page_title: Goethe–Schiller Monument
section_title: The Weimar monument
hierarchical_section_title: Goethe–Schiller Monument / The Weimar monument
caption_attribution_description: English: The Goethe and Schiller statue in Weimar around 1900
context_page_description: The original Goethe–Schiller Monument is in Weimar, Germany. It incorporates Ernst Rietschel's 1857 bronze double statue of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, who are probably the two most revered figures in German literature. The monument has been described "as one of the most famous and most beloved monuments in all of Germany" and as the beginning of a "cult of the monument". Dozens of monuments to Goethe and to Schiller were built subsequently in Europe and the United States.
  Goethe and Schiller had a remarkable friendship and collaboration that was "like no other known to literature or art." Both men had lived in Weimar, and were the seminal figures of a literary movement known as Weimar Classicism. The bronze figures of the Goethe–Schiller statue are substantially larger than life-size; notably, both are given the same height, even though Goethe was nearly 20 cm shorter than Schiller.
  The figures were mounted on a large stone pedestal in front of the Court Theater that Goethe had directed, and that had seen premieres and countless performances of Schiller's plays. Goethe is on the left in the photograph, his left hand resting lightly on Schiller's shoulder.
context_section_description: 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 dedication of the monument was planned to coincide with the centennial celebrations of the birth of the earlier Grand Duke Karl August, who had brought Goethe to Weimar in 1775. Goethe lived most of his adult life there, and Schiller the last six years of his life. The site for the monument was the city square that fronted the Court Theater (German: das Hoftheater) where Goethe was managing director from 1791 to 1815; Goethe later wrote that he had "tried to elevate the masses intellectually with Shakespeare, Gozzi, and Schiller".  Goethe arranged for the theater to premiere Schiller's last four plays (Mary Stuart, The Bride of Messina, The Maid of Orleans, and William Tell). By the time of their monument's dedication in 1857, the theater had seen countless performances of all Schiller's plays.
  Christian Daniel Rauch was invited to prepare a design for a double statue (German: Doppelstandbild); Rauch was perhaps the most prominent sculptor working in German-speaking Europe in the first half of the 19th century. Rauch's design has the two men clad in antique dress; while the convention of creating sculptures of heroic figures in antique dress was well established, it was rejected in this case. Ernst Rietschel, another prominent sculptor who had been Rauch's student, made a design with the two men in contemporary dress that was accepted, and a contract was signed with Rietschel in December, 1852.
  Rietschel needed four years to complete the full-size model for the statue. The actual casting in bronze was done remarkably quickly by Ferdinand von Miller at the Royal Foundry in Munich. The finished monument was dedicated on September 4, 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."
caption: 1900 photograph of the Goethe–Schiller monument in front of the Court Theater in Weimar
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