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Description
‘Schreitendes Pferd’ (‘Walking Horse’)
Biography: Josef Thorak
Original bronze sculpture by Josef Thorak, identical in shape and form as the larger two Thorak-horses from the Neue Reichskanzlei, but on a smaller scale.
- This specific sculpture is depicted and described-in-detail in ‘Hitler’s Horses’, by Arthur Brand.
- Displayed at the exhibition ‘Nazi Design’, Design Museum Den Bosch, The Netherlands, 2019/ 20.
The exhibition ‘Nazi Design’, Design Museum Den Bosch, The Netherlands, 8 September 2019 – 1 March 2020, was a world-wide highly publicized exposition which attracted over 130.000 visitors in six months. The exhibition was covered on the front page of the New York Times and Bild, and i.a. in the Guardian, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Paris Match, Spiegel, Welt, Tagesspiegel, El Pais and all Dutch newspapers. On television the exposition was covered i.a. by the ARD, ZDF, DW News, Aljazeera, AFP News Agency, SBS World News, and all mayor television chanels in The Netherlands. Because of the enormous popularity of the exhibition, the museum extended opening hours, opened its doors also on Mondays, and finally it extended the exhibition by 6 weeks.
‘Schreitendes Pferd’ by Thorak, displayed at the exhibition ‘Nazi Design’, Design Museum Den Bosch, The Netherlands, 8 September 2019 – 1 March 2020.
The offered sculpture depicted and described-in-detail in ‘Hitler’s Horses’, by Arthur Brand, Boekerij Publishers, 2019, The Netherlands (the English edition was published in spring 2021).
The Swedish publisher has put the small horse even on the cover.
‘Why a German museum is putting two Nazi sculptures on show’, documentary by ‘Deutsche Welle’, 29 May 2023:
https://www.dw.com/en/why-a-german-museum-is-putting-two-nazi-sculptures-on-show/a-64360206
Notice our small bronze Thorak horse at the left of Arthur Brand.
Thorak’s ‘War Horses’.
Josef Thorak creating the original model.
The two Thorak horses in the garden-terrace of Hitler’s Neue Reichskanzlei (New Chancellery), art prints*. A third horse was displayed at the Great German Art Exhibition in 1939.
Left: Josef Thorak, art print, ‘Pferd’. Displayed in 1939 in room 2, the ‘Skulpturensaal’ of the Haus der Deutsche Kunst’, Munich. In August 2015, this sculpture (The Third Thorak Horse) was discovered at the school yard of the Landschulheim Schloss Ising in Ising, Bavaria.
Right: Josef Thorak, ‘Pferd’, depicted on a ‘Haus der deutschen Kunst’-postcard.
X-Ray photo’s of the offered Thorak horse. Visible are some reinforcing iron wires inside (not from the core, but construed during the indirect lost-wax casting process).
Josef Thorak’s design for the ‘Bekrönungsgruppe’ (‘Crowning-group’) destined for the Märzfeld of the Reichsparteitagsgelände in Nürnberg (Nuremberg rally grounds), with the Siegesgöttin Goddess of Triumph in the midst, flanked by two horses (art print). The two casts of these horses were eventually placed in the garden-terrace of the Neue Reichskanzlei in Berlin.
The Thorak horses (I and II, and III)
For several years, Thorak worked on the monumental sculpture ‘Bekrönung des Marzfeldes’. But the two bronze horses from Bekrönung des Märzfeldes were finally placed in the garden-terrace of the Neue Reichskanzlei in Berlin, in front of the Arbeitzimmer (study) of Adolf Hitler. After a series of bomb attacks in Berlin during November 1943, the two life size horses were brought from the Neue Reichskanzlei to Arno Breker’s atelier in the City Wriezen, 20 kilometers outside Berlin. After 1945 the Russians placed the two horses at a sportfield of a military barrack in Eberswalde, East Germany. On this sportfield they also placed two Arno Breker Sculptures (‘Künder’, GDK 1940, and ‘Berufung’) and two bronzes by Fritz Klimsch (‘Olympia’, GDK 1938, and ‘Galathea’, GDK 1939). The sculpture Olympia stood, like the Thorak horses, originally in the garden of the New Reichschancellery. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 all the sculptures in Eberswalde disappeared. According to a Russian Press Officer at that time, the works had been taken away by an unidentified person.
In Mai 2015, the German police found the stolen Thorak horses in a warehouse in the town of Bad Duerkheim. Also the two Breker- and Klimsch statues were found, as well as three granite reliefs by Arno Breker, measuring 10 meters by 5 meter. Possibly Brekers famous ‘Wehrmacht’ and ‘Partei’ were also found back.
In August 2015, a third bronze Thorak horse was discovered at the school yard of the Landschulheim Schloss Ising in Ising, Bavaria. This was the original horse which was displayed at the Grosse Deutsche Kunstausttellung in 1939; the sculpture was an eye-catcher and caused quite a sensation; ‘the shape and form represented a symbol of the primeval-power of the animal’. After the exhibition the horse stayed in the possession of Josef Thorak.
In 1961, Thorak’s widow used the sculpture to pay tuition fees for her son’s education at the Gymnasium Landschulheim Ising, where the horse has stood ever since.
Left: one of the two Reichskanzlei-horses in Eberswalde, at the sportfield of a Russian/ DDR barrack, circa April 1989.
Right: ‘Berufung’ by Arno Breker at the same Russian/ DDR sportfield.
