Gerhard von Scharnhorst
The Scharnhorst Memorial stands on Unter den Linden in Berlin’s Mitte district, opposite the Neue Wache. Its marble figure commemorates Gerhard von Scharnhorst, a Prussian military reformer and freedom fighter who lived from 1755 to 1813. Christian Daniel Rauch created the neoclassical work between 1819 and 1822, drawing on simplicity, symmetry and proportion. The setting once formed an urban ensemble with the Neue Wache.
The statue originally stood to the right of the Neue Wache before moving across the avenue in 1963. Weathering led to its removal in 2021, while plans call for a replica and discussion continues about returning it to the original position. Rauch founded the Berlin school of sculpture, and this memorial shows how its nineteenth-century neoclassicism joined portraiture with ideals of Prussian military reform. The combination of white marble, a historic boulevard and the Neue Wache remains the detail that fixes this place in Berlin’s civic landscape.
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