Schiller Monument (Berlin)

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Schiller monument on the Gendarmenmarkt

The Schiller memorial in Berlin district of Mitte is at a central location on the Gendarmenmarkt , in front of the staircase to the former Royal Theater , now the Konzerthaus Berlin . The sculpture group in honor of the poet Friedrich Schiller was created by Reinhold Begas , a prominent representative of the Berlin school of sculpture in the 19th century. The monument was inaugurated in 1871, between 1936 and 1984 it was dismantled and relocated. Since its reorganization in 1988, it is under monument protection . A bronze cast of the memorial figure has been in the Wedding district in the park named after Schiller since 1942 .

History of origin

Celebrations for the 100th birthday of Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) on November 10, 1859 were planned across Germany. However, the Berlin police chief - eleven years after the revolution of 1848 - had a planned street move forbidden for fear of unrest. On the other hand, Prince Regent Wilhelm (the " Kartätschen prinz" from 1848 and later Kaiser Wilhelm I ) donated 10,000  thalers for a Schiller monument. The magistrate of Berlin also provided 10,000 thalers, a collection among the population resulted in a further 12,680 thalers.

Since the beginning of the 1860s, the city council's assembly dealt in several meetings with the question of the form in which the poet could be honored, the project "square beautification matter" for the square then called Gensd'armes Markt was launched. The three most famous German poets - Goethe, Schiller and Lessing - should each be honored with a monument.

A Schiller Committee was set up to honor Schiller.

On the day of the Schiller anniversary, the foundation stone for the planned memorial was laid in front of the theater. At this point in time, a draft was not yet available. The magistrate of Berlin only announced a competition in 1861 in which 25 artists took part. An academic jury, with the participation of Adolf Menzel, evaluated the individual proposals comprehensively by means of an expert opinion. The completion and the ceremonial unveiling of the monument was scheduled for 1869, the 110th birthday of the poet.

The final decision was made at the beginning of 1864 - for Reinhold Begas, against his toughest competitor Rudolf Siemering . In Berlin, this was the first significant sign of the transition from late classicist styles in the succession of Christian Daniel Rauch to the formal language of the neo-baroque , particularly evident in Begas' allegorical female figures. For Begas, this memorial, which he modified somewhat at the request of the memorial committee, was the first major order of his career. As a result he received commissions for numerous monumental sculptures. To work on the Schiller monument, he had a modern, hall-like studio built in the years 1864–1866 at Stülerstrasse 4 in Berlin's Tiergarten district . The planned unveiling was delayed by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871; it finally took place on November 10, 1871, i.e. on Schiller's 112th birthday.

The Schiller celebrations and corresponding applications from a Friedrich-Wilhelmstadt district association led to the decision of the city council to designate the area of ​​the Gendarmenmarkt between Jägerstrasse and Taubenstrasse from now on (from the end of 1871) as "Schillerplatz". The necessary traffic and horticultural changes as a result of the erection of the monument and an illumination of the Schillerplatz were decided in March 1889.

Soon there was criticism from Berliners and visitors that the “preservation of the monuments taken over from the city left a lot to be desired. In particular, it is the Schiller monument that seems to be neglected in this respect. ”Thus, with a sum of around 155,000 marks, further beautification measures of the square (including the construction of two large fountains) and cleaning of the monument were carried out by 1895 .

The name Schillerplatz was abolished in 1936 after the memorial was removed and the area underwent extensive renovation work.

Description of the monument

Transport of the Schiller statue to East Berlin , 1986

The statue of the poet made of white marble stands in the middle of four semicircular fountain bowls on a pedestal with the basic shape of a cube. This in turn has its place on a hexagonal raised platform, to which five steps lead up on all sides.

The figure of the poet shows a young man with a laurel wreath in a self-confident manner. The model for the head of the statue was the Schiller bust from 1794 by the sculptor Johann Heinrich von Dannecker , who was friends with the poet. The foot of the monument is provided with fountain shells and with lion heads in the form of gargoyles, from which thin jets of water have streamed since the public inauguration of the monument.

Four allegorical female figures are placed on the edge of the bowls, which symbolize the main creative fields of the poet: on the left, the poetry with a gooseneck harp; in front right the tragedy , originally with the attributes dagger and mask, only the mask is still present; in the back left the philosophy , in hand a scroll with the ancient Greek text “ Know yourself ”; In the back right the story , on her writing boards are written the names of Lessing , Kant , Goethe and other famous people next to Schiller . The pedestal has inscriptions referring to Schiller and two small bas-reliefs; they show how Schiller receives a lyre from the muses and is introduced to the great poets of earlier times.

