Flying Geese

History of the work

On the covered south-west wall of the Egelsee kindergarten, Heinrich Würgler painted geese in flight in 1946. The picture is large: Wikidata gives about 2.85 by 4.70 metres and, besides the geese, lists a mallard, a frog and a fish among the subjects. It is located in the open play hall, which the city's building inventory describes as a deep porch taking up almost the entire ground floor on the street side.

The kindergarten was built in 1945/46 to plans by Henry Daxelhofer and Karl Müller. It is a pavilion under a shallow gabled roof, built of timber posts with Durisol panels set between them. The inventory stresses that the building and its fittings survive as they were when built, from the cork and clinker floors to the small stoneware basins sized for children. For the heritage office this standard type is important for the history of post-war kindergarten building throughout Switzerland; an identical building stands at Dalmaziquai 91. A park links it with the slightly later Egelsee II kindergarten on Egelgasse.

Heinrich Würgler was born in Meiringen on 25 April 1898 and died there on 9 July 1986. SIKART calls him a painter, graphic artist and illustrator who painted murals and mountain landscapes. From 1922 to 1953 he taught drawing at the Seminar Muristalden, a teacher training college in Bern. For the Natural History Museum of Bern he painted the backgrounds of the dioramas.

A few years later the same architects also built the double kindergarten on Thormannstrasse, whose entrance Beat Zumstein decorated with carvings. In the play hall on Segantinistrasse it is worth searching among the geese for the frog and the fish.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Segantinistrasse 5 · Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Thormannstrasse 80 · SIKART: Heinrich Würgler · Wikidata: Fliegende Gänse · Wikimedia Commons: Wandmalerei Fliegende Gänse