The Luther Monument in Lutherstadt Wittenberg is a monument that has stood on the city's market square since 1821 and is intended to commemorate the reformer Martin Luther. It is the first monument of its kind in Germany in which a non-noble person was publicly honored with a freestanding statue. The bronze figure is by Johann Gottfried Schadow, the cast iron canopy by Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
Around 1806, when the French occupied the Saxon fortress of Wittenberg, planning for a monument to Martin Luther began. A patriotic literary society in Mansfeld, the town where Luther spent much of his childhood, announced a competition, but it was not successful. After the Congress of Vienna, Wittenberg became part of Prussia after the conquest of 1814. In 1816, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the posting of Luther's theses on the door of the castle church, the Prussian King Frederick William III took charge of the planning of a monument to Luther, although the Hohenzollerns were Calvinists. However, a religious reform towards a united Protestant church in Prussia with the king at its head was imminent in 1817. A committee consisting of Johann Gottfried Schadow, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Martin Friedrich Rabe was set up and tasked with designing the monument, but did not come to a common conclusion. For the first time, the question arose in a monument project as to how a non-nobleman should be represented in public. Until then, statues were reserved only for princes and generals.
Source: Wikipedia.org
Copyright: Creative Commons 3.0
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Address: Wittenberg, Germany
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