Adam Mickiewicz - Warsaw, Poland - Dead Poets' Society Memorials on Waymarking.com

The Neo-Classicist monument, dedicated to the one of the greatest poets of Poland and a lifelong apostle of Polish national freedom was constructed in 1897-1898 by sculptor Cyprian Godebski. The monument was built on a place where several buildings demolished in 1865 were located. Since 1897 it has been sculpted by Godebski in Italy. The 4.2 m tall bronze statue was cast in Pistoia, Italy.Red granite column and foundations were produced by Italian company in Baveno near Milano. The statue shows Mickiewicz standing tall, with the head slightly raised and the right hand laid on his heart. The monument was ceremonially unveiled on 24 December 1898 on the 100th anniversary of poet's birth. The ceremony was planned to be much larger, however the Tsarist authorities feared it could turn into patriotic manifestation and banned all marches and speeches. The monument was thus unveiled in silence, in front of 12,000 people.

After the fall of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 it was deliberately destroyed by Nazi Germans. Remaining parts of the demolished monument were eventually transported to Germany. After the war, Polish soldiers found the head and several parts of the statue in Hamburg. Sculptor Jan Szczepkowski produced the copy of the original statue. Environs of the monument were also restored. It was unveiled again on 28 January 1950. Last parts of the monument returned to Poland as late as in the 1980s.

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Adam Mickiewicz, in full Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (Dec.24,1798—Nov. 26, 1855),was a Polish national poet, essayist, translator, publicist and political writer. A prime representative of the Polish Romantic period, he is one of that country's Three Bards and the greatest poet in all Polish literature. He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic and European poets. He has been described as a "Slavic bard". He was a leading Romantic dramatist and has been compared in Poland and in Europe to Byron and Goethe.

He is known primarily as the author of the poetic drama Dziady and national epic Pan Tadeusz, which is considered the last great epic of Polish-Lithuanian noble culture. Mickiewicz's other influential works include Konrad Wallenrod and Grazyna. All served as inspiration during regional uprisings and as foundations for the concept of Poland as "the Christ of Nations."

Mickiewicz was active in the struggle to achieve independence for his homeland, then part of the Russian Empire. Having spent five years in internal exile in central Russia for political activities, he left the Empire in 1829 and spent the rest of his life in other countries, like many of his compatriots. He settled first in Rome, later in Paris, where he became professor of Slavic literature at the Collège de France. He died, probably of cholera, at Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, where he had gone to help organize Polish forces to fight against Russia in the Crimean War. His remains were later moved to Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Poland.

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