275 Arno Breker: Porträtbüste Adolf Hitlers
Bronze. Signed on the right rear section of the neck: “A. BREKER 1937”.
Marked on the back of the plinth: “GUSS - RICH. BARTH BLN MARIENDORF”.
Without base. Height: approx. 41 cm.
Arno Breker (1900 - 1991) was born in Elberfeld in 1900 as the eldest son of master stonemason and tomb artist Arnold Breker and his wife Luise. He attended secondary school, learned the stonemason's craft at an early age in his parents' business, attended the School of Applied Arts in Elberfeld, and studied the works of Auguste Rodin and Michelangelo. After being unable to collaborate with the artist and professor Adolf von Hildebrand (Munich) for economic reasons, he began studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1920. There he encountered the revolutionary artists of the Young Rhineland, from whom he distanced himself after some time. Rodin became his role model after one of the French sculptor's sculptures made a strong impression on him. He studied architecture with Wilhelm Kreis and sculpture with Hubert Netzer, a student of Adolf von Hildebrand.
He successfully participated in several architecture competitions and competitions for memorials, such as a competition in 1922/23 for the design of the memorial cemetery in his hometown of Elberfeld (mother-son group, Pietà type). The Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia commissioned him to design annual gifts. In 1924, shortly before completing his studies, he made his first trip to Paris, then the center of modern sculpture. There he met the writer and painter Jean Cocteau, the film director Jean Renoir, the Jewish art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, and the art dealer and publicist Alfred Flechtheim, who was also of Jewish descent. He also met Pablo Picasso there. Flechtheim signed Breker and made him known in the Paris art scene.
In 1925, he completed his studies in Düsseldorf. The monumental figure “Aurora” on the roof of the Ehrenhof in Düsseldorf, created for the “Ge So Lei” exhibition on behalf of Wilhelm Kreis, already illustrates Breker's talent for architectural sculpture.
Arno Breker was awarded the challenge cup of the District President in Düsseldorf.
In 1927, he received a commission from the town of Budberg (Rheinberg/Lower Rhine) to design a war memorial.
In 1928, he built a memorial near Kleve-Kellen to commemorate the attacks by Belgian troops during the occupation after the First World War (1918-1926). These were works that he probably owed – as he did “Aurora” – to the mediation of his former teacher Wilhelm Kreis. He created portrait busts, such as that of the painter Otto Dix, and, on behalf of the government, a bust of Friedrich Ebert, the first President of the Weimar Republic, who died in February 1925. He undertook a second trip to Paris, where he met Alexander Calder, among others.
In 1927, he decided to settle in Paris. He made numerous contacts – including lifelong friendships – with artists and intellectuals such as Aristide Maillol, Charles Despiau, Maurice de Vlaminck, Robert Delaunay, Emile Antoine Bourdelle, Constantin Brâncuși, Jules Pascin, Jean Fautrier, Isamu Noguchi and Man Ray, and travelled throughout North Africa. There he met the Greek Demetra Messala, known as “Mimina,” who became his partner. Demetra was the daughter of a Greek diplomat who had already modeled for Pablo Picasso and Aristide Maillol. Breker created a sculpture of her in 1933. He produced numerous sketches and drawings as well as the etching and lithography series Tunisian Journey. In 1927, he exhibited together with Alf Bayrle, who also lived in Paris. This led to a long-standing friendship, which is also documented by a lively exchange of letters.
Breker's sculptural works during this period were strongly influenced by Aristide Maillol, Charles Despiau, and Auguste Rodin. In his nudes, torsos, and portrait busts, Breker attempted to fuse the different styles and surface treatments of his role models. He also developed a casting technique that produced pure forms—without any unevenness on the surfaces of his figures—which later became characteristic of his depictions during the Nazi era.
