Oympia: Head of the Bride Deidameia from the West Pediment of the Temple of Zeus, 1935

About the Work

Commissioned by archaeologist Gerhardt Rodenwaldt, Walter Hege photographed plaster casts of Greek sculptures from the collection of antiquities at Berlin University for research purposes. In 1935, the German Olympic Committee sent him to Greece. One year later, Olympia, after Akropolis (1930), appeared as the second volume in his series Griechische Tempel (Greek Temples) published by the Deutscher Kunstverlag. Later this was distributed among the participants at the Berlin Summer Olympics. Hege's pictures visualise the ideal image of antiquity and found considerable favour in National Socialist propaganda. A reversion to antiquity can also be observed in Hege's heroic images of large neoclassical buildings; National Socialism sought to set itself within the antique tradition with such architecture, so emphasising its own eternal value.