Adolf von Donndorf (16 February 1835 – 20 December 1916) was a German
sculptor.
Life
Adolf Donndorf was born in
Weimar, the son of a cabinet-maker. Starting in 1853 he was a student of
Ernst Rietschel in
Dresden. After Rietschel's death in 1861, he and
Gustav Adolph Kietz [
de] completed the large
Luther Monument in
Worms, Germany. Donndorf contributed several statues including standing figures of
Reuchlin and
Frederick the Wise, seated figures of
Savonarola,
Peter Waldo and the allegorical town of
Magdeburg as well as reliefs. His talents as a sculptor were recognized on 12 November 1864 when he was named an honorary member of the
Dresden Academy of Arts and in 1876 he was appointed professor of sculpture at the Stuttgart Academy of Arts.
Adolf von Donndorf was an
honorary citizen of Weimar and Stuttgart and was
ennobled in 1910 allowing him to add "
von" to his name. A museum created in his honor in 1907 by the city of Weimar was destroyed at the end of
World War II.
His son
Karl August Donndorf (1870–1941) was also a sculptor and one of his father's students.
Luther Monument on the Nikolaiplatz in
Eisenach, 1889–1895. With accompanying figures of Savonarola, Mourning Magdeburg, Frederick the Wise, Peter Waldo and Reuchlin
Angel of the Resurrection at Rheineck Castle, 1877
Union Square Drinking Fountain also called the James Fountain,[1]Union Square, New York City, 1881.[2] A standing draped female figure combining common iconic representations of Charity and of Temperance holds an infant and empties a ewer with her left hand, aided by a boy. Lion-mask spouts on the block base spit water into basins.
Pauline Fountain,
Stuttgart 1898 (destroyed during
World War I, restored in 2008)
Johann Sebastian Bach statue in
Eisenach, originally (1884) on the marketplace in front of the Georgenkirche, since 1938 on the Frauenplan adjacent to the Bachhaus