Wir überwinden Grenzen

Wilhelm Eugen Merten

* 1879 in Gaggenau; † 1952 in Freiburg; German sculptor

Orphaned at the age of 14, Wilhelm Merten had to leave the Realgymnasium in Karlsruhe without graduating and began an apprenticeship as a chaser. From 1896 to 1900 he attended the Karlsruhe School of Arts and Crafts, and from 1900 to 1901 he was a student of Prof. Bausch in Stuttgart. From 1902 to 1908, he studied under Fridolin Dietsche and Hermann Volz at the Karlsruhe Academy. Under Dietsche, he worked on the statue of Count Egon I for the New Town Hall in Freiburg and the figure of Rudolf of Habsburg on the Kaiserbrücke (melted down in 1942). From 1908 to 1910, he was a master student of Edmund von Hellmer at the Vienna Academy. A first prize in a competition organized by Emperor Franz Josef I enabled him to go on a study trip to Italy. In 1910, Merten went to Paris, where he had the opportunity to have his sketches corrected by Auguste Rodin. When war broke out in 1914, he had to leave France and abandon a large part of his work. After moving to Freiburg in 1917, he created numerous gravestone sculptures for the main cemetery and war memorials in Ihringen, Ehrenstetten and Bleibach as well as a chapel altar in Merdingen. From the late 1930s, the order situation deteriorated noticeably. When the artist died in 1952, his estate was buried in the ground when the studio in Talstrasse was closed, according to his daughter Annemarie.

_{from: "Skulptur in Freiburg, Kundst des 20. Jahrhunderts im öffentlichen Raum;}
^{Edited by Michael Klant in collaboration with Oliver Dieskau;}
mondo^{verlag GmbH, Freiburg im Breisgau; ISBN 3-922675-76-X}