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the Grand Concourse, and the Lorelei, or Heinrich Heine, 

 fountain, over whose acceptance by the city so much fuss was 

 made in 1893 and subsequent years. 



The statue is the work of Professor Ernst Herter, a famous 

 German sculptor, and was originally intended for erection 

 at Dusseldorf, Heine's native place; but it was refused there 

 on account of Heine's being a Jew, and also on account of the 

 fact that he had satirized the ruling houses of the various 

 German states and principalities. It was then purchased by 

 some of the citizens of New York of German extraction or 

 ancestry, and offered to the city in 1893. Then arose a bitter 

 and acrimonious discussion, which lasted for several years. 

 The statue was at first rejected on the question of its suita- 

 bility and artistic worth ; but there is no doubt Heine's nativity, 

 both as a Jew and a German, played considerable part with 

 the opponents of the monument. The demand on the part 

 of the monument committee for its erection in the most 

 prominent place in New York, the entrance to Central Park 

 at Fifth Avenue, where the Sherman statue stands, was dis- 

 regarded; and the fountain, as a sort of compromise, was 

 relegated to the Borough. The task of erecting it was begun 

 on February 1, 1899, and the unveiling took place on the 8th 

 of July following. Shortly afterward, some vandal — actuated 

 by anti-Semitism, anti-Germanism, an objection to the nudity 

 of the symbolic female figures, or, perhaps, out of a spirit of 

 viciousness — very seriously defaced the figures, putting the 

 city to an expense of nearly two thousand dollars to repair 

 them. For a long time afterward, a police officer was kept on 

 guard night and day. The position of the statue at the en- 

 trance to the Concourse will, in time, be almost as prominent 

 as that originally asked for it. 



Immediately north of the Heine monument is a statue of 



