Two marble poets at Leibniz Gymnasium

Last week, when I was in Viktoriapark, I was searching for some statues of poets mentioned by my 1929 observer, Franz Hessel. Everything else he described nearly a century ago was still there, but the poets were gone. After a little online research, I learned that the two surviving statues (the others were destroyed in the war) had been moved to the courtyard of a nearby high school, Leibniz Gymnasium. So I went there searching for them.

The determined-looking fellow wearing the pro-Ukraine cape (courtesy of the students) is Ludwig Uhlander. He seems almost as good as new, except that parts of his scroll, which originally said “The old law” in German, have been broken off. 

The other poet (see extra) is the more famous Heinrich von Kleist. He is a bit the worse for wear, having lost his quill pen and a finger or two (he was originally tapping the pen on his chin), and having gained a few bullet holes in his cheeks and forehead. But he still wears the same pensive expression Hessel described.

When I asked some nearby students if they could tell me who these statues represented, one of them knew they were poets but didn’t know their names. The two others just shook there heads and volunteered, “Not Leibniz.”