Wikipedia (
visit link) has a webpage for the monument which informs us:
"Adam Mickiewicz Monument in Kraków, (Polish: pomnik Adama Mickiewicza w Krakowie), is one of the best known bronze monuments in Poland, and a favourite meeting place at the Main Market Square in the Old Town (Stare Miasto) district of Kraków.
The statue of Adam Mickiewicz, the greatest Polish Romantic poet of the 19th century, was unveiled on June 16, 1898, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, in the presence of his daughter and son. It was designed by Teodor Rygier, a little-known sculptor at the time, who won the third and final competition for this project by popular demand ahead of over 60 artists in total, the renowned painter Jan Matejko included.
Even though the first prize was awarded to famed Cyprian Godebski, professor at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg from Paris, with Rygier at a close second, for the final execution a more popular design by Rygier was accepted with a contract signed in November 1889. At the poet's feet are four allegoric groups symbolising the Motherland (from the face of the monument along Sienna Street), Science (facing north), Courage (facing Sukiennice Hall) and Poetry (facing Church of St. Wojciech, south). The inscription on the pedestal reads: "To Adam Mickiewicz, the Nation".
History
Destruction of Mickiewicz Monument by Nazi Germany, August 17, 1940
The monument came into being at a studio on Dluga Street under the supervision of an artistic committee. All the figures were cast in the Nellich foundry in Rome. The final location of the monument was not decided at once, with at least three other city squares taken into consideration. Ultimately, it was the city Mayor who suggested that the structure be placed in the Main Market Square instead.
In 1940 the monument was destroyed by the Nazis following German invasion of Poland (photo). It was not to be seen in the Square until its restoration in 1955. However, most of the figures were recovered from a Hamburg scrap metal heap in 1946, which allowed the restoration of the Monument's original appearance.
Adam Mickiewicz had himself never been to Kraków. In 1890, 35 years after his death, his remains were brought there from Paris and ceremoniously laid to rest in the St. Leonard's Crypt under the Wawel Cathedral, which partially inspired the project with the original idea put forward by university youth. Every year on Christmas Eve, the Adam Mickiewicz Monument is decorated with flowers by the florists of Kraków."
and it's page for the poet (
visit link) informs us:
"Adam Bernard Mickiewicz ... 24 December 1798 – 26 November 1855) was a Polish poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator, professor of Slavic literature, and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. A principal figure in Polish Romanticism, he is counted one of Poland's "Three Bards" ("Trzej Wieszcze") and is widely regarded as Poland's greatest poet. He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic and European
poets and has been dubbed a "Slavic bard". A leading Romantic dramatist, he has been compared in Poland and Europe to Byron and Goethe.
He is known chiefly for the poetic drama Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) and the national epic poem Pan Tadeusz. His other influential works include Konrad Wallenrod and Grazyna. All these served as inspiration for uprisings against the three imperial powers that had partitioned the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth out of existence.
Mickiewicz was born in the Russian-partitioned territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which had been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and was active in the struggle to win independence for his home region. After, as a consequence, spending five years exiled to central Russia, in 1829 he succeeded in leaving the Russian Empire and, like many of his compatriots, lived out the rest of his life abroad. He settled first in Rome, then in Paris, where for a little over three years he lectured on Slavic literature at the Collège de France. He died, probably of cholera, at Istanbul in the Ottoman Empire, where he had gone to help organize Polish and Jewish forces to fight Russia in the Crimean War.
In 1890, his remains were repatriated from Montmorency, Val-d'Oise, in France, to Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Poland."