The Schiller Monument is located in central Berlin (Berlin-Mitte) on Gendarmenmarkt, in front of the flight of steps leading up to the former royal theater, today a concert hall.

[citation needed] In response to public criticism that Schiller should not stand alone in front of the theater, the magistrate decided in 1861 that his statue would be flanked by monuments to Goethe and Lessing, but these were never erected.

The statue of the poet stands on a cube-shaped pedestal surrounded by four semicircular basins, above which there are water spouts in the form of lion heads.

In the back are History, with names including Schiller, Lessing, Kant, Goethe and other famous people on her tablets, and Philosophy, holding a scroll with a text in Ancient Greek: ‘Know Thyself’.

The metal used was from a memorial fountain for Emil and Walther Rathenau, originally erected in 1930 in a large public park, Volkspark Rehberge, but removed from this location by the Nazis in 1934 for ideological reasons and melted down in 1941.

The marble original of the Schiller statue was placed in Lietsensee Park, which was in one of the Western sectors into which the city was divided after World War II.