Eberlein, Gustav

Sculptor

born: 14.07.1847 in Spiekershausen (near Hann. Münden)

died: 05.02.1926 in Berlin

Eberlein learned the trade of goldsmith in Hildesheim. His further training took him to the Nuremberg Art School from 1866-69 and to the Royal Prussian Academy in Berlin, the latter made possible by a three-year scholarship from Queen Elisabeth, the widow of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. After a stay in Rome, he settled in Berlin as a freelance artist. His first official commission was a war memorial in Munich (1873).

Eberlein became one of the busiest artists of the Berlin sculpture school of the 19th century with his depictions of rulers, e.g. monuments to Emperor Wilhelm I in Mannheim (1888) and Frederick III in Elberfeld (1889). He sculpted the monuments to Frederick William III and Frederick I for the Victory Avenue in Berlin. He was a professor at the Berlin Academy of Art from 1893. In 1893, Eberlein created the group of figures on the roof of the Wiesbaden State Theater. It depicts the muse Euterpe in a chariot pulled by three panthers. A monument to Duke Adolph zu Nassau in Königstein followed in 1910.

However, most of his public monuments fell victim to the Second World War and were melted down.