97 Kurt Schmid - Ehmen: Eagle's head.
Bronze. Artist's signature "KURT SCHMID - EHMEN" on the back of the neck. On a presumably later solid limestone base.
Bronze sculpture 33 x 34 cm. Total height: 62 cm.
Kurt Schmid-Ehmen (* 23 October 1901 in Torgau; † 14 July 1968 in Starnberg) was a German sculptor.
Schmid-Ehmen is considered the creator of the imperial eagle and Nazi emblem. He studied at the Leipzig Academy under Adolf Lehnert and the Munich Academy, was a master student of Bernhard Bleeker and initially attracted attention with numerous busts, including one of the famous pianist Josef Pembaur, the teacher of concert pianist Hetty Haelssig (later Schmid-Ehmen).
His entry into the NSDAP at the beginning of the 1930s and his acquaintance with the architect Paul Ludwig Troost brought him his first commissions and a personal acquaintance with Adolf Hitler. He designed the memorial for the fallen of 9 November 1923 in the Feldherrnhalle or the eagles on the party buildings in Munich, on the Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg or the eagle relief for the smoking room in the New Reich Chancellery.
Schmid-Ehmen created the largest bronze eagle, measuring nine metres in height, for the German Pavilion at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris, for which he was awarded the Grand Prix de la République Française.
From 1936 he was a member of the Presidential Council of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, and on 30 January 1937 Adolf Hitler appointed him professor. He had previously been appointed a member of the Reich Cultural Senate by Joseph Goebbels in 1935.
Schmid-Ehmen was represented at all major German art exhibitions in Munich from 1937 to 1944. In 1937, he exhibited portrait busts of the Gauleiter of Munich - Upper Bavaria Adolf Wagner, the Reich Treasurer of the NSDAP Franz Xaver Schwarz and Julius Streicher, among others.
Hitler acquired the "Female Figure" statue exhibited in 1938, the "Striding Man" statue in 1940 and the "Female Figure" in 1942[. In 1944, Schmid-Ehmen exhibited the bust of the writer Hans Zöberlein.
His work "Mädchen mit Zweig" was exhibited at the exhibition Deutsche Künstler und die SS 1944 in Salzburg.
From 1948, Schmid-Ehmen was once again active as an artist at his new home in Starnberg and created portraits, gravestones and figurative works. His late works include a mourner in 1961, a mother fountain commissioned for a retirement home in Schweinfurt, as well as a monumental phoenix with a wingspan of 3.50 metres and a height of 2.10 metres, which he completed as a plaster model ready for casting two months before his death in 1968. The bronze was cast in 1990 under the supervision of his widow.
Impressive sculpture of high artistic quality by one of the most important sculptors of the 3rd Reich.
1-2