The Anatomiegarten with the famous Bunsen Monument is located in the main street.
The Bunsen Monument, which had stood laterally offset in front of the Friedrichsbau since 1961, moved to the centre in 1978. The two stone figures that had always belonged to the monument were also brought from the Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage, where the Bunsen monument had been unveiled in 1908 and put back in relation to the bronze figure. The conception of the monument as a whole was based on the idea of symbolically representing the still not wake, to a certain extent veiled forces of nature and also the giant forces of the elements that have been tamed by the human spirit and forced into its service, and to give them to the side of the great natural scientist.
Just as Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811-1899) was appreciated by the people as an affable man and a popular personality during the 44 years he lived in Heidelberg, the people of Heidelberg also gladly accepted his monument and took it into their care. Despite latent dangers, it has not been melted down. It was thanks to a fundraising campaign initiated by Bunsen's second successor as director of the Chemical Institute, Professor Dr. Theodor Curtius, which raised 65,000 gold marks by 1910. The Karlsruhe sculptor and academy teacher Hermann Volz created the bronze monument and the two allegories in stuccoed granite in 1907/8 for 59,000 marks. Volz had known Bunsen personally. The unveiling of the monument at its original location in Leopoldstraße at the level of the extended Märzgasse took place on August 1, 1908.
The bronze figure of Bunsen holds, according to a thinker, the head slightly inclined and therefore does not look directly at the building, in which the scholar together with Gustav Kirchhoff succeeded in the ground-breaking discovery of the method of spectral analysis.
Just as Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811-1899) was appreciated by the people as an affable man and a popular personality during the 44 years he lived in Heidelberg, the people of Heidelberg also gladly accepted his monument and took it into their care. Despite latent dangers, it has not been melted down. It was thanks to a fundraising campaign initiated by Bunsen's second successor as director of the Chemical Institute, Professor Dr. Theodor Curtius, which raised 65,000 gold marks by 1910. The Karlsruhe sculptor and academy teacher Hermann Volz created the bronze monument and the two allegories in stuccoed granite in 1907/8 for 59,000 marks. Volz had known Bunsen personally. The unveiling of the monument at its original location in Leopoldstraße at the level of the extended Märzgasse took place on August 1, 1908.
The bronze figure of Bunsen holds, according to a thinker, the head slightly inclined and therefore does not look directly at the building, in which the scholar together with Gustav Kirchhoff succeeded in the ground-breaking discovery of the method of spectral analysis.