Heinrich Deutsch

Heinrich Deutsch was born in Vienna, the son of Friedrich Josef Deutsch, originally Jewish, and Eugenie Hedwig, née Taczanowska, a Catholic. His father had converted to the Protestant faith A.B. in 1904 and later to Roman Catholicism. Heinrich Deutsch was baptized and educated as a Roman Catholic.

After elementary school, he attended the Bundesrealgymnasium Albertgasse in Vienna's 8th district. When he was in the third year of the lower school, free and independent Austria came to an end with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. With the occupation of Austria, German legislation was adopted and with it the 'Nuremberg Race Laws', according to which Heinrich Deutsch was classified as a 'Mischling I. or 'Half Jew'.

At the end of the 4th grade of lower school, the compulsory school age, he is forbidden from attending school again due to 'lack of 100% Aryan descent'. After private training courses at the Atelier Bildhauerei Gurschner in Vienna's 7th district, he tried to enter the School of Applied Arts in Vienna in the summer of 1942, but was once again rejected for reasons of descent. He applied for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts, but was drafted into the Wehrmacht on December 22, 1942 before his application was processed.

On April 6, 1945, Heinrich Deutsch was wounded and taken prisoner of war in Russia, where he witnessed the liberation of Austria and the re-establishment of the Republic in April/May 1945.

In September 1945, Heinrich Deutsch returned home from captivity as a prisoner of war and in October 1945 became a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He joins the ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich.

Heinrich Deutsch studies under Marcel Gimond in Paris from 1948 to 1950 and graduates as a sculptor from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1951. He then studied ceramics under Robert Obsieger at the Academy of Applied Arts Vienna until 1953.

From 1953, Heinrich Deutsch worked as a freelance sculptor, creating several portraits, such as those of Albert Einstein, Hedwig Bleibtreu and Albin Skoda, as well as other bronze sculptures, mosaics and fountains made of ceramic and natural stone. In 1959, he co-founded the St. Margarethen Sculpture Symposium and in 1964 was awarded first prize in the competition for the Monument to the Founding of the State, which was erected in the Schweizergarten in Vienna. His work is characterized by the fact that he strives for harmony and perfection in his sculptures and portraits.