The image above shows two wooden sculptures, a honey bear and a woodsman (Waldmensch in German), as arranged along an 8.5 kilometer route between Neuler and Niederalfingen, communities located in Germany, some 70 km south of Frankfurt.
The route includes a total of 83 sculptures made by non-professional sculptors.
Cinderella
Court Jester
Creation of the sculpture trail
Hubert Schull, living in Neuler, was an artist and teacher at a technical school, who dreamed that there would be a sculpture trail near his hometown. In 2001, on his initiative, a number of former pupils of the school and non-professional artists, living in various communes in the region, gathered to crystallize this idea.
Under the name Sculturies they formed a group of non-professionals with a passion for making wooden sculptures. The group focussed on the creation of a sculpture trail in the woods, connecting Neuler and Niederalfingen.
Angel
The project started in Neuler. The sculptures for this first part of he trail were created from the beginning of November 2001 until the end of February 2002. With the help of a local construction company the 16 wooden sculptures were set up on March 16, 2002 along a circular route in Neuler .
Thereafter 31 sculptures were created for the 2.5 km circular route in Niederalfingen, which opened in 2005.
Then, until 2009, sculptures were made for the trails connecting the two circular ones, a series of 17 sculptures near the Krähenbachtal and a series of 19 sculptures near the Schlierbachtal.
Faun
Most sculptures along the trail show that the basic material is formed by a man-sized stump of a large tree. There are a lot of stand-alone creations, but also a number of mixed ones, such as a scene with the Wolf and the Seven Goats, as well as the scene in the image below with the Town Musicians of Bremen (this sculpture by the way is a replica of the original one in Bremen, see Wikipedia).
A number of the stand-alone sculptures depict a fairytale character, such as Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Hansel and Gretel, Hameln's Pied Piper and Nils Holgersson, others depict historical or mythical characters, such as a court jester, a woodsman, a faun or an angel.
Most of the sculptures are realistic in nature, but there are also some that depict an experience, such as the one about September 11 (the attack on the Twin Towers), a sculpture depicting temptation and another one called meeting the light.
The websiteSculturies has a map of the sculpture trail as divided into several parts and a detailed enumeration of all sculptures situated along it, this with titles of the sculptures, an explanation of what each sculpture depicts and the names of the artists who created them.
Wooden sculptures in the open air are vulnerable. In 2018, members of Sculpturiesrenovated a number of sculptures from the route in Niederalfingen. The other routes will also get the necessary attention.
Town Musicians of Bremen
Documentation
* WebsiteSculturies, with extensive explanation of the location of the sculpture trail, the titles and themes of all sculptures and the names of the artists involved
* WebsiteSkulpturenrundweg Niederalfingen with information as in the above website, but only relating to the route in Niederalfingen
* Prospectus with information about the sculptures in Neuler and the artists who made them
Video
* Video by Werner Schäffer (YouTube, 3'40"), stills of the sculptures in Niederalfingen
Collective of non-professionals
Sculpture trail
from Neuler to Niederalfingen
region Ostalbkreis, Baden-Württemberg federal state, Germany
magnifique
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