Thorak, Josef

Thorak, Josef, born on 07-02-1889 in Salzburg, two months before Adolf Hitler, as son of a master potter. In his father’s shop, Thorak learned ceramics and pottery. At the age of 23 years he studies at the Academy of Art in Vienna.  In 1915 he finally goes to Berlin, in order to continue there his art studies. From 1918 on Thorak earns his living as an independent sculptor. “Mainly works from wax were created by him at this time, because Thorak had no money to have them cast in bronze”. “A sculptor, who–in connection with the building architecture–wants to make monumental sculptures needs clients who can finance the bronze sculptures, as well as the equally expensive works in stone.

    Thorak found these clients at first in the public sphere. One of his model’s was the Fallschirmjäger, box champion Max Schmeling.   Ultimately, they were the monumental commissions in the NS times, which were awarded by Hitler’s architect Albert Speer.  Thorak’s reputation was established in 1922 when he created “Der sterbende Krieger” “The Dying Warrior, a statue memorializing the dead of “World War I  in Stolpmünde. Thorak created monuments for public buildings, autobahns and horses for the New Reich Chancellery. Yet already in 1928 he received a state prize of the Prussian Academy of Arts for his work. As Hitler came to power in 1933, Thorak stood, at the age of 44 years, “in the bloom of my manly strength”. He is described by eyewitnesses as a down-to-earth, rustic and erotic man. It gave him pure joy, according to his own admission, to use up his strength on the stone. Yet the budding optimism created by the allocations from Speer was temporarily damped down. In 1933, Thorak joined Arno Breker as one of the two “official sculptors” of the Third Reich. In 1935 Thorak came up against opposition in Berlin. The jury for the artistic composition of the Reich Sport Field at the Olympia Stadium refuses to take into consideration the works of the Austrian. Only on the notice from the NSDAP, that Hitler valued the works of the sculptor, was the attitude changed.

   After that, Thorak rise was assured with numerous commissions. In his government-approved studio outside Munich, Thorak worked on statues intended to represent the folk-life of Germany under Nazi leadership; these works tended to be heroic in scale, up to 65 feet (20 meters) in height. His official works from this period included a number of sculptures at the Berlin Olympic Stadium of 1936. Albert Speer referred to Thorak as “more or less my sculptor, who frequently designed statues and reliefs for my buildings” and “who created the group of figures for the German pavilion at the Paris World’s Fair. His statue Comradeship stood outside the pavilion, depicting two enormous nude males, clasping hands and standing defiantly side by side, in a pose of racial camaraderie. Because of his preference for muscular neo-classical nude sculpture, Thorak was known among some as “Professor Thorax”. Some expressionist influences can be noticed in his generally neoclassical style. He made a name for himself also internationally. He created reliefs for the Kemal Atatürk Monument in Ankara, where the “father of modern Turkey” has his mausoleum.

Reich Chancellery’s striding horses.

On 20-05-2015, two of Thorak’s sculptures, a pair of colossal “striding horses”

    that had once stood outside the Reich Chancellery built by Albert Speer in Berlin, turned up during a police raid on a storehouse in Bad Dürkheim, along with other Nazi art. The horses had disappeared in 1989 from a barracks ground in Eberswalde northeast of Berlin, where they had sat since sometime after the Second World War.

Death and burial ground of Thorak, Josef.

    Josef Thorak died at the age of 63 on 26-02-1952 in Hartmannsberg and is buried on the k

Cemetery location of Thorak, Josef.