Goethe and Schiller Monument

The project of creating a Goethe–Schiller monument in Weimar was sponsored by Karl Alexander August Johann, the Grand Duke of the Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach Duchy, and by a citizen's commission. The finished monument was dedicated on 4 September 1857, as part of the celebrations for the centenary of the birth of Grand Duke Karl August. Hans Pohlsander has written, "The monument was the first double statue on German soil, and was widely, and rightly, proclaimed a masterpiece." ==The U.S. monuments==

In 1895 in San Francisco, California, the Goethe–Schiller Denkmal Gesellschaft (Goethe–Schiller Monument Company) was formed for the purpose of raising a version of the Weimar Monument in Golden Gate Park. The statue was installed on a granite pedestal and steps that closely copied those of the Weimar original. The monument was dedicated on 11 August 1901, with 30,000 people in attendance according to the souvenir book published shortly thereafter. The statue for the Syracuse monument is electrotyped copper, and not a bronze casting. It was sited in Schiller Park, which had been renamed in 1905 to honor the centennial of Schiller's death. The monument was dedicated on 15 October 1911. All of the American monuments were sited in city parks, whereas the Weimar monument is in a city square. As can be seen from the antique postcards, the stonework of the San Francisco, Cleveland, and Syracuse monuments is similar to the Weimar original. The Syracuse monument is on a steep slope, and is distinguished by a formal stone stairway approaching the statue. The Milwaukee monument's stonework is more extensive. The three steps underneath the pedestal in Weimar were widened greatly in the Milwaukee design, and support long stone walls and benches on both flanks of the pedestal and sculpture; access to the back of the monument rear is reduced correspondingly. ==19th-century contexts==

German lands in Europe The commissioning of Rietschel's Goethe–Schiller statue had one clear motivation: to honor Weimar's famous poets and their patron; indeed, Schiller and Goethe had been entombed, along with Grand Duke Karl August, in the ducal burial chapel (the Fürstengruft) in Weimar. A second motivation may have been to increase "culture tourism" to the city, which had a claim as the "Athens on the Ilm". has written of this movement: By 1859, the centenary of Schiller's birth and the occasion for 440 celebrations in German lands, Schiller had emerged as the "poet of freedom and unity" for German citizens. Ute Frevert writes, Wisconsin's major city, Milwaukee, had been dubbed "the German Athens in America". The Chicago and St. Louis monuments were recastings of Ernst Rau's 1876 bronze located in Marbach, Germany, where Schiller was born in 1759. A monument to Goethe had also been erected in Philadelphia (1891–Heinrich Manger). By 1914 and the outbreak of World War I, eight additional monuments to Schiller had been erected in the US. Four were the double monuments to Goethe and to Schiller. Four monuments to Schiller alone were raised (in Omaha (1905), St. Paul (1907), Rochester (1907), and Detroit (1908)). This monument, by Hermann Hahn, shows an idealized figure often identified with Zeus; ==References==