Lorelei Fountain

The Lorelei Fountain, also known as the Heinrich Heine Memorial, is located on East 161st Street in the Concourse section of the South Bronx, New York City, near the Bronx County Courthouse. It is a white marble fountain dedicated to the memory of the German poet and writer Heinrich Heine. Heine had once written a poem devoted to the Lorelei, a feminine water spirit much like a mermaid that is associated with the Lorelei rock in St. Goarshausen, Germany. The monument was originally to be placed in Heine's hometown of Düsseldorf, but antisemitism and nationalist propaganda in the German Empire precluded the completion of the monument on Heine's 100th birthday in 1897. Instead, it was unveiled on July 8, 1899 in the presence of the sculptor, Ernst Herter, in the Bronx.

Above the fountain bowl situated in Joyce Kilmer Park, bounded by the Grand Concourse, Walton Avenue, 164th Street, and 161st Street, a life-size figure of Lorelei rises, supported on a base; the monument stands at the southern end of the Joyce Kilmer Park and is near 161st Street and the Grand Concourse, across from the Bronx County Courthouse. Three mermaids sit in the fountain bowl resting at the base, which is supported by three volutes. Located on the front side of the base, between two volutes, is a relief of a profile portrait of Heine. Below that is the signature of the poet. The figure to the left of the relief, the poetry, sits to the right of the figure symbolizing satire; on the back is one signifying melancholy. Between the three figures are three dolphin heads. In addition to the Heine-portrait, there is a depiction of a naked boy with dunce cap points his pen on a dragon, symbolizing the humor. On a third relief, a sphinx hugs "a naked young man in the kiss of death".

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