Goethe–Schiller Monument
About This Site
Goethe and Schiller have stood on the Theaterplatz since 1857, made by Ernst Rietschel. The city's own description is the best thing anyone has written about them: almost at the same eye level, and yet without eye contact.
Almost the same height
The two men were not the same height in life and are not quite the same height here, and they are not looking at each other. Whatever the monument was meant to say about a literary friendship, what it actually shows is two people standing together facing outward — which is a fair account of a working partnership and a poor one of an embrace. It repays a minute of looking rather than the ten seconds most photographs give it.
What the pedestal says, 1857
The inscription reads DEM DICHTERPAAR GOETHE UND SCHILLER DAS VATERLAND — to the poet-pair Goethe and Schiller, from the fatherland. By 1857 a nation that did not yet exist as a state was claiming two dead writers from a small duchy as its own, and the monument is the receipt.
Where it stands, 1799–1805
Directly in front of the theatre the two of them ran together between 1799 and 1805, on a public square, free and unenclosed at any hour. That siting is not incidental: the statue faces out from the building where the work happened, which makes the theatre behind it part of the monument whether or not anyone reads it that way.
Questions visitors ask
- Who made the monument, and when?
- Ernst Rietschel, in 1857. Goethe and Schiller have stood on the Theaterplatz ever since.
- What does the inscription say?
- DEM DICHTERPAAR GOETHE UND SCHILLER DAS VATERLAND — to the poet-pair Goethe and Schiller, from the fatherland: a nation that did not yet exist as a state, in 1857, claiming two dead writers from a small duchy as its own.
- Why does it stand where it does?
- Directly in front of the theatre the two of them ran together between 1799 and 1805 — the statue faces out from the building where the work happened.
- Is it free to see?
- Yes — it stands on a public square, accessible all day.
Connected Historical Figures
writer • poet • historian
He stands in bronze beside Goethe on the square outside the theatre they ran together.
writer • statesman • naturalist
One of the two figures Rietschel made, standing since 1857.
Visit Information
Free
Accessible all day in public square
Theaterplatz, 99423 Weimar
50.9799, 11.3260
Stay and eat nearby
Where to stay
Goetheplatz 2, 99423 Weimar
On the Theaterplatz, in front of the theatre.
Schützengasse 1, 99423 Weimar
The monument stands on the Theaterplatz, one end of the stretch this hotel describes as its position.
Goetheplatz 6, 99423 Weimar
The monument stands on the Theaterplatz, in front of the theatre.
Where to eat
Events held here
Events
Daily at 10:00 and 14:00, about two hours
The end of the route, in front of the theatre.
The weekend before Easter, every year
The overflow onto the Theaterplatz puts craft stalls at the foot of the monument.
A weekend in early September
The stalls stand on the monument's square — Goethe and Schiller preside over the cheese.
Late November to the first days of January, every year
The ice rink is laid out at the monument's feet on the Theaterplatz.
In Weimar's history
Historic sites
Theaterplatz 2, 99423 Weimar
It stands directly in front of the theatre the two of them ran together.
Historical periods
A nation that did not yet exist claiming the period's two names as its own, in 1857.
For roughly sixty years a duchy of a few thousand people held the centre of German literature, because its ruler kept inviting writers to live there and then gave them jobs. That is the whole mechanism, and it ran from Goethe's arrival in 1775 to his death in 1832.
Stages and venues
Theaterplatz 2, 99423 Weimar
The monument to the two of them stands on the same square, outside the theatre they worked for.
Theaterplatz 4, 99423 Weimar
The garden lies, in the city's own word, in the hinterland of the Theaterplatz, where the monument to the two poets stands.
The monument stands on the square; the Christmas ice rink is laid at its feet.