Monument to Oskar Bider

History of the work

On the raised terrace in the middle of the Kleine Schanze park, a bronze figure with arms spread wide stands on an inscribed stone base. It commemorates the aviation pioneer Oskar Bider and is the work of Hermann Haller. The City of Bern dates the monument to 1922. According to the inventory of army and war memorials of the Canton of Bern it was erected on 25 October 1924, and Wikimedia Commons also gives 1924.

Bider was born in Langenbruck in Basel-Landschaft on 12 July 1891. He trained as a farmer, worked for a year in Argentina and at the end of 1912 obtained his pilot's licence at Louis Blériot's flying school in Pau. On 24 January 1913 he became the first to fly over the Pyrenees. On 13 July 1913 he took off from Bern at four in the morning, crossed the Jungfraujoch and, after a stop in Domodossola, landed in Milan; with his return flight over the Alps he became the first person to cross them by aeroplane in both directions. In the First World War he became chief pilot of the new flying corps. On 7 July 1919 he was killed in Dübendorf during an aerobatic display.

According to Wikipedia, the figure's pose is meant to recall Bider's departure from Bern in the summer of 1913. The army today lists the work in its inventory as a memorial to a person.

The Kleine Schanze is the Wächter bastion of the old city fortifications, completed in 1623. Around 1817 it was turned into a promenade – according to Wikipedia the first garden conversion of a Baroque fortification in Switzerland. The Universal Postal Union monument was added in 1909; until September 2025 the park underwent a complete renovation.

Haller, born in Bern in 1880 and died in Zurich in 1950, was according to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland one of the best-known sculptors in the German-speaking world in the 1920s; a favourite subject was the female nude. His figure of a youth with a blue rock thrush stands nearby on Hirschengraben. On site it is worth reading the inscription on the base.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Schweizer Armee: Inventar der Armee- und Kriegsdenkmäler, Kanton Bern (2025) · HLS: Oskar Bider · Wikipedia (de): Oskar Bider · Wikipedia (de): Schanzen (Bern) · HLS: Hermann Haller · SIKART: Hermann Haller (Maria Apel) · Wikimedia Commons: Bider-Denkmal (Bronzeplastik – Hermann Haller 1924)