BIOGRAPHY: ARNO BREKER
Left: Arno Breker, postcard, ‘Die Partei’.
Right: Arno Breker, postcard, ‘Die Wehrmacht’.
Statues representing the spirit of the Nazi Party that flanked the carriage entrance to Albert Speer’s new Reich Chancellery.
Arno Breker, postcard, ‘Der Rächer’ (‘Revenger’), GDK 1941, room 2.
One of the most beautiful artworks ever
Arno Breker ‘Apollo und Daphne‘ (‘Apollo and Daphne‘) Bronze, created in 1940-1942. Cast by foundry Alexis Rudier Fondeur, Paris. Size 240 x 285 x 40 cm. Displayed at the Arno Breker-exhibition in the Musée de l’Orangerie in 1942 in Paris. At the opening of this exhibition on 15 May 1942, Aristide Maillol described Breker as ‘Germany’s Michelangelo’.
After the exhibition the huge bronze relief stayed in France. It was confiscated by the French state in 1944 and stored in a depot of the Musée dárt modern in Paris. In 1961 Arno Breker bought the relief back when the French state auctioned it off. One other cast in bronze exists. Offered by a German auction house in 2020.
‘The early works of Breker are found to be familiar first-attempts of a gifted student in love with various historic periods, from the Egyptians to Rodin’, according to Charles Despiau, one of the three most important French sculptors of the early 20th century (with Rodin and Maillol) in ‘Arno Breker par Charles Despiau’, 1942, published by Flammarion in Paris.
The full quote comes from Monuments Man Lincoln Kirstein in ‘Art of the Third Reich, -Magazine of Art, October 1945: ‘In a Handsome monograph published by Flammarion and signed: Charles Despiau, the early works of Breker are found to be familiar first-attempts of a gifted student in love with various historic periods, from the Egyptians to Rodin. In a portrait, he renders Nefretete as seen by Despiau: nudes are spineless and adolescent, like Kolbe’s. But in spite of eclecticism, he displays a genuine physicality and astonishing manual dexterity’.
The opening of the Arno Breker exhibition in the Musée de l’Orangerie at 15 May 1942 in Paris. From left to right: Arno Breker, Charles Despiau, Aristide Maillol and French art historian Louis Hautecoeur.
‘At the opening of the Breker show, Maillol had himself photographed with Breker and Despiau, having made a special trip from Banyuls to honor his former pupil’, Monuments Man Lincoln Kirstein in ‘Art in the Third Reich’, Magazine of Art, New York, October 1945.
Left: Arno breker, postcard, ‘Berufung’ (‘Mission’), GDK 1941, room 2.
Right: Arno breker, postcard, ‘Bereitschaft’ (‘Readiness’), GDK 1939, room 2.
Berlin Olympic Stadion (still existing)
Left: Arno Breker, ‘Zehnkämpfer’ (‘Decathlate’). GDK 1937, room 15.
Right: Arno Breker, ‘Die Siegerin’ (‘The Victress’). GDK 1937, room 8.
Both sculptures are placed in the Pfeilerhalle (Pillar-hall) of the ‘Haus des Deutschen Sports‘, Berlin Olympic Stadiun. Photos: 2015.
‘Die Siegerin’ -likely the plaster model- stood also in the Reichskanzlei (located in the ‘Verbindungshallen im Westlichen Verwaltungsbau’); ‘Die Siegerin’ was also displayed in the International Pavilion of the World Exhibition, 1937, in Paris.
Left: ‘Zehnkämpfer’ by Breker, displayed at the ‘Olympische Kunstausstellung Berlin’, 15. Juli -16. August 1936 (‘Olympic Art Exhibition Berlin’, 15 July through 16 August 1936). Depicted in the official exhibition magazine.
Left: cover of the 1936 exhibition catalogue.
Art competitions at the Olympic Games
The Olympic Games during its early years, from 1912 to 1948, included art competitions in addition to the athletic contests. Bronze, Silver and Gold medals were awarded for exhibits of town planning, architecture, drama, poetry, music, graphic arts and paintings as well as sculpture, reliefs and medallions. All of the entered works had to be inspired by sport, and had to be original and not previously published.
The competitions were part of the original intention of the Olympic Movement’s founder, Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, who believed that sports and the arts were inextricably linked.
The juried art competitions were abandoned in 1954 mainly because of the idea that artists were considered to be professionals, while Olympic athletes were required to be amateurs (however, the athletic events would later radically evolve to accommodate professional athletes).
Also, a continuing subject of discussion and debate was the fact that sporting achievements can be measured in easily-understood metrics such as time and distance, but judging the arts is undeniably subjective. Finally the arts competition suffered from the guiding parameter that the works created had to be associated with sport, limiting the entries to tiresome imagery of athletes and odes to sporting achievement.
