St. Jakobs Memorial

In the 15th century the St. Catherine's Chapel was built at the place where the current St.Jakob memorial stands, but it was demolished in 1805.^[1] The first monument to the Battle of St. Jacob at the Birs was designed by Marquard Wocher on a small hill^[2] at the fork in the road to St. Jakob and Münchenstein. The memorial was a neo-gothic^[3] 12 meter high tower sculptured out of red sandstone and had the coat of arms of the involved cantons depicted on its sides.^[2] It was inaugurated in 1824 and people would gather annually on the 26 August in memory of the battle.^[2] But the tower was in need of extensive maintaining and the city wanted to replace it with another memorial.^[1]

In 1859 a commission to elect a new memorial was formed,^[1] which included the Swiss historian Jakob Burckhardt^[1][4] and the architect Amadeus Merian [de].^[5] Several local and international artists were allowed to participate in the competition which was announced in February 1860 and closed on the 8 August of the same year.^[3] 18 artworks were taken into consideration by the commission^[3] of which the models of Arnold Böcklin, Ernst Stückelberg, Franz Heinrich Baldinger and Ferdinand Schlöth were exhibited to the public.^[6] The election committee chose the model of Baldinger as the one to be realized but Government of Basel hesitated in its pledge in view of the considerable costs on 100'000 Swiss francs.^[7] It demanded that the Grand Council of Basel Stadt choose a simple monument resembling the former one, to which the Grand Council agreed on the 9 December 1861 and a new competition began.^[7] The election committee favored an architectonic memorial but also asked painters to participate in the competition, after which paintings a sculpture was to be crafted.^[8] In the new competition, sculptor Ferdinand Schlöth and the painter Arnold Böcklin were the main competitors.^[9] Schlöth invested great time into the competition, and worked on different models of Helvetia out of plaster. He focused on Helvetia as he noticed that this motive gained wide support from the public.^[9] On the 5 July 1864, the electoral commission announced that the contract to build the memorial was given to Ferdinand Schlöth.^[10] In February 1866 a model of the sculpture was erected beside the Stadtcasino in Basel, so the public could inspect it.^[10] The surrounding figures mainly gained the approval from the public^[11] but again, Schlöth received a list of deficiencies of what did not meet the expectations for the sculpture and he made adaptions to the Helvetia, which was the most criticized.^[10] The demands included that the female figure should be better perceivable through the clothing, specially in the upper body and the right leg.^[11] Initially a sculpture in bronze was planned by the electoral commission for which a budget of 90'000 Swiss francs was provided,^[11] but by August 1866 the memorial was to be sculpted in stone.^[10] Schlöth insisted that it would be Carrara marble and assured,^[10] he would deliver the memorial of one central figure and four surrounding figures for 80'000 Swiss francs.^[11] He preferred the Carrara marble to other stones due to its better workability.^[12] At the time, the nature of the Carrara marble was not known well enough used for monuments of such dimensions below the open sky.^[12] Only after the electoral commission received benevolent informations on the weather resistance of the Carrara marble from Berlin and Stuttgart, the city council approved Schlöths demand for the Carrara marble.^[10] The aim was to inaugurate the sculpture for the 425. anniversary of the Battle of St. Jakob in 1869.^[10]

In 1867 Schlöth left for Rome where he had his workshop and waited for the Carrara marble to be delivered. The smaller blocks arrived in the winter months of 1867-1868, but the main block for Helvetia did still not arrive by 1869 due to which its inauguration had to be delayed.^[13] The costs of the memorial were of a considerable larger amount that expected and surpassed the 100'000 Swiss francs.^[10] As Schlöth had to endure financial hardships, the chancellor for the realization of the St.Jakob Memorial gave him a private credit for the time the city had to await the result of a fundraising campaign for the realization of the sculpture.^[14] But the work made good progress and by 1871, all five statues which comprised the memorial composition arrived in Basel.^[14]