Bernhard Hoetger

German sculptor (1874–1949)

Bernhard Hoetger (4 May 1874 in Dortmund – 18 July 1949 in Interlaken) was a German sculptor, painter and handicrafts artist of the Expressionist movement.

Hoetger was the son of a Dortmund blacksmith, he studied sculpture in Detmold from 1888 to 1892, before directing a workshop in Rheda Wiedenbrück. After a spell at the Düsseldorf Arts Academy, he took a trip to Paris, where he was deeply influenced by Auguste Rodin, but also got to know Paula Modersohn Becker. Later he was able to familiarise himself with Antoni Gaudí. In 1911, Hoetger was called up to the Darmstadt Artists' Colony, where he was to remain for some time.

In 1914, inspired by Modersohn Becker, he moved to Worpswede. It was here where he met the Bremen entrepreneur Ludwig Roselius, with whom he would go on to make his masterpiece, Bremen's Böttcherstraße, in an Expressionist style. In particular he was responsible for the Atlantis House, which reflected the race theories of the Nazi ethnographer Herman Wirth.

He also designed the HAG TURM, a building sponsored by Roselius's firm Kaffee HAG at the 1928 Pressa International Press Exhibition. The HAG Turm was a tower. This was built in 70 days.

Although Roselius was an ardent supporter of Nazism, Hitler denounced the art and architecture in the Boettcherstrasse. Roselius contemplated suicide, but his secretary Barbara Goette intervened with Hitler in Berlin and Café HAG, Roselius' corporation, invested heavily in Focke Wulf consequently outmanoeuvering Hitler. Like his patron Ludwig Roselius, Hoetger sympathised with the Nazi ideals and became a member of the Nazi Party. He moved to Berlin in 1934 and tried, in vain, to instill himself through his art into the party, but in 1936 Hitler declared it to be degenerate art. Expelled from the party, in 1943 Hoetger fled to Switzerland, where he died in 1949.