However, his connection to Germany did not break off. He received commissions for a large sculpture for the Matthäikirche in Düsseldorf and for the Conrad Röntgen monument in Remscheid. Exhibitions of his works were held, and he took part in competitions in Germany, including the competition of the city of Düsseldorf for a Heinrich Heine monument (located since 1983 in front of the Kurtheater Norderney).
In 1932, he received the Rome Prize from the Prussian Academy of Arts. This prize came with a scholarship, and he spent seven months, from October 1932 to May 1933, at the Villa Massimo. Here, one of his Jewish acquaintances, the artist Felix Nussbaum, was his studio neighbor. During his stay in Rome, Breker created, among other things, a reconstruction of the first version of Michelangelo's Pietà, which was also mentioned in professional circles, and participated in a competition for a military cemetery in France (Fricourt/Somme department). Breker himself described his time in Rome as “preparation for the monumental work of great magnitude that awaited me.”
In 1933, he went on to study in Florence and Naples. The inspiration he drew from ancient and Renaissance sculpture—especially Michelangelo's—had a lasting influence on Breker's middle, so-called “classical period” during the Nazi era.
In 1934, Breker left France and returned to Germany. According to Breker himself, it was the urging of Wilhelm Hausenstein, Grete Ring, and Max Liebermann that prompted him to leave Paris and settle in Berlin. Liebermann arranged for Breker to take over the studio of the sculptor August Gaul, who had died in 1921, at his new residence. He created a bust of Liebermann. When Liebermann died in 1935, Breker made his death mask.
The Nazis initially considered Breker decadent and too France-oriented, so in the early days after his return he mainly carried out portrait commissions for industrialists, military personnel, and fellow artists. In 1935, he received his first public commissions: the emblems on the Berlin Ministry of Finance, stone reliefs on the Nordstern Life Insurance building in Berlin-Schöneberg, and figurative decorations on the main portal of the German Aviation Research Institute in Berlin-Adlershof. Berlin-Adlershof, and the sculpture Der Flieger (The Aviator) for the main building of the Dresden Air Force Academy, but it was in 1936 that his rapid rise to become the most prominent sculptor of the Third Reich began. In 1937, he joined the NSDAP.
Breker created a lion's head relief for the renovation of Henry the Lion's crypt in Braunschweig Cathedral, which took place from 1936 to 1938.
His design, which he submitted to a competition for the design of the gate pillars of the Dietrich Eckart open-air stage on the Reichssportfeld, was purchased. He was then commissioned to create two monumental figures for the House of German Sport (Decathlete and Winner), which attracted Hitler's attention in particular. He received the silver medal from the International Olympic Committee in the sculpture competition at the Olympic Art Exhibition in Berlin in 1936 for both figures.
With the 1936 Olympic Games, the official decision was made to orient the style towards antiquity. Breker's reference to sculptures from Greek antiquity was in line with these aspirations. The National Socialists saw Breker's figures as symbolizing the aesthetic ideals of their racial doctrine, the “healthy, Aryan type of human being.”
Brekers form of expression was thus proclaimed as a “designed attitude, a worldview made form,” as a guide for the “new German style.” In retrospect, Breker himself described the year 1936 as a “turning point” in his life. In the period that followed, he was co-opted by Nazi propaganda, stylized as the “most important German sculptor of the present day,” and even stylized as a champion of the National Socialist revolution, as his monumental figures seemed ideally suited to visually capture the struggle of the “New Reich” against the “signs of decay” in art (degenerate art) and society as a whole.
Breker gained increasing influence in art policy committees. For example, he was a juror for the sculpture section of the first Great German Art Exhibition, which took place for the first time in July 1937 (then annually until 1944) in the House of German Art in Munich. Alongside the president of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, Adolf Ziegler, Breker selected the sculptures. In accordance with state instructions, only artists who did not work in the spirit of degenerate art were admitted. Breker himself was represented at the exhibition with four sculptures. By the end of the war, he had shown forty-two of his works at this most important exhibition of National Socialist art. Thus, Breker not only adapted his own style to the artistic ideal of the regime, but also, in his capacity as a juror, promoted those artists who worked in accordance with the rulers' ideology.
