritz Schaper. 1841-1919. Prestel, Munich 1976, p. 120.
  7. ↑ Georg Karl Hirsche: The projected Lessing monument on the Hamburg Gänsemarkt. Should it be a genre-like seat by the Hamburg dramaturge or a monumental statue of the German spiritual hero? : an art-critical time study on Professor Schaper's monument design. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg, 1879.
  8. ^ A b c Rolf Appel: Lessing on the Gänsemarkt. Barsbüttel 2004, pp. 52 and 55.
  9. ↑ Friederike Ulrich: The Lessing memorial is back on the Gänsemarkt. In: Hamburger Abendblatt . November 3, 2016. Retrieved August 27, 2019.
  10. ↑ Fritz Schaper. The rediscovery of the monument. Goch 2000, p. 114.
  11. ^ Wilhelm Haumann: Schapers Lessing. Goch 2000, p. 58.
  12. ^ Wilhelm Haumann: Schapers Lessing. Goch 2000, pp. 58-9.

Web links

Commons : Lessing monument  - collection of images, videos and audio files