Exhibitions

On 17 December 1905, a monumental sculpture of Ludwig van Beethoven was unveiled in the garden of the Beethoven-Haus. It still stands there today and is always met with great interest and enthusiasm by visitors to the museum and the neighbouring chamber music hall.

This monument was created by Naoum Aronson (1873-1943), a Latvian-born sculptor who had lived and worked in Paris since the end of the 19th century. As a pupil of Hector Lemaire and Auguste Rodin, he had already achieved a certain degree of international recognition and was particularly well known in Bonn society circles. The Wendelstadt brothers, for example, had commissioned him to design a fountain, the main figure of which can still be seen today in the Bad Godesberg city park. In the summer of 1905, Aronson visited the 7th Bonn Chamber Music Festival. Extremely impressed by the music performed there and the atmosphere in Beethoven's birthplace, he decided to design a modern Beethoven bust and donate it to the Beethoven-Hause Association.

The special exhibition uses surviving sketches and models to show the process of creating Naoum Aronson's sculpture. It also demonstrates how the inspiration of Beethoven's music directly stimulated the creation of a work of art. However, the other activities of Naoum Aronson in Bonn, an artist who has received relatively little attention today, are also highlighted.