The Statues of Central Park as Ego Ideals

The bronze and stone statues of Central Park in New York City represent ego ideals for the city’s many diverse ethnic groups, especially for immigrants arriving in Manhattan during the late 19^th century. The figures help us understand the organization of groups and the integration of for-

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eigners into American social life.

The bronze bust of German playwright and philosopher Frederich Schiller is one of the oldest statues in Central Park, its pedestal engraved with “1859.” Given to New York City by its German citizens, it symbolized a shared mental image of Germanic pride. Schiller was a cultural and political giant, and one of the most beloved German poets of all time. His poem “Song of the Bell,” about the casting and life course of a bell, was honored as part of the high school curriculum until the 1950s. Schiller was a frequent visitor in Freud’s dreams, and his bronze bust, located in the Central Park Mall Prominade next to Beethoven’s, illustrates the Freudian concept of the “ego ideal.”

The ego ideal is a person or abstract idea to which an individual or group aspires. Our country’s collective democratic ideal is written in the park’s motley cast of figures. Among Schiller’s current companions are two monuments to Columbus; The Pilgrim, holding a flintlock musket above the park’s best sledding area; founding father Alexander Hamilton; antebellum statesman Daniel Webster; and Augustus St. Gaudens’ gilded masterpiece of General Sherman sited at the main entrance.

The statues, representing ego ideals, were integral to the formation and reinforcement of group identity. They reveal our propensity for what Freud called the “herd instinct” and the way we feel incomplete when we are alone (Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, 1959, p. 65). A group is made of people who seize the same object as their ego ideal and in doing so, identify with all the other group members (Freud, Group Psychology, p. 61). Ethnic associations, who usually selected a sculptor from their own country of origin, sponsored most of the sculptures erected in the late 1800s.

The commemorative sculptures and those who wel-

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comed them also tell us something about the relationship between leaders and followers. A leader inhabits the role of a group’s shared ego ideal and this process enables a people’s submission to one individual (Freud, Group Psychology, pp. 53-57). Huge throngs paid homage to their homeland heroes in the dedication ceremonies that included a parade through the city in the morning and a torchlight procession at night, which was then followed by a banquet. The formal unveilings midday attracted an international audience whose upturned faces savored the magnetism of the moment. Like the artistic and military leaders they commemorate, the statues of Central Park created a network of shared identifications through such hypnotic reveries. They were not only resplendent icons of the Old World, but they provided a critical locus for group emotion in a new one. These objects reactivated what Vamik Volkan calls the “chosen glories” of a culture (Vamik Volkan, Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism, 1997, pp. 81-82). They enhanced the self-esteem of a transplanted people.

The dedication of Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini in 1878 featured the last public address by renowned poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant. This was a time when Italians in America were viewed as non-white and, 13 years later in New Orleans, victims of the largest mass lynching in our country’s history. Bryant’s impassioned speech received enthusiastic “Vivas” alongside “Hurrahs!” in the mutual acceptance of two races and a shared feeling of national identity. The statues invoked identifications across ethnic and nationalistic boundaries. They captured peoples’ memories, spoke to those they were meant to represent, and inspired social connection in a city of difference.

To be sure, these cast and sculpted players did not always serve as peacekeepers in a pastoral landscape. They provoked heated conflict as when, in 1892, both the Italians and Spanish claimed Columbus as their national hero. These

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idealized figures were also objects of ferocious denigration. Later that same decade, the monument of the Genovese explorer at Columbus Circle attracted not only Italian-Americans but also anti-Italian vandals who defaced its Carrara marble with mud. In the 20^th century, disgruntled Southerners taunted the equestrian monument of Sherman trailing a female figure of victory: “Who but a Northerner would let a woman walk while a man rides!” (Sara Cedar Miller, Central Park: An American Masterpiece, 2003, p. 206).

The commemorative sculptures were potent artworks that reached into our collective minds with polarizing potential. However, more often than not, these monuments reinforced shared identifications, a desire for equality, and a code of social justice. They charmed New Yorkers from their insular communities and soothed the tensions of diverse urban living.

Central Park was the first urban park to successfully integrate public space across deeply entrenched economic and racial divides (Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park, 1992, pp. 308-309). The sculptures erected during the 1860s-1890s helped create a sense of belonging for various ethnic groups at a time when mass immigration into cities was dramatically changing the social structure of America. Today the multicultural collection of statues totals over 50, including those erected against the park’s outer walls. The most recent placement in 1997 is jazz legend Duke Ellington in a large tableau held aloft by the Muses. These stone and bronze figures are both an historical looking glass for a sauntering spectator and a reminder of the power of public art to galvanize group identity and emotions, both love and hate.

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