Further public commissions followed: the large sculpture Prometheus for the Propaganda Ministry in Berlin, Icarus for the Dresden Air Force Academy, the Horse Drivers for the Wehrmacht buildings in Dessau, and the Lions at Maschsee Lake for the city of Hanover.
In the same year, Breker became professor of a sculpture class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and married the Greek Demetra Messala. At the end of 1937, he was commissioned to create the two monumental figures Party and Wehrmacht for the courtyard of honor of the New Reich Chancellery (inaugurated on January 9, 1939). At the same time, he worked on five figures (Wager, Wäger, Anmut, Psyche, Eos) and two marble reliefs (Genius, Sieger) for the Round Hall of this building. These commissions marked the beginning of a close personal collaboration between the sculptor and Albert Speer, who had been General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital since January 30, 1937, and who was responsible for planning and implementing the “redesign of Berlin as the capital of the Greater Germanic Reich.” Breker was given the task of decorating the new buildings with his sculptures. Brekers' rise was probably promoted by Wilhelm Kreis, Brekers' former architecture teacher at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, with whom Breker had a close friendship throughout his life. Brekers created designs for the fountain on Runder Platz, reliefs for the planned Soldatenhalle (Soldiers' Hall), for a 240-meter-long relief frieze on the planned north-south axis, a series of heroic depictions with the titles Torchbearer, Victim, Avenger, Guardian, Retribution, and Comrades, and then reliefs for the Great Triumphal Arch and the Führerbau (Führer's Building).
Hans Freese set up a large studio for him in Berlin-Dahlem for this task. Between 1939 and 1942, the studio building on Käuzchensteig was constructed, but due to the approaching war front, it was only used for just under a year. The Berlin Senate listed it as a historic monument in 1990.
In the spring of 1938, the exhibition Contemporary German Sculptors with Breker, Georg Kolbe, and Richard Scheibe was a great success in Warsaw and Krakow. In 1940, Breker was the first visual artist to receive the Mussolini Prize at the Venice Biennale. In 1941, Breker became vice president of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts.
In May 1942, the Vichy government opened a solo exhibition of Arno Breker's work in the Orangery of the Tuileries Garden in occupied Paris with a state ceremony attended by Abel Bonnard, Fernand de Brinon, Jacques Benoist-Méchin, Georges Scapini, numerous French artists such as Charles Despiau, Jean Cocteau, German Ambassador Otto Abetz, and other representatives of the German occupying power and selected guests. Minister of Education and Instruction Abel Bonnard and Secretary of State Jacques Benoist-Méchin gave the official speeches.
Further solo exhibitions during the war took place in 1943 at the “Haus der rheinischen Heimat” in Cologne and from June to September 1944 at the Potsdam Garrison Museum Lustgarten - organized by Albert Speer and the Gauleiter for the Mark Brandenburg, Oberpräsident Emil Stürtz.
On June 23, 1940, one day after the signing of the armistice agreement with France in the Forest of Compiègne, Breker, in the entourage of Adolf Hitler, together with architects Albert Speer and Hermann Giesler, took part in a visit to occupied Paris that lasted only a few hours. They visited the Paris Opera, the Champs Elysées, the Trocadéro, the Eiffel Tower, the Invalides (Napoleon I's tomb), the Panthéon, and the Sacré Cœur. Shortly thereafter, Breker—presumably through Speer's mediation—was given the “Aryanized” luxury apartment of Helena Rubinstein on the Ile Saint Louis (Quai de Béthune 24) at his disposal.
On his 40th birthday in 1940, Breker received the former Jäckelsbruch manor in Eichwerder (Wriezen) as a gift from Hitler in “grateful recognition of his creative work in the service of German art.” The gift included not only the castle with its park, but also the entire furnishings of the house and a newly built studio by architect Friedrich Tamms. The interior was redesigned by Paul von Waldthausen.
