Fechner-Denkmal

The Fechner monument stands in Leipzig’s zoo, near the western edge where the Rosental meadow meets the Hacienda las Casas entrance. A bronze bust of Gustav Theodor Fechner, 70 centimetres high, is mounted on a red granite column 1.8 metres tall, topped and bottomed with stepped sandstone. The front bears Fechner’s name, life dates and the inscription ‘In Gott leben, weben und sind wir’ from Acts 17:28. The rear shows a reference to his 1879 work Die Tagesansicht, page one, where he describes the very spot where the monument now stands. The monument was proposed in 1896 by Fechner’s pupil Paul Julius Möbius, a neurologist and psychiatrist, and designed by Dresden sculptor Gustav Adolph Kietz. It was unveiled in April 1897 on a site Fechner had favoured, close to the 1824 Schweizerhäuschen café. In the 1940s the bronze bust was melted for war needs, but a replica by Hans-Joachim Förster was installed in 1983. The zoo’s expansion in 1927 incorporated the monument and café, which later became the Hacienda las Casas restaurant. Visitors approach through a locked gate behind the restaurant and find the bust on its granite column beside a quiet path. The inscription and biblical phrase remain clearly visible. The surrounding Rosental meadow and zoo grounds offer a calm setting for reflection on Fechner’s work in medicine, physics and philosophy.