Holbein horse

The foal immediately after the restoration and re-installation on June 3, 2019

The Holbeinpferd for the referendum on the new district of Dietenbach on February 24, 2019

The stable representative of the horse during the renovation

An insight into the layers of paint (more than 120) on the Pferdle (September 2015)

Holbeinpferdle, restoration March 2019, the layers are 35 mm thick

Restoration status in mid-April

All shifts are from May 14th, 2019. The foal is slim again and "created after life" as instructed by the artist

Holbeinpferd or Holbeinpferdle ("little horse", horse with the Alemannic diminutive ending -le ) is the colloquial name for a horse sculpture in Freiburg im Breisgau in the Wiehre district , which has achieved a certain level of awareness through numerous anonymous redesigns. The name of the sculpture is "Standing foal made of cast concrete".

The standing foal made of concrete was created in 1936 by the sculptor Werner Gürtner . It is 1.90 m high and long, weighs about a ton and is owned by the city of Freiburg. In the 1950s the horse was placed on a small piece of lawn between the eponymous Holbeinstraße, Hans-Thoma-Straße and Günterstalstraße (tram line 2 to Günterstal , stop “Holbeinstraße”).

description

Since the early 1970s, the sculpture has been carefully painted and decorated by strangers. In the past this only happened at night, but is now also done during the day. Most of the time, creative attempts are made to portray a specific topic. The growing media interest increasingly encouraged strangers to redecorate the horse again. The idea of currently costuming a sculpture may have been inspired by Manneken Pis from Brussels , who has received this honor since the 17th century - but today from an official supervisor.

One of the first and at the same time longest lasting paintwork made the horse a zebra , but since then its appearance has changed ever faster. The Holbeinpferd was already an unofficial advertising medium (e.g. milka , Nivea , Uhu ), conveyer of political messages ( Brent Spar boycott ) and bearer of love oaths; It wore flag colors , football and cycling team jerseys , unicorn and Pegasus appliqués, in 2003 it acted as a donkey for the Bremen Town Musicians sitting on it and was also veiled in 1995 when Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag building .

At the beginning of the 1990s, series of postcards and photos of the horse in its various paintings were published and TV programs were broadcast.

prehistory

In 1936 the sculpture, which was still unsigned at the time, was sold to Walter Cordes, who later resold it to the garden authority in Freiburg. On May 28, 1951, it was installed on Holbeinstrasse. Walter Cordes' nephew, a veterinarian, had given Gürtner the foal that he used as a model. At the request of the then mayor Wolfgang Hoffmann , Werner Gürtner added his signature in the 1950s. Hoffmann also had controls, because in the beginning there were always children riding horses. In 1954 it was painted a dull brown, which aroused displeasure on all sides. In the 1980s the horse was restored three times and in June 1987 it was painted brown in the spirit of Gürtner. This painting did not last long - the horse is constantly being redesigned by strangers. On March 29, 1990, the sculpture was knocked off its pedestal by a car.

Postcard litigation

The community of heirs around Elsa Gürtner, the sculptor's widow , sued for disclosure of the sales that the photographer Matthias Wolpert had achieved with pictures and postcards of the Holbein horse. The lawsuit with a value in dispute of DM 10,000 was dismissed in 1996 by the Freiburg District Court on the grounds that photographs of sculptures may be used commercially if they are in public space ( freedom from panorama ). The applicants submitted appeal , and the Mannheim Regional Court upheld in 1997 the vorinstanzliche judgment largely, but gave the desire for disclosure of revenues instead (LG Mannheim 14 February 1997 7 S 4/96 "Freiburger Holbein Horse", GRUR 1997, 364 ).

The photographer's conviction only came about because he had given the horse an appearance through image processing that it never had in reality (in Santa Claus costume). The court emphasized that the admissibility of the use of a work according to § 59 UrhG does not disappear because third parties have changed the work. In contrast, a violation of the right of exploitation exists if photographs of a work are reproduced and distributed in which the found appearance of the work has been changed by means of photographic measures.

cleaning

Initially, the city had the sculpture cleaned in 1981, 1985 and 1987. The last time a stonemason was cleaned with a high-pressure cleaner took place in 1997 , for which the photographer Matthias Wolpert paid for. Since then, one coat of paint after another has been applied and the horse has become more and more shapeless.

restoration

On February 20, 2019, it was dismantled in order to be freed from its layers of paint by hand in the Hellstern stonemasonry workshop in Freiburg. As the restoration took longer than expected, the horse did not return to its place until June 3, 2019.

During the restoration, around 180 kg of paint, plaster and other materials were removed. It was precisely these non-colored materials such as plaster of paris, newspaper and wallpaper that contributed a lot to the damage, as the sculpture was constantly damp. The outer layer was removed in two steps. First the paint was roughly removed with an oscillating saw , then the last layers with the high pressure steam jet. After removing it, it turned out that the sculpture had suffered considerably more than expected. The legs in particular had to be intensively restored, as the internal iron square reinforcement had been damaged and had to be completely freed from rust. For this purpose, part of the concrete also had to be removed and then put back together with epoxy resin . Finally it got a protective coating. The whole work took more than 80 hours of working time. The Stather family and the city of Freiburg borne the costs of 6,500 euros.

The city does not want to tolerate painting in the future. The next morning after the re-erection, the horse was painted again, this time with the Danish flag.

Commons : Pictures of Restoration - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Others

Artistic freedom is a fundamental right and is protected in Germany by Article 5, Paragraph 3 of the Basic Law (GG).

Alienating photographs can be art or is often received as art. Well-known examples are the edits Andy Warhol made on photos of Marilyn Monroe .

Under image editing something else is understood than at the time of the judgment mentioned above, namely the pixel-level editing on the PC today. "Photo-technical measures" were taken when developing in the photo laboratory . This could e.g. B. affect the sharpness, the brightness and / or the color of the image.

In the meantime there is a slightly different model of the horse made of polyresin for painting.

The horse as an art carrier

The Holbein horse on May 21, 2006
The Holbein horse in January 2007
November 15, 2008
The Holbein horse in July 2009
As a Holbein sheep in February 2010
The Holbein horse in November 2011
March 17, 2012
Urban Knitting : Wollbeinpferdle in September 2013
In February 2014 rainbow colors as a symbol for the educational plan , for tolerance and sexual diversity in schools
September 2015
February 2017
August 2018
June 4, 2019, 1st day after the restoration