Kneeling Youth

History of the work

By the Federal Mint, today Swissmint, at Bernastrasse 28, a young man of bronze kneels. The figure is by the German sculptor Hans Wimmer and is unsigned. The city of Bern dates it to 1951; the list of works in the German-language Wikipedia gives 1954 for the 'Kneeling Youth, Federal Mint, Bern'.

Hans Wimmer was born in Pfarrkirchen in Lower Bavaria on 19 March 1907 and died in Munich on 31 August 1992. He studied at the Munich academy from 1928 to 1935, among others with Bernhard Bleeker, met Aristide Maillol in Paris and held a fellowship at the Villa Massimo in Rome in 1940. During the Nazi period he was a member of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts and exhibited at the Great German Art Exhibition in 1937 and 1938.

After the war, according to Wikipedia, Wimmer made figurative sculpture against the trend of his time, drawing on antiquity and on classical modernism. From 1949 to 1972 he taught sculpture as a professor at the Nuremberg academy. He took part in documenta in Kassel in 1955 and in the Venice Biennale in 1958.

The building behind the figure was designed by Theodor Gohl; it was completed in 1906 after almost three years of construction and is protected as a cultural property of national importance. Until 1998 the institution was called the Federal Mint. Its neighbours are the Federal Archives, the Kirchenfeld grammar school, the National Library and the Natural History Museum. On the facade, look for the relief medallions by Giuseppe Chiattone.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Wikipedia (de): Hans Wimmer · Wikipedia (de): Swissmint · Wikimedia Commons: Bronzeplastik Kniender Jüngling (Hans Wimmer 1951)