Statue Removal and Frederick the Great: A Story of Three Statues

 

The Unter den Linden statue being replaced, 1980
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-W1127-030

The post looks at statue/commemoration removal, an idea that dates back to at least the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, and likely before. Over the past few years, citizens of the United States have confronted the issue of the removal of statues of historic figures from prominent places in public life. In the United States today, opinions towards statue removal are often split along party lines, exacerbating the tension of an already charged issue. I will attempt to tread carefully, and my point is certainly not to advocate for the removal or maintenance of statues.  Rather, I hope to provide some comparisons that will allow for reflection regarding statue removal debates as a whole. King Frederick II of Prussia, a figure that few Americans could pick out of a lineup, also has a contentious legacy of statue removal, destruction, and replacement. 

Without becoming enmeshed in the politics of the debate in the United States, I seek to examine the story of three statues of Frederick, their removal, and fate (to the present). In doing so, I hope to demonstrate a few things: First, statue removal and replacement is a struggle that is located in specific, often politically charged, moments in time. Second, when statues are removed, destroyed, or replaced, the decision is not always final. Debates over historical commemoration of specific individuals will continue, regardless of statuary. Finally, knowledge of historical figures, and even debates over their merits, are rarely impacted in the long-term by the removal and destruction of statues. I've been to see all of these statues in person, and that is part of how I know their stories. Two of them are in Germany, one is in the United States. All have been removed, one was destroyed, and two have been replaced. 

The Kloster Zinna Frederick

The drive between Dresden and Berlin can take many different routes, such as Autobahn 13, part of Germany’s famous interstate highway system. If you stick to the path less traveled, however, you might find yourself driving down small rural route 101, a two-lane highway broken up by turns and stoplights. On this scenic drive, which could easily be mistaken by Americans for the rural Midwest, you will pass by small industrial city of Jüteborg, a “city of the reformation,” as the town slogans remind you. Just north of Jüteborg, an hour away from Berlin Mitte, sits the small village of Kloster Zinna. Originally an abbey in the medieval era, the Prussian King Frederick II founded a small community of weavers on this site in the year 1764. The memory of Frederick, the father of the city, is all over Kloster Zinna. Walking through the central square and park, you see the local eatery, “Curry-Fritz,” an amalgamation of the King’s nickname “Alte Fritz” and the popular twenty-first century dish “Currywurst”: a spicy sausage plate. The centerpiece of Frederick’s historical memory in Kloster Zinna, however, is the Denkmal, or commemorative statute, which stands proudly next to rural route 101, reminding all the visitors to Kloster Zinna that this was a city founded by Frederick the Great.

I have had the great good fortune to stop by Kloster Zinna twice in the course of my dissertation research. During my first visit, in 2018, I had never heard of the place before, and it was only the statute of Frederick which caused me to pull my micro-sized rental car to the side of the road for a closer look. The second time in the summer of 2019, I returned with a bit more reverence, and snapped a selfie with the Kloster Zinna Denkmal. Secondary research and discussions with the gruff but friendly townspeople of Kloster Zinna revealed that much like the memory of Frederick across all of Germany, the Kloster Zinna Denkmal, too, had a turbulent and contested meaning. Like so many monuments, the statute of Frederick was built on an anniversary, in 1864 during the centennial of the founding of the city. The Denkmal became a site of congregation for local school events. During the twentieth century, with the image of Fritz used so widely in the National Socialist era, the Denkmal became a symbol of the Nazi legacy in Germany. With the fall of the Nazi Regime in 1945, the legacy and memory of Frederick the Great took a radically different turn. As denazification proceeded in both East and West Germany, the memory of Frederick was tarnished by its association with the Nazi Regime. The former eastern lands of the German state (East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia) were given over to new Polish and Soviet leaders. On February 25, 1947, Prussia which had existed as a state in the German federal system, was now replaced with Brandenburg and the very name of Prussia was erased from the maps of Europe. After the Second World War, a communist youth organization was set up nearby, and during a village outing which took most people out of Kloster Zinna, a group of communist party youth destroyed the statute with sledgehammers. 

The blindfolded statue in 2016. 

The memory of Frederick, however, endured. On the 8th of April, 1994, a group of citizens who had collected the pieces of the old, smashed Denkmal, fused them into a new monument, with an inscription proudly stating: “Frederick the Great: Founder of the City in the year 1764. This thanksgiving monument erected in 1864.” A plaque on the reverse side of the monument reads: “This monument was destroyed in 1949. It was renewed on April 8th 1994 thanks to the funds from the citizens and friends of the city.” The contested nature of the statue has continued since that time: when I visited in 2019, there was graffiti, and in 2016, the stature, and many other statues across Germany, were blindfolded in order to demonstrate their historical figure's blindness to the problems of hostility to Jewish communities. The Kloster Zinna monument, a local story, demonstrates the ways that Germans have engaged with and contested the memory of Frederick the Great.

