Gänseliesel-Brunnen
The walk begins at a small fountain with a big reputation. The Gänseliesel, the goose girl, has stood in front of the medieval town hall since 1901, and although the figure is rather modest in size, she is the best-known landmark of Göttingen. Take a moment to notice what she is not: no professor, no prince, no founder, just a girl from ordinary life, in a city otherwise full of statues of famous scientists.
That contrast is exactly why she is here. A fountain already stood on this spot in the 18th century, but it decayed and was partly pulled down in the early 19th century. In 1898 the city council called for designs, and sculptors from all over Germany sent proposals. The jury favoured a neo-Gothic design by the sculptors Mehs and Jehs called “In the Spirit of the Ancients / Fountain of Virtue”. The goose girl, designed by the architect Heinrich Stöckhardt and sculpted by Paul Nisse, came second.
Then the three best designs went on public display, and the people of Göttingen clearly preferred the simple girl, perhaps because she stood for them rather than for the university's great names. After long discussion she was put up in 1901, without any official ceremony. Oddly, the fountain has no particular link to the town's history at all.
What gave her meaning came soon after: newly enrolled students of the Georgia Augusta began to climb the fountain and kiss the statue, and it quickly became a university tradition. Today it is part of graduation, as new doctors of the University of Göttingen climb up to kiss the goose girl. The figure you see is a copy; the original is kept in the Städtisches Museum, later on this walk.
The Marktplatz opens around you, and the Altes Rathaus is just 20 m away, about a minute's walk.
