Waldemar Grzimek

Who was Waldemar Grzimek?

Waldemar Grzimek was a German sculptor.

Grzimek was born in Rastenburg, East Prussia to a Silesian family, which moved to Berlin in 1925 when Grzimek's father Günther Grzimek was elected to the Preußischer Landtag.

As a child, Grzimek enjoyed the exotic animals of the Berlin Zoo, which is also where he met Hugo Lederer, a professor at Berlin's Akademie der Künste, who inspired Grzimek to take up sculpting. During his adolescent years he produced sculptures of an American Bison, an African rhinoceros, busts of his parents heads, and a pet Skye Terrier.

After high school, Grzimek worked as an apprentice stonemason for the construction company Philipp Holzmann AG and also studied sculpture under Wilhelm Gerstel. He completed his degree in 1941, then served in the Kriegsmarine until the end of World War II, after which he worked as an art professor and as a freelance sculptor.

Famous works by Grzimek include the Heinrich Heine Memorial, the fountain at Wittenbergplatz, and Holocaust memorials at the Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald concentration camps.