The artist Ottmar Hörl installed more than 100 gold-colored Wagner sculptures in front of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus at the end of July – now they are all gone. “The work has now completely dissolved,” Hörl said on Wednesday when asked. He assumes that the 49 centimeter tall figures were stolen at night, although they had been specially attached. This “radicality” surprised him and was unprecedented: “I’ve never had that in 30 years.” Previously he had North Bavarian Courier reported about it.
According to Hörl’s words, the damage was around 12,000 euros. He will file a complaint with the police. According to its own statements, the Bayreuth City Police Inspectorate has now initiated investigations. There it said: Anyone who mistakenly took one of the figures with them was welcome to bring them back.
Hörl rules out the fact that festival guests took a mini-Wagner home as a souvenir. He assumes that the sculptures were dismantled at night. He can no longer set up new figures during the festival – the manufacturing company is on vacation.
Hörl has been installing serial sculptures for years, such as King Ludwig II in Munich in 2018, Berthold Brecht in Augsburg in 2019 or Friedrich Hölderlin in Tübingen in 2020. Hörl created slightly larger Richard Wagner sculptures for the composer’s 200th birthday in Bayreuth in 2013. The current Wagner art for Bayreuth was intended as an invitation, as a conciliatory gesture in the face of increasingly radical discussions, said Hörl.