Bernhard von Plettenberg (sculptor)

Bernhard von Plettenberg (born  April 23, 1903 in Hovestadt , †  November 18, 1987 in Neuss ) was a German sculptor.

Life

He came from the Lenhausen line of the Westphalian noble family of Plettenberg . At the age of 18 he took painting and drawing lessons from the Spanish painter Antonio Fabrés . This was followed by studying anatomy at the Baden State Art School in Karlsruhe and at the end of 1922 he went to Munich to continue his studies there. He shifted more to sculpture and after studying in Berlin he returned to Munich in 1928 and became a student of the sculptor Josef Wackerle .

In the 1930s and 1940s he exhibited at several " Great German Art Exhibitions " in the House of German Art in Munich. A state workshop for him was planned alongside those of Josef Thorak and Arno Breker in Berlin-Grunewald on Kronprinzenallee.

In April 1939 he received the state commission from Adolf Hitler personally to design four monumental figures for the Nibelungen Bridge in Linz on the Danube : Siegfried , Kriemhild , Gunter and Brunhild , the main characters from the Nibelungenlied and in Richard Wagner's literary treatment in Der Ring des Nibelungen . They should rise 6.5 m high on 2.5 m high plinths. He recorded his discussions about it with Adolf Hitler in writing. In April 1940, drafts of the equestrian figures, cast in plaster on a scale of 1: 9 and tinted like gray granite, were completed and Plettenberg presented them to Hitler in the Reich Chancellery. He had exactly met his taste, as is evident from his statements. To test the effect of the figures, Siegfried and Kriemhild were modeled in original size in clay and placed at the intended location. At the beginning of April 1943, Hitler took a special train to Linz to inspect the two figures set up at the south end of the bridge. Hitler expressed himself enthusiastically: “ German art! Check out the details of the horse's head! Plettenberg is really a god-gifted artist! “These statements made his companions rather embarrassing, as Albert Speer writes in his memoirs. Due to the war , the figures were no longer made. The models were damaged and removed again. Only the empty areas at the north and south ends of the bridge are reminiscent of the intended figures today.

After the war von Plettenberg lived and worked in Lohe near Lippstadt .

swell

• Carl Peter Fröhling: The sculptor Bernhard Graf von Plettenberg zu Lenhausen and Hitler's dream of the Nibelungen Bridge in Linz on the Danube. In: Heimatstimmen from the Olpe district, year 1976 pp. 189–195.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee : Das Kulturlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 460.
2. ^ A. Speer: Spandauer Tagebücher, Frankfurt, Berlin, Vienna 1975. P. 256f.