Werner Stötzer (born Sonneberg 2 April 1931, died Altlangsow 22 July 2010) was a German artist and sculptor. For the last three decades of his life he lived and worked in Altlangsow (administratively part of Seelow) in the marshy Oderbruch region of Brandenburg.
Life
After training as a ceramics modeller at the Vocational Arts Academy in Sonneberg, Stötzer moved on to study between 1949 and 1951 at the Grand Ducal Arts Academy in Weimar, where his teachers included Heinrich Domke, Hans van Breek and Siegfried Tschiersky. Because of a reorganisation at the Weimar academy he then transferred to Dresden where he continued his studies at the city's Academy of Fine Arts from 1951 till 1953, taught by Eugen Hoffmann and Walter Arnold. Between 1954 and 1958 her was a "Master Schoolman" (Meisterschüler) with Gustav Seitz at the Berlin Academy of Arts where contemporaries included Manfred Böttcher, Harald Metzkes and the painter Ernst Schroeder. He formed lifelong friendships with the first two of these three. On concluding his time as a Master Schoolman he embarked on a career as a freelance artist.
In 1974 he worked with Konrad Wolf on the tragicomedy film The Naked Man on the Sports Ground ("Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz"), himself taking a small cameo role as the town mayor.
Werner Stötzer also worked as a teacher. From 1975 to 1978 he was a guest lecturer at the Berlin-Weißensee High Arts Academy, and between 1987 and 1990 he held a teaching professorship at the East German Arts Academy. From 1978 he was employed at the Berlin Arts Academy where he served as Vice-president from 1990-1993. and where he personally mentored a number of younger artists. His own "Master Schoolmen" from this period included Horst Engelhardt, Berndt Wilde, Joachim Böttcher (1989-1992) and Mark Lammert.
Werner Stötzer was first married to graphic artist Renate Rauschenbach from 1961 to 1992. With their daughter Carla (*1961) they lived in their house in Berlin-Altglienicke from 1961 to 1978. After living in a succession of apartments and ateliers in Berlin and Vilmnitz (Putbus) on the Island of Rügen, he relocated to Altlangsow, some 70 km (45 miles) to the east of Berlin and (since 1945) some 20 km (12 miles) to the west of the frontier with Poland. Here, for almost thirty years, he worked, living in a former presbytery with his second wife, the sculptor Sylvia Hagen. From this marriage their son Carl-Hagen Stötzer was born in 1978. "What lies within me is neither Heaven nor Hell. It is humanity." „Mein Inhalt ist weder der Himmel noch die Hölle, es ist der Mensch.“ Werner Stötzer 2010
Awards and honours
1962 Will Lammert Prize from the (East) German Academy of Arts
1975 Käthe Kollwitz Prize from the (East) German Academy of Arts
1977 National Prize of East Germany
1986 National Prize of East Germany
1994 Ernst Rietschel Arts Prize for Sculpture
2008 Brandenburg Arts Prize
2009 Honorary citizenship of the Town of Seelow
Selected works
1956 Sitzender Junge, Bronze
1959/60 Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters und Lesender Arbeiter in the courtyard of the Berlin State Library, Unter den Linden, Bronzerelief 1963 Portrait of Gerhard Kettner, Bronze bust 1965 Grieving women, Marble relief 1966-1968 Bronze door for the Our Lady Monastery, Magdeburg 1967 Babi Jar, Relief and Lithography 1970 Draft Bronze door for the St Thomas's Church in Erfurt 1972 Auschwitz group, Marble 1980 Stage sets and mask for Electra at the German Theatre, Berlin 1981 Große Sitzende (Internationales Bildhauersymposion Formen für Europa – Formen aus Stein in Syke) 1982–84 Saale and Werra, Sculpture Park, Magdeburg 1985-86 Marble Relief wall Alte Welt for the Marx-Engels-Forum in Berlin-Mitte 1986–87 Mother and child 1988 Gypsey woman from Marzahn 1995 Torso (für Eberhard Roters) 1996 Fliehende (Flying) 1996 Undine 2002 Liegende (reclining) 2010 Torso, leicht gedreht (Torso, turned slightly)