Franz Metzner

Franz Metzner ( born November 18, 1870 in Wscherau (now Vseruby ) in Pilsen, † March 24, 1919 in Berlin) was an Austrian stonemason and sculptor who lived a long time in Berlin and worked. His art in the tradition of symbolism and the Vienna Secession. He designed his monumental figures simple, expressive and reduced to the essentials.

Life and work

Born in Bohemia Franz Metzner began in 1886 in Pilsen a lesson as a stonemason. After training, he worked 1890-1894 in various workshops in which he was self taught further knowledge of the sculptural design appropriated, as in the studio of Christian Behrens in Wroclaw, in Zwickau, Dresden and Hamburg. Study trips led him to Paris and Italy. From 1894 to 1903 Metzner lived in Berlin. In his 1896 furnished studio he designed craft items and models for the Royal Porcelain Manufactory. In these works showed early a harmonious interplay of symbolism and art nouveau. For his sculptures, he received at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris great recognition.

The more nationalist -oriented Metzner graduated in 1902 as the " Order of the real life " designed "new community" whose members aspired to free forms of life outside the conventions of Wilhelminism. In collaboration with the painter " Fidus ," he designed the walls of the apartment in the Uhland Road 144 in Berlin- Wilmersdorf, which was rented for meetings and activities like-minded people from the community.

The fourth place in a competition for a monument to Empress Elisabeth in the popular Garden Vienna in 1903 brought him a professorship in the Modellierklasse at the local arts and crafts school. In the Austrian capital, he came into contact with artists and architects of the Vienna Secession and became a member of, among others, founded by architect Josef Hoffmann Wiener Werkstätte. Metzner be involved in the interior design in collaboration with other artists such as Gustav Klimt, Berthold Löffler and Richard Luksch to its fully erbautem in Secession 1905-1911 Palais Stoclet in Brussels.

A 1904 created design for a "Nibelungen Fountain " before the Votive Church was not performed. Only years later, 1924-1945, but was the centerpiece of the fountain, the crowning bronze figure of Rüdiger von Bechelaren in Jablonec nad Nisou as a " Rüdiger Fountain " his place, who in 1970 at the plant in front of the Sacred Heart church was rebuilt in the displaced community in the Bavarian Neugablonz.

1905 could win him for the sculptures at the Leipzig Battle of the Nations Monument to the architect Bruno Schmitz. Metzner joined be the successor of the deceased in the same year Christian Behrens. In 1906 he left Vienna and returned to Berlin in order to be closer to his new job. In Zehlendorf he built for himself and his family a house with a workshop of my own design and made for the Battle Monument, the " fate masks " and monumental figures in the Hall of Fame, the rider Fries in the inner dome and the twelve, almost 13 meters high " Warriors of Freedom Watch " on the outer dome. In cooperation has also created the designed, designed by Bruno Schmitz grave system of Max Krause family at the cemetery IV of the community in Jerusalem and New Church in Berlin- Kreuzberg. The tomb, completed in 1907, on the Metzner performed the sculptural works, is considered sepulkrales main work of Symbolist Art Nouveau in Berlin.

At the "First Zurich Space Art Exhibition" in the fall of 1908, the interior design of a library room after a design by the Zurich architects Streiff and Schindler was shown expressive for its permanent fixtures Metzner carved masks of the four temperaments " sanguine ", " melancholic ", " phlegmatic " and " Cholerikus "created.

In Berlin and Prague, he designed numerous facades of commercial buildings with bauplastischem jewelry, in Berlin, among others, the 1905/1907 built by Bruno Schmitz Weinhaus Rheingold at the Bellevue Street, the William Muller 1910/1911 established publishing house J. Springer in the link road or after a design by Oskar Kaufmann 1912/1913 running on Nollendorfplatz Lichtspielhaus " Cines Theatre ". All three buildings were destroyed in the Second World War. Still get the Volksbühne at that time Bülowplatz, today Rosa Luxembourg Square, for the Metzner 1914 created the sculptures. 1909, works were created in the business house of the Viennese banking association in Prague and 1910 for the local building of the Czech sugar industry.

In 1919 he was elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, Department of Fine Arts, was appointed. In the same year died Metzner with 49 years of the Spanish flu.

1920, plants of the Secessionists exhibited at the " Art Show 1920 " in the Austrian Gallery, which included also some sculptures created by Metzner. In the same year in Bohemia founded German artists in memory of him " Metzner -Bund ", which existed until 1945.

Statue in the Imperial Hall of the wine house Rheingold, 1907

Knight medallion in the Imperial Hall, 1907

Vaulted stone pillar in the hall of the house wine Rheingold, 1907