"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana
My adventure today led me on a trip to the city via the Göttingen Seven, statues of a group of seven professors from Göttingen by Floriano Bodini in 1998. These professors included Georg Gottfried Gervinus, a literary and political historian; Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, a historian, politician and public law specialist (co-authoring the constitution of 1833); Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, both philologists (I had to look up the meaning of this word!); Wilhelm Weber a physicist who together with Carl Friedrich Gauss, invented the first electromagnetic telegraph; Heinrich Ewald, theologian; and Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht, a constitutional lawyer, jurist, and docent. In 1837 they were protesting to Ernest Augustus I (who became had just become King of Hanover when his niece, Victoria, became Queen of the United Kingdom, ending the personal union that had existed between Britain and Hanover since 1714), against the abolition or alteration of the constitution of the Kingdom of Hanover, refusing to swear an oath to the new king. Outside the statue's gate are the three members of the Göttingen Seven, who were banished from the Kingdom and inside the gate are the four members still confronting the King (on the horse), after being dismissed from their office but not banished from the Kingdom of Hanover. (All this knowledge gleaned from Wikipedia).
These are remarkable statues, so lifelike that you can feel their protest, even though now silent. The constitutions of our countries are just as important now as they were then, and it is important that we remember our past through history books and works of art like this, in the hope that we do not repeat our mistakes, and at the very least, learn from them to improve our future.
No comments:
Post a Comment