Introduction and summary

For the 100th Jubilee of the Erection of the Goethe Monument by Professor Hermann Hahn in Chicago

The Goethe Monument by Hermann Hahn in Chicago is one of a series of monument erections that started during the eighties of the nineteenth century. German emigrants coming from the West and urbanizing the American prairie, creating settlements while remaining conscious of their roots, initiated erections of monuments as a remembrance of their home culture and of their own achievements. The link to Germany was still strong enough, whereas confidence in American art had not yet grown, so that orders for sculptures went to German artists and orders for technical founding went to German foundries.

What was created here was the export of German art of monuments and founding technique, the traces of which can be found distributed over the five continents. Due to its colossal dimension and its experimental conception, the Goethe monument in Chicago represents the apogee of this development, but at the same time we must consider this monument as the latter portion, the twilight of the gods by way of monumental personal sculptures, in Germany as well as overseas.

On September 27the of 1913, the then highest bronze monument of the prince of poetry Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was presented to the public in the Royal mineral foundry von Miller. Among the important number of invited guests, there was the Bavarian Prince Regent Ludwig III, who would not have foregone the personal inspection of this monument about which so much had been said and written prior the its erection. The connective spirit, the symbolic bridge between the old and the new world was underlined many times on the occasion of the official speeches on the day of presentation; indeed, the monument was not to be placed on German ground, but for America, more precisely for Chicago.

German emigrants, regrouped in a multitude of associations, above all located in the north of Chicago, wanted to erect a monument bearing witness to them and to their attachment to their home country. After the statues for Friedrich Schiller (1886), Alexander von Humboldt (1892) and Fritz Reuter (1893), there figure who was in their opinion the most important hero of German thinking: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. “The Mastermind of the German People”, as it can be read on the front of the pedestal. As to the number of monuments donated, the Germans were on the forefront of other nations, which was in conformity with the inflation of documents during that time, and also with the percentage of German inhabitants in comparison with other immigrants from Ireland, Great Britain, Italy and Poland. “ The Germans of Chicago” inaugurated on the 16th of June 1914 the highest personal bronze monument in North America, in the northern part of the Lincoln Park of the City. The festive act was watched by a crowd of some twenty thousand visitors, a majority of German descent. Pouring rain could not prevent them from being present during the three hours of the ceremony. Admiring speeches were held, German songs brought forward by the numerous association and chorals of singers, and a march of participating associations in their multi-colored costumes mqarked the end of the festivities. Only some weeks later, the First World War started in Europe.

How had the erection of this monument been conceived?

When on the 31st of March 1876 the “Swabian Association” was founded, it was the first association founded by German immigrants in Chicago. The objective of the “non-profit organization” should be as follows: To keep alive the festivities and customs of Swabians having come from Swabia, to acquire land and mutually help and support each other. Obviously, the erection of monuments was part of this effort, and as one of the first personal monuments in Chicago, the replica of the Schiller monument by Ernst Rau in Marbach, had been built under the responsible leadership of the Swabian Association. The Association and its members were also part of the realization of the the Humboldt monument that was already mentioned, and also of the Reuter monument. All the three statues are somewhat taller than life-size and appear in historic outfit; they are in accordance with the usual monumental style of the German Emperors, and they also agree with the interpretation of art as it was emerging in America which is reflected in particular in the public sculptures of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Without a preceding public tender, the German sculptors had received their orders directly, and the bronze casting were done in German foundries: “MADE IN GERMANY”.

As early as 1889 the board of t