Unzeitgemäße Zeitgenossen

---

Unzeitgemäße Zeitgenossen (Untimely Contemporaries) by Bernd Göbel, 1989
Grimmaische Straße
Leipzig, September 2024

“‘Unzeitgemäße Zeitgenossen’ is the title of a bronze sculpture by the Halle sculptor Bernd Göbel near the eastern beginning of Grimmaische Straße in Leipzig. Bernd Göbel, professor of sculpture at the University of Industrial Design at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle (Saale) since 1982, began at the end of the 1970s to give form to personal annoyances by modelling people to suit them. For example, a teacher using sledgehammer methods, a town planner who first blasted the space where he wanted to build, and a doctor who had problems diagnosing him. The figures were given names ending in ‘-iker’, probably referring to dogmatists. In 1982, Göbel had put together five of these examples and presented them as the ‘beginning of a series’ at the 9th GDR Art Exhibition in Dresden. In the mid-1980s, the idea of permanently displaying the work in public arose, and negotiations began with the city of Leipzig. The design of the modified version with a high base and the selection of the slogans to be displayed, in which Bernd-Lutz Lange was also involved, began in 1986. In 1989, the negotiations came to a successful conclusion and the casting was commissioned at the Leipzig bronze foundry Noack in early 1990. The work was completed in September and Göbel donated it to the city of Leipzig, which immediately displayed it in the representative location and presented it to the public on November 14 of that year as ‘Unzeitgemäße Zeitgenossen’. From 2006 to 2009, it had to make way for the redesign of the Leipzig University campus and the reconstruction of Grimmaische Straße.” (Unzeitgemäße Zeitgenossen, Wikipedia)