Josef Hinterseher (1878-1955), German sculptor, was born in Munich. He went first to the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich and later to the Art Academy in the same city. At a relatively young age (before he was 20) his works were already displayed in the Glaspalast (a portrait-bust and ‘Vasenträger’). At the age of 25 he was awarded the ‘Rompreis’ which enabled him to travel to Italy. In the same year, 1903, his sculpture ‘Fruchtträger’ was displayed in the Glaspalast. A year later, in 1904, when Hinterseher was travelling to Paris (where he stayed until 1914), his sculpture ‘Forest Idyll’ (sold at Christies in 2011 for 25,000 euro) was exhibited during the St. Louis World’s Fair. Finally this cast became the grave figure of beer manufacturing giant August Busch Sr., on a hilltop in Sunset Memorial Park in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1906 Hinterseher was awarded the Silver State Medal of Austria for his work ‘Gänsedieb’. Also in 1906 his ‘Grabfigur’ won the Golden Medal at the ‘Berliner grossen Kunstausstellung’ (‘Great Berlin Art Exhibition’). At the beginning of the 20th century Hinterseher seemed to have begun a very promising career. However, after World War I his prospects -like those of many other German artist- diminished and he tried to get support from right wing political circles. Nevertheless, in 1920 Josef Hinterseher created a bust of Richard Martin Willstätter (a German organic chemist whose study of the structure of plant pigments won him the 1915 Nobel Prize for Chemistry; Willstätter born into a Jewish family in Karlsruhe, ended his career in 1924 when, as a gesture against increasing anti-Semitism, he announced his retirement). After the Christal Nacht someone removed the Willstätter bust out of the Honor-foyer of the State Laboratory in Munich. Josef Hinterseher did not have any works displayed at the Great German Art Exhibitions in Munich from 1937 to 1944.
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