Postage stamps: Places of interest - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1997 - 100 Pfennig

Inaugurated in 1857, the Goethe Schiller Memorial in front of the German National Theater in Weimar was the first double statue in Germany. Its creator is the Dresden sculptor Ernst Rietschel (1804-1861), who put the Weimar poets Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) and Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) on a common monumental base. The double statue as a monumental expression of the creative alliance of the two poets was deliberately placed in front of the former court theater; Here, Goethe conducted the artistic direction from 1791 to 1817, and the dramas created by Schiller in the last decade of his life were performed here for the first time. The monument symbolizes the creative power of classical German literature at the end of the 18th century in the residence city of the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. Goethe had entered the Weimar state service in 1775, while Schiller had settled in Weimar in 1799. The monument was a reference of the city to the "poet heroes" of German classical music. In the costume of the time, the artist juxtaposed the two friends of the poet and expressed in the design individuality and commonality of the classical poet couple. The group of figures on the marble base (2.59 m high) is a larger than life bronze casting (3.34 m high). The memorial of the two »national poets« in Weimar has always been conceived as a memorial to the nation of culture, despite some political appropriation. It is the personalized symbol of the Thuringian cultural city of Weimar. (Text: Dr. habil. Volker Wahl, Thuringian Main State Archive Weimar)