Spectacular herald for Schliersee's cultural autumn

Created: 2022-10-07 21:54

By: Katrin Hager

The colossus is standing: on Tuesday morning, the "Heaven's Ladder" by stone sculptor Hubert Maier was erected with a crane on the banks of Lake Schliersee.

© Stefan Schweihofer

It's cultural autumn in Schliersee - that's obvious.

A particularly impressive messenger stands in the spa park on the lake shore: Hubert Maier's monumental "Himmelsleiter".

Schliersee

– As soon as the colossus is standing, onlookers crowd around him, look through the opening as if through a window into the landscape around Schliersee and Brecherspitz, and take selfies.

Hubert Maier already knows that.

His "ladder to heaven", which was erected yesterday morning with a heavy-duty crane in the spa park on the banks of Lake Schliersee, always causes a stir.

It can be seen in Germany for the first time at the Kulturherbst.

The Upper Bavarian stone sculptor, born in 1960, lives and works in Moosach in the Ebersberg district and in Bohuslän in Sweden.

There he also worked the "Heaven's Ladder".

In a quarry in western Sweden he came across the granite colossus, 7.20 meters high.

A "stroke of luck": "You can't order a record like that," explains Maier.

"You find something like that once in maybe 20 years."

Until then, he worked sideways for a long time.

Of course, such massive stone blocks achieve a more impressive effect on edge.

A desire that gradually matured in him.

"I started to flee to the front," says Maier.

His sculptures grew taller.

He took up this development with the "Heaven's Ladder", which he carved out of the huge block of granite about eight years ago.

"This is my most spectacular work," explains Maier.

"This sculpture is not commissioned, it belongs to me." In Sweden it was shown at exhibitions for a few years before moving to Germany four years ago, by ferry and flatbed truck.

Moving such a colossus always requires effort.

"A whole truck-trailer is full of it."

just a stone's throw away from a spiral sculpture by Maier's stone sculptor colleague Tobel, whose International Sculpture Symposium in Valley he attended in 2015.

"I'm happy about the technical help," says Moosacher, "but such sculptures were already set up 5,000 years ago.

One wonders how that went.”

The crane driver was able to determine this using the scales on board, the “sky ladder” weighs eleven tons;

So far, Maier had only been able to guess.

So that it stands securely, it is solidly bolted to a steel foundation.

So she can safely defy even storms.

Art leads through the place

The “ladder to heaven” was the harbinger, so to speak.

Maier is showing three other large stone sculptures outdoors at the Kulturherbst.

There is another one at the entrance to the vital world: the "skin", as it is called for short.

The title of the sculpture is actually longer: "I have thin skin," it reads.

It is part of a series that the sculptor created as a kind of self-portrait in which he reflects on his own sensitivities.

Because he is a sensitive person, he came across as “thin skin”.

From one side - the "outside" - it shows itself quite naturally.

"In stone sculptor jargon, this is also called skin if the surface is untreated," reveals Maier.

On the other side are carved fragments in the form of cylinders and hollow cylinders.

They stand for the inner life,

that is hidden under the largest of the organs - with blood vessels, nerves, glands.

In the Vitalwelt forum, Maier will set up around eight medium-sized and smaller sculptures, surrounded by paintings by Manfred Mayerle.

So there are again two artists who are exhibiting at the Kulturherbst.

"There are dialogues," says organizer Johannes Wegmann, chairman of the tourism association.

It was important to him that art runs like a red thread not only through the cultural autumn, but also through Schliersee.

This is how the idea for the "Art Path" came about - seven stations marked with color and stone: from the Vitalwelt Forum to the Kurpark, Christ Church, local history museum, Sixtus Church and Georgskapelle am Weinberg to the farmer's theatre.

Every Thursday on October 13th, 20th and 27th, the artists take the visitors along the "art path" (meet at 5 p.m. Vitalwelt-Forum).

In addition, there will be artist talks with musical accompaniment at 7 p.m. in the Christuskirche (October 13), in the Heimatmuseum (October 20) and on the Weinberg (October 27) (admission free).

The full program can be found on the Kulturherbst website.