Ludwig van Beethoven, Plastik - Fotografie eines Modells von Ernst Barlach, 1926

In 1926, a competition for a Beethoven statue had been announced in Berlin. Numerous well-known sculptors had been encouraged to participate - among them was Ernst Barlach. Almost all the drafts that had been handed in for this competition, showed that the sculptors tried to go into new directions with regard to the shaping of the statue, and that they tried to break with the traditional scheme of the Beethoven figure on a more or less elaborated base.

Ernst Barlach's model was a round pedestal with reliefs on which he put a disproportionately big head of Beethoven, expressively conceived. The pedestal reliefs were to show the experience of listening to music in its different expressions. That was why Barlach designed a number of simple figures, which were standing next to each other and each of them expressed the act of listening in a different body language. Since the sculptor was not happy with the draft as a whole, he destroyed the plaster model. He casted the reliefs only. They were used for the "Fries der Lauschenden" from 1930 until 1935, which now can be seen in the Barlach-Haus in Hamburg.

The plan to erect a Beethoven statue in Berlin had been discussed extensively by the German press and partly it had been strongly critizised. Since the opinions of the competition committee members differed very much and the whole project was fiercely disputed, there was no award in the end, and finally, the plan to erect a new Beethoven statue in Berlin was given up completely.(S.B.)