"Heinrich Heine" 2010

Waldemar Grzimek

Bronze casting, pedestal: 1.2m, sculpture: 2.2 m

The bronze sculpture by Waldemar Grizmek shows the sitting writer Heinrich Heine. The sandstone pedestal is decorated with a bronze ribbon-type relief showing scenes of war and peace.

It‘s the fourth cast of the sculpture that was created by the artist. On the occasion of the centenary of Heinrich Heine’s death (1797-1856), Grizmek was awarded the contract to execute a Heine monument. Three versions of it can now be found in Ludwigsfelde and Berlin (at Weinbergspark and Humboldt University).

The fourth cast 2010 is a gift from the honorary citizens Uwe Hollweg and Klaus Hübotter to the city of Bremen. That way the city of Bremen honours a great writer and revolutionary poet, who has not been a complete stranger to the city. Heinrich Heine visited Bremen in 1826 on his way to the North Sea. He enjoyed the atmosphere and the wine at Bremer Ratskeller which he celebrates in his book of songs „The North Sea: Cycles I and II, 1825-1826“, second cycle “Im Hafen“ (At the port).                                                                                                                                     

The sculptor Waldermar Grizmek was one of the most influential figurative working sculptors in 20th century Germany. He was born on December 5th 1918 in Polish Ketrzyn (Rastenburg). In 1924, the family moved to Berlin, where Grzimek, then a young student, exhibited his first sculptures of animals in the Berlin zoo. After a stone carver apprenticeship, he attended the School of Visual Arts in Berlin (1937 – 1941). From 1946 to 1948 Grzimek taught at the Burg Giebichenstein School of Art in Halle an der Saale. Between 1948 and 1951, he was employed as a professor at the School of Visual Arts in Berlin Charlottenburg. In 1957 he undertook a professorship at the School of Visual and Applied Arts in Berlin Weisensee. Since the mid-1950s Grizmek intensively dealt with the National Socialism. In 1959 the sculptor was awarded the "National Prize of the GDR". In 1961, he moved into his parent’s home in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance. From 1968, Grizmek was appointed teacher at the Darmstadt Technical College and became a member of the “Darmstadt Secession“ in 1971. In 1984, the sculptor won the Bremen Sculpture Prize. Waldemar Grizmek died in Berlin on May 26th 1984. His estate was inherited to the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus Bremen, also including the plaster cast of the Heinrich Heine monument.

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