Otto Stichling

Otto Stichling (10 April 1866, Ohrdruf - 28 April 1912, Berlin) was a German sculptor in the Art Nouveau style.

Biography

He was the illegitimate son of Auguste Wilhelmine Rosalie Stichling, the daughter of a shoemaker, who was still underage. His father has never been identified. In 1868, she married a tailor named Wilhelm Bernhard Frommann. By legal declaration, Otto retained the name Stichling. After completing his primary education, he served an apprenticeship as a porcelain painter at Kestner & Co.; known for their porcelain dolls. During this time, his talents came to the attention of Duke Ernst II, who provided him with a scholarship to study in Berlin. From 1886 to 1893, he studied at the Academy of Arts with Fritz Schaper and Ernst Herter, while working as an assistant in several sculpture studios, to pay his living expenses.

His first major project came in 1890, when he won a competition to design colossal figures for the Staatstheater Wiesbaden. He and Fritz Klimsch collaborated on a design for the "Kriegswissenschaft" (Science of War) figure. In 1900, he designed and modelled several bronze statues, wood panels, and majolica sculptures for Pallenberg Hall, at the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Cologne. From 1901 to 1902, he created window reliefs for a house owned by the toy manufacturer. This was part of a renovation overseen by the architect, Bruno Möhring, with whom Stichling would collaborate on several other projects.

He returned to Berlin in 1910, to teach at the of the Arts and Crafts Museum. In 1911, he had a serious fainting spell while completing work on the interior of the ocean liner, SS Cap Finisterre, in Hamburg. This curtailed his teaching activities. A second severe attack left him unable to do any sculpting. He died, aged forty-six, of a heart attack, at a sanitarium in Berlin.