Gottfried Semper - Dresden, Germany - Statues of Historic Figures on Waymarking.com

Gottfried Semper (Nov 29, 1803 – May 15, 1879) was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture, who designed and built the famous Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden and was put on the government's wanted list. Semper fled first to Zürich and later to London. Later he returned to Germany after the 1862 amnesty granted to the revolutionaries.

Semper wrote extensively about the origins of architecture, especially in his book The Four Elements of Architecture from 1851, and he was one of the major figures in the controversy surrounding the polychrome architectural style of ancient Greece. Semper designed works at all scales, from a baton for Richard Wagner to major urban interventions like the re-design of the Ringstraße in Vienna. Semper was undoubtely architectural peer in the German-speaking countries and his ideas had pushed European architecture to the brink of modernism.


Gottfried Semper Monument

The monument consists of a bronze sculpture standing on a pedestal of red Meissner's granite. The life-size statue stands in front of Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. Semper statue is dressed in an elegant suit with a jacket over it. In his hands he holds a partly rolled-up architectural drawing. With his left foot he stands on a decorated with two lions heads console. On the front of more than 1.50 meters high pedestal a bronze plaque is attached with his name.

In 1892 Dresden the architect was honoured with a bronze monument. It was donated by the "Verband Deutscher Architekten und Ingenieure" (Association of German Architects and Engineers), because the Royal Saxon Court and the city of Dresden gave no money because Gottfried Semper's participation at the 1849 May Uprising in Dresden, despite his achievements in the Dresden architecture. It was made by the Dresden sculptor Johannes Schilling (1828-1919), a student of Gottfried Semper’s friend Rietschel who also made the figures decorating today’s Semper Opera House, most notably the panther quadriga.


More detailed info in Deutsch - (visit link)

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