Focus on Goethe–Schiller Monument (Syracuse) and discuss the 19th century context.
As Paul Zanker describes it, the original Weimar monument helped launch a "veritable cult" of zeal for the poets and of monument building. The monument was very unusual for its time. It was rare until the 1850s to erect costly monuments to poets and intellectuals. Double monuments were also unusual, as was the choice to depict the poets in contemporary dress. The resulting monument was considered highly successful, and set a style for the numerous monuments to the poets that followed. By 1859, the centenary of Schiller's birth and the occasion for 440 celebrations in German lands, Schiller in particular had emerged as the "poet of freedom and unity" for German citizens. Rüdiger Görner has illustrated the origins of Schiller's reputation with a speech from the "famous" tenth scene of the third act of Schiller's 1787 play, Don Carlos: "Look all around at nature's mastery, / Founded on freedom. And how rich it grows, / Feeding on freedom." Ute Frevert has written of the celebrations, "It did not matter who spoke, a Hamburg plumber, a political emigrant in Paris, an aristocratic civil servant in Münster, a writer in Wollenbüttel, they unanimously invoked Schiller as a singer of freedom and the prophet of German unity."
About four dozen monuments to Schiller or Goethe were erected in German-speaking Europe between 1850 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914. In the same era, four million German-speakers emigrated to the United States. Schiller continued to have great significance to these immigrants; his work "was the best expression of that side of German character which most qualified the German despite his distinctiveness to become a true American citizen". By the late 1800s, the German-Americans had also become prodigious monument builders, and they erected at least fifteen additional monuments to the poets prior to World War I.In 1900, the total population of Syracuse and Onondaga County was 168,000. Nearly 10,000 had been born in German-speaking countries of Europe; with their children, it was estimated at the time that there were more than 25,000 German-speakers. There were extensive observances in May, 1905 of the centennial of Schiller's death. Round Top Park was renamed Schiller Park on July 3, 1905, and planning commenced for the Goethe–Schiller Monument.The monument they erected was costly. In Syracuse, the 1908 Deutscher Tag (German Day) celebration was raising funds for the monument, as did the subsequent 1909 and 1910 German Days. The 1908 Goethe–Schiller Monument in Milwaukee cost $15,000 to erect, and presumably the cost for the Syracuse monument three years later was about the same. For comparison, the cost of building the sizable 1901 Deutsche Evangelische Friedenskirche (German Evangelist Peace Church) in Syracuse was also about $15,000.Ultimately, about 60 monuments to Schiller and to Goethe were built in German-speaking Europe and the United States. The 1911 Syracuse monument was one of the last in the style that had been largely established by the Weimar original 54 years earlier. Christiane Hertel has suggested that the lavishness of the late monuments and their celebrations in the US were "a German-American farewell to the Schiller cult, at least in this form and with this popular, inclusive scope." While the Weimar monument is still "one of the most famous and most beloved monuments in all of Germany", the original significance of the US monuments is now largely forgotten.
World War I Schiller Park Goethe–Schiller Monument Goethe–Schiller Monument in Milwaukee Weimar Ute Frevert Don Carlos Milwaukee Onondaga County