While browsing on the website of the Austrian State archives I came across of Kurt Schmid-Ehmen, the sculptor responsible for creating the eagles for some of the most important monuments the Third Reich created for itself.
The eagles of the NS are significantly different to styles prior to the Third Reich, the eagles of the Third Reich symbolised the “resurgent power” of the new German Empire, most often with wings outspread, as in preparation for flight.
Here below is an image from the Imagno archive of the sculptor Kurt Schmid-Ehmen (1901-1968) at work on a model for the eagle created to adorn and ‘protect’ the ‘Mahnmal des 9.November 1923 (1933), erected on left side (while facing) of the Feldherrnhalle in München’, the honour memorial to the fallen of the failed putsch of 1923, Munich. This work of 1933 and the 1934 Hoheitszeichen Reichsparteitagsgelände, which Hitler personally appointed the Schmid-Ehmen to design for the grandstand of the Luitpold Arena in the Reich Party Rally Grounds Nuremburg are surely his most well known works.
Below two images taken from postcards in my collection, the memorial and the Feldernhalle.