The 1936 Summer Games in Berlin, best-documented Olympic Art Competition
At the opening ceremony of 1936 Olympic Art Competition, Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels reminded his audience that each work entered in the competition was required to have been created within the last four years. This restriction, he declared, ‘enables us to derive from the Exhibition an estimate of international conditions.’
The detailed descriptions in the Official Report of the 11th Olympic Games not only provided a dazzling depiction of this charmingly peculiar Olympic-art phenomenon, but also a chilling snapshot of Germany during the emergence of the Third Reich. Home-field advantage greatly worked in Germany’s favor that year; the international jury consisted of 29 German judges and 12 from other European countries. It was also a welcome, if not surprising, spike in gold medals for the German artists, who won five of the nine gold medals awarded that year. Charles Downing Lay was the only American to win a medal in 1936, taking home silver in the Architecture category. The German brothers Werner and Walter March took home gold in that category for their design ‘Reich Sport Field.’
The 1936 art competition was one of the most successful on record. More than 70,000 people visited the accompanying exhibition over the course of its four weeks on display. Prominents like the Reich Ministers Frick, Goebbels, and Rust, the Italian Minister of Education, and the Baron Morimoura of Japan all purchased works from the exhibition.
German section at the 1936 Olympic Art Competition in Berlin. Depicted in ‘Baugilde, Zeitschrift der Fachgruppe Architekten in der Reichskammer der Bildende Künste’, 1936.
‘Die Siegerin’ by Breker, displayed in the German section of the International Pavilion of the World Exibition, 1937, Paris. Depicted in ‘Deutschland in Paris, ein Bild-Buch von Heinrich Hoffmann’, 1937. 
The Biennale di Venezia, Deutscher Pavillion, 1938.
Left : ‘Atleta’ (‘Zehnkämpfer’ or ‘Decathlete’) by Breker (in the possession of Reichssportführer von Tschammer und Osten).
Right: ‘Vincitrice’ (‘Die Siegerin’ or ‘The Victress’) by Breker. 
‘Die Siegerin’ by Breker, located in the Neue Reichskanzlei.
Right: depicted in ‘Die Kunst im Dritten Reich’, 1939.
The Biennale di Venezia, Deutscher Pavillion, 1940.
Left: ‘Pronti!’ (‘Bereitschaft’ or ‘Readiness’) by Breker.
Right: ‘Ponderazione’ (‘Der Wäger’ or ‘Ponderer’) by Breker. Depicted in the exhibition catalog.
Arno Breker, postcard, ‘Knieendes’ (‘Kneeling woman’). GDK 1942, room 11.
Arno Breker, ‘Aurora’. Sculpture, created in 1926, on the roof of the Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (photo: 2014).
Left: Arno Breker, ‘Vergeltung’ (‘Revenge’), depicted in the ‘Völkischer Beobachter’, 1943, after the lost Battle of Stalingrad.
Right: Arno Breker, postcard, ‘Vergeltung’.
Left: ‘Bust of Arthur Kampf’, by Arno Breker, created in 1935. Bronze, height 38 cm. Displayed in 2016 by the ‘Museum de Fundatie’, The Netherlands (given on loan by the heirs of Arno Breker). The same -or a similar- cast of Arthur Kampf by Breker, was displayed at the GDK 1937 room 2.
Right: ‘Bust of Arthur Kampf’ by Arno Breker, displayed at the ‘Frühjahrs-Ausstellung’, 1937, Preussische Akademie der Künste. Depicted in the exhibition catalog.
Arno Breker, ‘Frauenkopf‘ (’Head of a Woman’), at the façade of the building of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik e.V. The building at the Rauchstrasse 17/18 in Berlin, was erected in 1938/39, and previously housed the ‘Königlich Jugoslawische Gesandtschaft’; it was dsigned by architect Werner March who also designed the Olympiastadion.
Arno Breker, ‘Kniende’ (‘Kneeling’), displayed in ‘The Kunstpalast’, Düsseldorf, November 2023.
Three impressive Breker sculptures, displayed at the exhibition ‘Nazi Design’, Design Museum Den Bosch, The Netherlands, 8 September 2019 -1 March 2020. 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 News papers. On television the exposition was covered by the ARD, ZDF, Aljazeera, and all mayor television chanels in The Netherlands.
‘Junges Europa’ by Breker, bronze, height 146 cm. Created in 1978. Weight 83,5 kg. One out of a serie of 6.
Cast in 1978 by foundry Herbert Schmäke Düsseldorf (NB the smaller casts with a height of 69 cm are part of a series of 150). Depicted in ‘The Art Newspaper’, 1 January 2026.
