Berlínarbjörninn

Sintenis, Renée

• Year : Án ártals
• Height : 83 cm
• Width : 32 cm
• Category : Skúlptúr
• Sub-category : Málmskúlptúr

Location: Hellusund. The sculpture The Berlin Bear at Hellusund is located 2380 km northwest from Berlin, which reminds us of the distance between the two capital cities. The statue is made of metal alloy and arrived here in 1967, as a gift from the residents of then West-Berlin. There are many such bears all over Germany. The idea originates from the 1950s, when Germany, and later Berlin, had been divided into two parts, east and west. West-Berlin was a kind of an oasis of freedom and democracy in a desert of oppression and dictatorship. Gerd Bucerius, the publisher of Die Zeit newspaper, got the idea of reminding the German people of the distance to Berlin with so-called “milestones” or Meilensteine. The idea of sculpting a bear instead of simply carving numbers into rocks, was from Sintenis. The first Berlin Bear was installed in 1957 by the A115 highway at Dreilinden in a Berlin suburb. However, the original, the very first bear, can be found at the Renée Sintenis primary school in Frohnau, a suburb just north of Berlin.

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