The Washington D.C. statue in its original location

The Washington D.C./Carlisle Frederick   

In 1904, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany presented a statue of Frederick II to the United States as a symbol of goodwill. That stature was originally placed on a military base in southern Washington D.C., Fort McNair. It remained in that location between 1904 and 1918. Almost immediately, there was trouble. In January of 1905, Gessler Rousseau, attempted to destroy the statue with an "infernal machine" (bomb). The Saint Louis Republic reported on January 16th that Rousseau was a "patriotic fanatic" with a history of bombing attempts. 

During a surge in anti-German hostility during the First World War, there were calls to remove and destroy the statue. Ralph Block, for the New York Tribune, reported on February 9th, 1918: 

The deadly statue of Frederick the Great, the statue of the man who was termed by Dr. R. M. McElroy of Princeton university, "the head devil of the whole Prussian philosophy," still lurks in front of the War college. Doctor McElroy announced at a luncheon in New York he was gong to start of movement to tear down Frederick and turn him into bullets. But Washington so far has manifested an alarming apathy to the patriotic project.

On August 25th of the same year, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that statue had been melted down, but this was premature. Many newspapers, including the The Herald, out of New Orleans, ran this cartoon accompanying the story. 

The statue was removed to a cellar after popular demand grew for removal. In 1927, Dwight F. Davis, the secretary of war, returned the statue to its original location, asserting, "Frederick lived many years before the World War and was not identified in any way with that conflict."[1] Concerns about the statue returned again during the Second World War, and it was removed again. 

The Carlisle Frederick in 2018

With the end of the war, desiring to move Frederick to a "relatively inconspicuous site," he was moved from Washington to Army War College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania.[2] The statue remains at Carlisle to the present day, and civilians can indeed gain entrance to the base in order to visit the statue (as of 2018). 

Unter den Linden  Frederick, 2018

The Unter den Linden Frederick

In 1851, perhaps the most famous statue of Frederick, sculpted by Christian Daniel Rauch, was unveiled and displayed on the Berlin boulevard Unter den Linden. It remained their in relatively the same way until the Second World War, when it was encased in cement for preservation from allied bombing. 

Frederick being removed from carbonite, 1950

As we have already seen above at Kloster Zinna, statues of Frederick were torn down and demolished in Soviet-controlled East Germany. The Unter den Linden statue was removed by the East German government, and nearly melted down. Prussia, and by extension, Frederick, were blamed for the disaster at the end of the war, or leading to militarism and the rise of National Socialism, and a host of other problems. 

The statue being moved in the 1980s, from Christopher 
Clark's Frederick the Great and the Enigma of Prussia

After being nearly melted, and saved by chance, the statue was sent to the Charlottenhof palace in Potsdam for twenty years. By the 1980s, however, the East German government had officially softened its position on Frederick, and Erich Honecker, the East German head of state, personally ordered the restoration of the Rauch’s equestrian statue of Frederick the Great on Unter den Linden. In the later stages of the Cold War, Frederick was remembered in East Germany for his progressive social and legal policies. By emphasizing Frederick’s progressivism, rather than his military feats, the East German government found a way to rehabilitate his historical memory. The equestrian statue remained in place after the reunification of Germany, and it continues to inspire visitors to the Berlin State Library.[3]

Final Thoughts 

What do the stories of these statues tell us? Very little about Frederick himself. Instead, they tell us about the changing nature of historical commemoration across time, regimes, and national boundaries. 

These three statues display the variety of experience in contested historical commemoration. The story of historical commemoration is not a tale of permanence. Statues are built, they are celebrated, they become controversial, they are protested, they are removed, they are destroyed, they live in obscurity, they are rebuilt. Every generation must decide how to commemorate its own past. What is certain, however, is that future generations will continue to contest this legacy: changing, revising, and rediscovering how the past is remembered. What we believe about historical figures and their commemoration is important to us today. It is almost guaranteed that the next generation will remember the same set of historical figures with a different lens of significance. 

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Thanks for Reading, 

Alex Burns

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[1]Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.), 08 Nov. 1927. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1927-11-08/ed-1/seq-15/>

[2] Historical Marker with the assistance of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle. 

[3] Helmut Engel and Wolfgang Ribbe, Via triumphais: Geschichtslandschaft, “Unter den Linden” zwischen Friedrich-Denkmal und Schlossbrücke, (Berlin: Akadmie Verlag, 1997), 52.