Hermann Göring Collection
Hermann Görings entire art collection comprised some 4,263 paintings, sculptures and tapestries. He planned to display them in the ‘Norddeutsche Galerie’, an art gallery which should be created after the war. The Norddeutsche Gallery was to be erected as an annex to Karinhall in the big forest of the Schorfheide, near Berlin. According to the website of the German Historical Museum, the following works by Arno Breker were part of the collection: ‘Morgenröte’ and ‘Schreitende’ (life size bronzes, both cast in Paris), ‘Anmut’ (marble) and a Horse-relief (high-relief, bronze, 125 x 100 cm, also cast in Paris).
Arno Breker
The Michelangelo of the Third Reich
Arno Breker (1900 – 1991) was a German sculptor, best known for his public works in Nazi Germany, which were endorsed by the authorities as the antithesis of degenerate art. During his time in Paris in the twenties and early thirties he was influenced by Jean Cocteau, Jean Renoir, Pablo Picasso and Aristide Maillol. He maintained personal relationships with Albert Speer and with Hitler. In 1937 Breker joined the Nazi Party and was made ‘official state sculptor’ by Hitler. He was given a large property and provided a studio with forty-three assistants. As main sculptor and more or less number one on the Gottbegnadeten list, he was exempted from military service. His twin sculptures The Party and The Army held a prominent position at the entrance to Albert Speer’s New Reich Chancellery.
Arno Breker was represented at the Great German Art Exhibitions with 42 works. The neoclassical nature of his work, with titles like ‘Comradschip’, ‘Torchbearer’ and ‘Sacrifice’, typified Nazi ideals, and suited the characteristics of Nazi architecture. On closer inspection, though, the proportions of his figures, the highly colorful treatment of his surfaces (the strong contrasts between dark and light accents), and the melodramatic tension of their musculatures perhaps invites comparison with the Italian Mannerist sculptors of the 16th century.
Four works by Breker were part of the art collection of Hermann Göring and destinated for the ‘Norddeutsche Gallery’.
Breker had 10 sculptures displayed at the XXI Venice Biennale 1938 and at the XXII Venice Biennale 1940, including ‘Vincitrice’ (‘Die Siegerin’, GDK 1937), ‘Atleta’ (‘Zehnkämpfer’, GDK 1937), ‘Pronti’ (‘Bereitschaft’, GDK 1939), ‘Ricardo Wagner’ (‘Bust of Richard Wagner’, GDK 1941), and ‘Ponderazione’ (‘Berufung’, GDK 1941).
In 1942, he took part in the ‘Ausstellung Deutsche Plastik der Gegenwart’, Zagreb. In the same year, an Arno Breker-exhibition was held in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. At the opening of the exhibition on 15 May, Aristide Maillol described Breker as ‘Germany’s Michelangelo’. Charles Despiau, one of the three most important French sculptors of the early 20th century (with Rodin and Maillol) wrote: ‘The early works of Breker are found to be familiar first-attempts of a gifted student in love with various historic periods, from the Egyptians to Rodin’, (‘Arno Breker par Charles Despiau’, 1942, published by Flammarion in Paris).
‘At the opening of the Breker show, Maillol had himself photographed with Breker and Despiau, having made a special trip from Banyuls to honor his former pupil’, Monuments Man Lincoln Kirstein, ‘Art in the Third Reich’, Magazine of Art, New York, October 1945.
Displayed was in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris i.a. the relief ‘Apollo und Daphne‘ (‘bronze, cast by foundry Alexis Rudier Fondeur, size 240 x 285 x 40 cm). After the exhibition the huge bronze relief stayed in France. It was confiscated by the French state in 1944 and stored in a depot of the Musée dárt modern in Paris. In 1961 Arno Breker bought the relief back when the French state auctioned it off. It was offered by a German auction house in 2020.
While nearly all of his sculptures survived World War II, more than 90% of his public work was destroyed by the Allies after the war. In 1946 Breker was offered a commission by Joseph Stalin but he refused and stated ‘One dictatorship is sufficient for me’.
After the war he continued to receive commissions for sculptures, producing a number of works in his familiar classical style, working for businesses and individual patrons. He also produced many bronze female sculptures, in smaller sizes. Some of these were casts from original models designed before 1945. His works can be seen in the Breker Museum in Schloss Nörvenich in Germany.
An original marble relief ‘Du und Ich’, as well as three bronze life size sculptures by Breker, were displayed at the exhibition ‘Nazi Design’, Design Museum Den Bosch, The Netherlands, 8 September 2019 – 1 March 2020. This world-wide highly publicized exhibition 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 News papers. 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.
In 2023, ‘The Kunstpalast’ in Düsseldorf displayed Arno Breker’s ‘Kniende’ (‘Kneeling’).
The marble ‘Du und Ich’ by Breker was displayed at the exhibition ‘Art in the Third Reich, Seduction and Distraction’, Museum Arnhem, The Netherlands, November 2023 – March 2024.