Below one of the two ‘Reichskanzlei-horses’ on display in the Spandau Museum, southeast Berlin, 11 January 2023. Both horses were added to the permanent exhibition dedicated to the political monuments of Berlin, which stood in the city in different eras, and then disappeared from the streets and squares of the capital under the influence of the ‘winds of change’. So among the exhibits of the museum there are statues of Prussian monarchs, symbols of the ‘Third Reich’ frozen in stone and a monumental bust of Lenin that stood in Berlin during the GDR.
The giant Lenin head of 3,5 tonnes, belonged to a granite statue of 19 meters high, unveiled in 1970 at Leninplatz, now Platz der Vereinten Nationen, Friedrichshain, Berlin. The statue was destroyed in the early 1990s after the German reunification. Parts of the statue were buried in a forest in the south-eastern part of Berlin, however, the head was recovered in 2015.
The marble statues and busts of Prussian monarchs used to line the Siegesallee (Victory Avenue) in Berlin’s Tiergarten park. They were erected under Emperor William II at the turn of the 20th century.
In 1938, Hitler moved the statues to the Neue Siegesallee because they got in the way of building projects for his planned new world capital Germania.
After 1945, the statues which had survived World War II, were finally removed by the Allied powers as symbols of German militarism and grandeur. The majority of the statues were buried in the grounds of nearby Schloss Bellevue, from where they were recovered in the 1970s. They too eventually found their way into the Spandau Citadel, where they form the largest part of the collection.
Spandau Museum, 11 January 2023 (photo: David Crossland / www.davidcrossland.net)
The Third Thorak Horse
The third bronze Thorak horse at the school yard of the Landschulheim Schloss Ising in Ising, Bavaria. This was the original horse which was displayed at the Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung in 1939. After the exhibition the horse stayed in the possession of Josef Thorak. In 1961, Thorak’s widow used the sculpture to pay tuition fees for her son’s education at the Gymnasium Landschulheim Ising, where the horse has stood ever since. After heavy political debates about the destaination of this sculpture, it was decided that The Third Thorak Horse will stay in school forever.
Josef Thorak’s 17 metre high atelier in Baldham, near Munich, designed by Albert Speer. Notice the small bronze horse standing under the large horse (identical shapes).
‘Schwertträger’ (‘Sword Bearer’) and ‘Fahnenträger’ (‘Flag Bearer’)
Thorak’s sculptures ‘Sword Bearer’ and ‘Fahnenträger’ were destinated for the March Field (Märzfeld) of the Nuremburg Party Rally Grounds.
Left: Josef Thorak, ‘Schwertträger’ (‘Sword Bearer’). Adolf Hitler and the widow Gerdy Troost, laughing under the primeval power of the hooves of a Thorak horse (photo: Bayerische StaatsBibliothek). Photo taken at 10 July 1940, the day Hitler visited the Haus der deutschen Kunst, before the opening of the GDK in order to inspect the artwork chosen.
Right: ‘Schwertträger’ depicted in ‘Deutsche Plastik Unserer Zeit’, Kurt Lothar Tank, 1942.
‘The artist has perceived the primeval power of the horse.. … In the shadow of the huge horses the plaster model of the Monument of Work is sinking..’ writes the author, still enchanted by a recent visit to Thorak’s atelier: Lothar Tank, Deutsche Plastik unserer Zeit, München 1942.
Left: ‘Schwertträger’, depicted in ‘Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich’, 1942, and in the ‘American ‘Magazine of Art’, New York, October 1945 (‘Art in the Third Reich’ by Monuments Man Lincoln Kirstein).
Right: Josef Thorak, ‘Der Fahnenträger’ (‘Flag Bearer’), art print.
‘Symbol of the Wehrmacht’
‘Schwertträger’ by Thorak, depicted in ‘Frauenwarte’, Heft 24, 1941. The text below the picture reads: ‘Schwertträger’, symbol der deutschen Wehrmacht’.
Preview of the GDK 1940. Behind Hitler, ‘Schwertträger’ and ‘Flag Bearer’ by Thorak. Date: 10 July 1940. 
‘Sword Bearer and Standard Bearer, much sturdier than Mestrovic’s Indians in Chicago’
‘Thorak’s two equestrian bruisers of 1940, Sword Bearer and Standard Bearer are nevertheless, in about the same style, much sturdier than Mestrovic’s Indians in Chicago. They have crushing weights added to their brutal silhouettes, Wagnerian orchestrations in bronze….’ (‘Art in the Third Reich’ by Monuments Man Lincoln Kirstein, published in the American ‘Magazine of Art’, New York, October 1945).
Mestrovic’s Indians, The Bowman and The Spearman, are two bronze equestrian sculptures standing as gatekeepers in Congress Plaza, Chicago. The sculptures were made in Zagreb by Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović and installed in 1928. Each statue stands 5.2 meter high and rests atop an 5.5 meter high granite pedestal. An unusual aspect of the sculptures is that both figures are missing their respective weapons, the bow and arrow and the spear. The omitting of the weapons was intentional, as the artist preferred that they be ‘left to the imagination while attention is focused upon the bold lines of the musculature of both man and beast, as well as the linear patterns of the horses’ manes and tails and the figures’ headdresses’.
Left: ‘The Bowman’ by Ivan Mestroviv, 1928, Chicago.
Right: ‘The Spearman’ by Ivan Mestroviv, 1928, Chicago.
| – condition | : II |
| – size | : 37 cm high, width 35 cm, weight 9,9 kg |
| – signed | : at the marble base |
| – type | : bronze |
| – misc. I | : signed: ‘For my friends 3 IV 1939’ |
| – misc. II | : professional cleaned and treated with a preserve |
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