The allegorical figures at the foot of the monument
Schillerdenkmal Berlin, Begas, Allegorie Geschichte.jpg
history
Schillerdenkmal Berlin, Begas, Allegorie Lyrik.jpg
Lyric poetry
Schillerdenkmal Berlin, Begas, Allegorie Philosophie.jpg
philosophy
Schiller monument Berlin, Begas, Allegorie Tragoedie.jpg
tragedy

Further history of the monument

During the Nazi era , the Gendarmenmarkt was redesigned as a parade ground. Instead of the horticultural ornaments, large stepping plates were laid, the Schiller monument was to be re -erected in the Schiller Park. However, it fell over during dismantling and was massively damaged. In a current newspaper report it says: "In particular, a thorough investigation has shown the damage to be so severe that a permanent, durable repair is no longer possible." Above all, the base plate was broken and the casing damaged, so that the statics are no longer possible was true. The plan for a new installation in Schillerpark had to be abandoned, the parts were temporarily stored in a shed in Treptow . As a resurrection, the figure was to be cast in bronze and then given the planned replacement location. The bronze copy was cast in 1941 from the material of the dismantled Rathenau fountain and erected in the southern part of the Schillerpark in the Wedding district of what is now the Mitte district . (The memorial for Emil and Walther Rathenau , which had stood in the Rehberge park since 1930 , was removed from its location by the National Socialists in 1934 for “ideological” reasons and melted down in 1941.)

The restored marble original of the Schiller statue without a stair landing and without a fountain base had stood in Lietzenseepark since 1951, i.e. in the western sectors of the city ​​that was divided after the Second World War . The heavily damaged allegorical figures on the monument were temporarily stored in the Friedrichsfelde zoo in East Berlin . An east-west agreement on cultural exchange dated May 6, 1986 was the prerequisite for bringing together all the individual items that were received in East Berlin. In December 1988, the partly reconstructed , partly restored monument was re-erected in its original location on the Gendarmenmarkt. However, the function of the well was not restored.

When the Gendarmenmarkt was “completely renovated” in autumn 2006, a comprehensive restoration of the Schiller memorial had become inevitable. The entire ensemble had to be freed from dirt, small imperfections had to be added and joints sealed. The cast iron decorative grille was derusted and given a new coat of paint.

literature

  • Alfred Gotthold Meyer: Reinhold Begas. Verlag von Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld / Leipzig 1897, p. 36 ff. Fig. 9-14.
  • Georg Dehio: Handbook of German Art Monuments, Berlin. Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1994, ISBN 3-422-03111-1 , p. 155.
  • Michael Bienert: A museum for freedom! In: Der Tagesspiegel , September 9, 2009 (on the history of the monument, online ).
  • Hermann Müller-Bohm: The monuments of Berlin in words and pictures . M. Spaeth Verlag, Berlin 1905, pp. 88/89.
  • Max Ring : The two competition drafts for a statue of Schiller for Berlin . In: Die Gartenlaube (1863), pp. 795–797.
  • Max Ring: The two competition drafts for a statue of Schiller for Berlin . In: The Gazebo . Issue 50, 1863, pp. 795-797 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Commons : Schiller Memorial  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Bienert: A museum for freedom! In: Der Tagesspiegel , September 9, 2009 (on the history of the monument, online ).
  2. ↑ erection of statues of the poet Lessing, Goethe and Schiller (A Rep. 001-02-261 in the Berlin State Archive).
  3. ↑ The Schillerplatz and the Gendarmenmarkt ; Acta of the city council meeting of Berlin; Minutes of the meeting of November 18, 1869, No. 918 (A Rep 000-02-01, in the Berlin State Archives).
  4. ↑ A full-page (= DIN A 3) line drawing for the laying of the foundation stone can be found in the magazine “The illustrated London News” with the title: The Schiller festival at Berlin - Laying the Foundation Stone of Schiller's Statue (F Rep 250-01, A 203 in the Berlin State Archives).
  5. ↑ a b Hermann Müller-Bohm: The monuments of Berlin ... (see literature ).
  6. ^ The Schiller memorial in the memorial database of the Senate Department for Urban Development Berlin
  7. ↑ The Schillerplatz and the Gendarmenmarkt ; Acta of the city council meeting of Berlin; Minutes of the meetings of November 29, 1871, March 6, 1889 and March 14, 1889; No. 918 (ARep 000-02-01, in the Berlin State Archives).
  8. ↑ The Schillerplatz and the Gendarmenmarkt ; Acta of the city council meeting of Berlin; Minutes of the meeting of April 1, 1890; No. 918 (ARep 000-02-01, in the Berlin State Archives).
  9. ^ Gisela Moeller: The Neptune Fountain by Reinhold Begas in Berlin . In: Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 44 (2002), pp. 129–166, here p. 161 it says: “Above all, the Berlin fountains were lacking in water. In the case of the Peace Column erected in 1843 [...] and the Schiller monument by Begas, which was unveiled in 1871 on the Gendarmenmarkt, the water and the fountain idea were only of secondary importance. "
  10. ↑ The working gargoyles can be seen in a sharp black and white photograph from 1910. This can be viewed in the Berlin State Archives (F Rep 290; 04 Bau), but publication in Wikipedia was not approved (as of September 19, 2017).
  11. ↑ Gendarmenmarkt green area, extensive correspondence from the period 1920 to 1936 (A Rep. 007 - 326 in the Berlin State Archives).
  12. ↑ Schiller monument can no longer be saved . In: Berlin Latest News , February 19, 1936. (A Rep 007 - Film No. 5240 in the Berlin State Archive)
  13. ↑ Schillerbrunnen on stadtentwicklung.berlin.de

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 49.08 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 33.58 ″  E