In April 1942, Hitler mentioned during a table conversation that he had personally ensured that Breker's annual income of one million RM would remain at a tax rate of 15%. Since mid-1941, Wriezen had been home to a large factory site with a railway siding and canal port – the Arno Breker Gmb H stone sculpting workshops. The endowment was worth 800,000 Reichsmarks.
The stone sculpting workshops were an institution of the General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital Berlin, which enabled Speer to award contracts of any size directly to Breker without any approval process. The workshops produced sculptures for the redesign of Berlin and for the party conference grounds in Nuremberg. In the following years, the workshops were continuously expanded at a cost of millions. Towards the end of the war, up to 50 prisoners of war and forced laborers were employed to work on the figures.
In 1944, Breker accepted the call to the Prussian Academy of Arts as head of a master studio and was admitted to the academy's senate. Also in 1944, the documentary film Arno Breker - Hard Times, Strong Art was made about Breker. (Directed by Arnold Fanck, Hans Cürlis; produced by Riefenstahl-Film GmbH, Berlin). In view of these numerous activities, the sculptor was included by Adolf Hitler himself in the special list of “irreplaceable artists,” which meant that he was exempt from military service. Many of the monumental sculptures were destroyed during the war, while others disappeared into storage or ended up in private collections. However, some of his works still stand on pedestals in museums, parks, portals, and squares, without being immediately recognizable as sculptures by Arno Breker.
From mid-1944, when the air raids on Berlin became too intense, the task force for the reconstruction of bomb-destroyed cities sought shelter in a barracks camp in Wriezen.
Numerous illustrated books and photo postcards were produced during this period. Breker's works were photographed by Charlotte Rohrbach.
Postwar period
In the spring of 1945, Breker moved to Wemding in Bavaria.
In 1948, during the denazification process, Breker was classified as a follower by the Donauwörth denazification tribunal in the former US occupation zone of Bavaria, despite his massive artistic commitment to the National Socialist state, because he had demonstrably stood up for persecuted artists. According to his own account, he had protected the painter Pablo Picasso from the Gestapo in Paris during the German occupation; Picasso, a sympathizer of the communists, thus escaped deportation to a concentration camp. One of Arno Breker's achievements was the rescue of the German publisher Peter Suhrkamp, who had been imprisoned on suspicion of resistance against Adolf Hitler. Breker had visited Suhrkamp in prison and successfully lobbied Albert Speer and Hitler for the publisher's release.
In 1950, Breker settled in Düsseldorf, where other former members of the Reconstruction Task Force—such as Friedrich Tamms, Wilhelm Kreis, Helmut Hentrich, Rudolf Wolters, Hans Heuser, Karl Piepenburg, Hanns Dustmann, Kurt Groote, and later Julius Schulte-Frohlinde—had already reestablished themselves. It can be assumed that Arno Breker, who was also staying in Wriezen, was well informed about post-war plans through his contacts with the General Building Inspector and the Reconstruction Task Force. After Friedrich Tamms was appointed head of the Düsseldorf City Planning Office in 1948 and subsequently began to work closely with Rudolf Wolters, former employees of the General Building Inspector of the Reich Capital Berlin began to move to Düsseldorf in increasing numbers, and Arno Breker obviously also felt that the time had come to relocate here.
Arno Breker's brother Hans, a sculptor like Arno and, like him, active for the Nazi regime (bronze relief of the naval memorial in Laboe 1935/36, " Ear of Corn Group“ and ‘Sower’ for the exhibition ”Schaffendes Volk" in Düsseldorf in 1937, sculpture for the Nazi Mother's Home in Meisenheim am Glan in 1939), also moved to Düsseldorf in 1954. Arno Breker moved into the former studio of animal sculptor Josef Pallenberg and, in 1958—two years after the death of his first wife Demetra—married Charlotte Kluge, who was 26 years his junior, with whom he had two children (son Gerhard, born in 1959, and daughter Carola, born in 1962).
