Bust of Jeremias Gotthelf

History of the work

In the reading garden by the pavilion of the Rosengarten, behind a wall of Bernese sandstone, a bronze bust of the writer Jeremias Gotthelf stands on a pedestal. Gotthelf was the pen name of the pastor Albert Bitzius, who was born in Murten in 1797 and died in Lützelflüh in 1854. According to the sculptor's list of works, the bust is 64 centimetres high.

The sources give two years for its making. The city and the list of works in Wikipedia date the bust to 1933, the building inventory gives 1933/37, and the Wikipedia article on the Rosengarten names 1937 as the year Huggler made it. The building inventory gives 1937 as the year it was set up; in the same year, according to its own chronology, the city's parks department built a Gotthelf terrace at the southern corner of the park. According to the list of works, the bust was also shown at the national exhibition in Zurich in 1939.

It came to its present spot later. Around 1960 it had to make way for the new summer restaurant, which opened in 1961, and was moved in front of the pavilion. The city converted the old pavilion of 1918 into a library, which opened together with the reading garden in 1962 and collected works of Bernese literature. The park itself was the cemetery of the lower town until 1877 and from 1913 was gradually turned into a public garden.

Arnold Huggler (1894–1988) came from a family of woodcarvers in Brienz and trained at the carving school there. From 1919 to 1936 he lived in Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian and worked with Henri Bouchard and Paul Landowski; afterwards he settled in Zurich. He worked mainly in bronze: animal sculptures, fountains, statues and portrait busts. Wikipedia counts the Gotthelf bust in the Rosengarten among his main works.

If you want to read Gotthelf, this is the right place: the walled garden was laid out as a reading garden.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Bauinventar Stadt Bern: Alter Aargauerstalden 31 (Rosengarten) · Stadt Bern, Stadtgrün: Rosengarten, Info und Chronologie (2012) · Wikipedia (de): Rosengarten Bern · Wikipedia (de): Arnold Huggler · Wikipedia (de): Jeremias Gotthelf · Wikimedia Commons: Gotthelf-Denkmal (Bronzebüste Arnold Huggler 1933)