Prof. Arno Breker

“Arno Breker, Hitler’s favorite sculptor?” You whisper, your eyebrows raised in disbelief. “But how could someone who made such grand statues for the Nazis also be a friend of Salvador Dali and Ernst Fuchs?” Well, the tale of Arno Breker, the sculptor, isn’t quite that simple. This place, right here in Dusseldorf, holds a few answers, a slice of his complicated life. Imagine yourself in his studio, the one he moved to in 1950, after a lifetime of grand commissions and controversial choices. You see the massive sculptures, the portraits of influential figures like Konrad Adenauer and Louis-Ferdinand Celine. These works were the ones that followed the downfall of the Nazi regime, a period where he tried to distance himself from the past, seeking redemption through art. But the shadow of his Nazi past remained. He sculpted these grand figures for the Reich, for the grandiose vision of Germania, the new capital of the Third Reich, a vision that never materialized. Ironically, he sought refuge from Berlin’s Allied bombing raids right here in Wriezen, where he had been granted a huge stone sculpture workshop, a gift from Hitler, where prisoners of war and forced laborers created works celebrating Nazi rule. These works were propaganda disguised as art, a powerful message sculpted in stone. Breker walked a fine line, a sculptor of Nazi propaganda and a talented artist who continued to find appreciation. It’s a story full of contradictions, a story we can only understand by looking at the complexity of his life. These sculptures, the ones right in front of you, are a testament to that complexity, forever intertwined with Arno Breker’s legacy.