After 1945, he received hardly any public commissions, but numerous private ones: he portrayed influential industrialists—such as Hermann Josef Abs, Hugo Henkel, Günther and Herbert Quandt, Rudolf-August Oetker, Paul Girardet, and Gustav Schickedanz; politicians such as Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard; artists such as Jean Cocteau, Jean Marais, Salvador Dalí, Ernst Jünger, and Ezra Pound; and art collectors such as Irene and Peter Ludwig, reportedly earning fees of up to 150,000 marks. He was friends with Salvador Dalí and Ernst Fuchs. Dalí said of the friendship between the three artists, known as the Golden Triangle: “Breker-Dalí-Fuchs. You can turn us any way you like, we're always on top.”[9] He said of Breker, whom he regarded as a great artist and praised in his television program about artists: “Breker has captured my soul.”
His lion was a study for the “Monument to the Liberation of Africa,” on which Breker had been working since 1970 at the request of King Hassan II of Morocco and which was to stand in the Grand Square of the United Nations in Casablanca. He had received the commission through the mediation of Jacques Benoist-Méchin, who was a friend of the king. After the assassination attempt on the king in 1971, at which Benoist-Méchin and Breker were also present and at which they, like the king, narrowly escaped death, the monument was never built.
Breker retained his preference for portrait busts and athletic, mostly male bodies. Until the 1980s, he worked with athletes as models, stating that he “could never get enough of muscles” (Breker 1980). The decathlete Jürgen Hingsen, the high jumper Ulrike Nasse-Meyfarth, and the swimmers Walter Kusch and Peter Nocke modeled for him. Hingsen was immortalized as the “Greek Apollo.”
Together with the poet and philosopher Rolf Schilling, he created the collaborative work “Tage der Götter” (Days of the Gods), which contains numerous drawings by the sculptor. For the luxury edition of the publication, he dedicated the original lithograph Orpheus with the Harp to Schilling. Schilling was also a guest at the figure studio and at Breker's museum.
Breker had been involved in architectural projects throughout his life. According to Albert Speer, his earlier studies in Düsseldorf were also helpful for the plans to redesign Berlin. After 1945, he was involved in the design of the Gerling Group headquarters in Cologne, among other things. Due to the monumental character of the buildings, which evoked memories of Albert Speer's colossal structures, the building ensemble was soon dubbed the “Little Reich Chancellery” by the population. Breker came under criticism here simply because the architects and construction managers involved (Kurt Groote, Karl Piepenburg, Helmut Hentrich, Hans Heuser) and the supporting experts Friedrich Tamms and Hans Mertens had already held leading positions in the Third Reich. After disagreements with Hans Gerling, the son of the company's founder Robert Gerling, the architects Helmut Hentrich and Hans Heuser resigned from their positions and the building was completed under the formal direction of Breker and Hans Gerling on their own. Breker was active here as a sculptor. The figures on the central fountain in the Gereonshof courtyard are his work, as are several reliefs on the walls of the building: depictions of the Three Kings, St. George and St. Martin, St. Christopher, and other groups of figures.
In 1955/1956, Breker designed the office and residential building for the Gerling Group at Körnerstraße 45 in Hagen, which is now a listed building, and in 1957 the office building at Jägerhofstraße 21 in Düsseldorf-Pempelfort, which is also now a listed building.
Important portrait bust by the renowned sculptor Arno Breker. Copies of this bust were exhibited from 1939 onwards in the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin, in Munich, and at Luftgau Kommando 4 in Dresden, among other places.
In addition to this portrait bust, Breker also created a relief portrait of Adolf Hitler in 1939, which was cast in iron in various sizes.
One of the few original copies of what is probably the most significant portrait of the Führer from the Third Reich era.
Excellent for a museum exhibition on the theme of “The Cult of the Führer in the Third Reich” based on scientific principles.