Adolf Wamper

Adolf Wamper (23 June 1901 – 22 May 1977) was a German sculptor. Most of his works were figural, with some in an abstract realist style. During the 1930s he produced monumental sculptures for the Nazi régime; after World War II he taught at the Folkwang University of the Arts.

Adolf Wamper was born in Grevenberg in what is now the town of Würselen, one of five sons raised by their mother, Anna Maria, after their father, Franz Josef Wamper, died in a mining accident in 1907. He was raised Roman Catholic. After finishing school he trained in business and went to work for the Eschweiler Bergwerks-Verein, a leading coal producer. He studied drawing and in 1923 enrolled in the Handwerker- und Kunstgewerbeschule, a school of applied arts in Aachen. He also attended classes for two years at the Aachen Technical University, now RWTH Aachen University. From Aachen he transferred to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he passed his qualifying examinations in 1927 and continued for two further years as an advanced student under Richard Langer. He lived in a studio residence in Düsseldorf until 1931. During this time he was already participating in competitions; in 1928 he won the commission to design a monument to be placed in the honorary cemetery for World War I soldiers in Bonn. He exhibited in Cologne in 1930 and at the Reiff Museum in Aachen in 1931. In 1932 he travelled briefly to France and Spain to study art, exhibiting in Paris and Barcelona.

Wamper joined the regional affiliate of the Reichskartell der bildenden Künste, a precursor organisation of the Reichskulturkammer, in 1928; it was superseded by the latter in September 1933 after the Nazis came to power. He joined the Nazi Party on 1 May 1933. He moved to Berlin in 1935, when he was 34, and collaborated with the architect Paul Otto August Baumgarten on the design for the Charlottenburg opera house. He received his first commission for monumental sculpture in 1935, for the two pairs of figures in relief flanking the entrance to the Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne open-air theatre, now the Waldbühne, on the grounds of the 1936 Summer Olympics. On the left, representing Fatherland Celebration, male nudes hold a sword and a spear, a pairing that was to be used more famously by Arno Breker; on the right, representing Artistic Celebration, female nudes hold a laurel wreath and a lyre; the intent was to show the kinship between ancient Greek and Germanic culture. Also in 1935, he married Maria Elisabeth Haack, a dentist, and was also involved in the renovation of the Deutsche Oper building, which had become the property of the state and was redesigned to better suit Nazi tastes; he was responsible for the ceiling and for busts of Wagner and Beethoven for the foyer.

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