RAUCH, Christian Daniel

Rauch set his studio permanently in Berlin in 1819. From then on he produced a range of major monuments both in Berlin, and throughout Germany.

Gebhard Leberecht von Bl�cher, F�rst (Prince) von Wahlstatt (1742-1819), Graf (Count), later elevated to F�rst (Prince) von Wahlstatt, was a Prussian Generalfeldmarschall who led his army against Napoleon I at the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig in 1813 and at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 with the Duke of Wellington.

In addition to his main work, the equestrian statue Frederic the Great, Rauch produced numerous portrait busts, too.

At the beginning of the 1820s, Rauch had promised to do some sculptures for the city church of his home town, Arolsen. However, Rauch took a long time to redeem this promise.

At the beginning of the 1820s, Rauch had promised to do some sculptures for the city church of his home town, Arolsen. However, Rauch took a long time to redeem this promise.

Rauch had been working on this equestrian statue for more than 20 years by the time it was unveiled on May 31, 1851 in Unter den Linden in Berlin. Rauch’s execution had been preceded by numerous draft designs, mostly by Schadow, who had worked at this commission virtually all his life.

Executed in bronze, the statue shows the King in contemporary dress with a regal cloak and two-cornered hat. On the three-tier pedestal there are inscriptions at socle level, and fully developed equestrian statues at the corners of the middle level representing Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, Prince Henry, Ziethen and Seydlitz. They are accompanied by 21 male statues depicting the most outstanding generals in Frederick’s army and other leading personalities. Six other equestrian figures appear in the reliefs. At the corners of the upper level are the female allegories of ruler virtues, while the rather genre-like reliefs illustrate the life and merits of Frederick.

When the monument was unveiled in 1851, it had been 70 years in the planning, involving around 40 artists and around 100 designs.

The central figure in Rauch’s ensemble in the Arolsen church was carried out in Carrara marble, and many replicas were made. For example, the sculptor presented a statuette version to the royal couple as a silver wedding present. Another version, with a lotus blossom in the lowered left hand as a symbol of eternity, was produced by Rauch in 1855 for the tomb of his deceased brother, but finished up cast in bronze for his own tomb in the Dorotheeenstadt cemetery in Berlin.

Schinkel’s Kreuzberg Monument consists of a 19-meter tower on the ground plan of a Greek cross, with a socle and a niche level in which 12 winged battle spirits are displayed. Rauch designed six of the battle spirits, but modeled only two. One of them is the Spirit of Paris.

Directly after the queen of Prussia, Louise died in 1810, King Frederick William III asked Humboldt to invite the Rome-based sculptors Thorvaldsen, Canova and Rauch to submit designs for a memorial tomb for the queen for the mausoleum in Charlottenburg. The client wanted to see his deceased wife depicted on her sarcophagus in the form of death as eternal sleep, merely dozing, and ready to be wakened any moment. When he came to see the tomb executed by Rauch, the King “broke into a flood of tears as he saw the head of his beloved deceased wife laid down for sleep, so eloquently lifelike did he find her.”

In this monument Rauch succeeded in combining two trends in Neoclassical sculpture of his day to make a new visual language. On the one side were the individualizing traits in the sculpture of his Berlin teacher Schadow, on the other the canonically idealized images of his Roman friend Thorvaldsen By developing a kind of synthesis of these two approaches, Rauch succeeded in creating one of the masterpieces of Neoclassical sculpture, which received unqualified admiration.

hen he came to see the tomb executed by Rauch, the King “broke into a flood of tears as he saw the head of his beloved deceased wife laid down for sleep, so eloquently lifelike did he find her.”