Jeanne Anderegg

Until recently, it was a safe bet that people rarely noticed the statues around them. They stood, scattered all over the city’s parks and public spaces: statues of people like Floyd B. Olson, Charles Lindbergh, Leif Erikson, or Nathan Hale in St. Paul; or Mary Tyler Moore, Kirby Puckett, “Hiawatha,” and Hubert Humphrey over in Minneapolis. Especially these days, with most noses buried in smartphones, they’ve been the often-unseen background of everyday life.

On the bluffs above New Ulm stands a statue of Hermann, a first-century German chieftain who triumphed over Rome. This copper-sheet sculpture reflects the pride the early German American immigrants to Minnesota felt in their cultural background.