Fridolin Dietsche was born at
Schönau im Schwarzwald, a small town along the
Wiese valley in the hills to the north-east of
Basel. His father was a
cabinet maker. Back at the
"Arts and Crafts Academy" in
Karlsruhe he was a
"masters student" ("Meisterschüler") of , while also working as a researcher and undertaking teaching assignments between 1888 and 1898. He also took the opportunity to undertake extended study trips to
Paris and to
Italy. In 1898 he succeeded as Professor of Sculpture at the Karlsruhe academy. With his pupil, Wilhelm Merten (1879–1952), he created for the city-hall facade a figure of
Egino, the first
Count of Freiburg. Another of the niches accommodated Dietsche's statue of
Conrad I, Duke of Zähringen, which before finding its more permanent position was exhibited at the
Paris World Fair in 1900. It was melted down during the
Second World War.) The other two spaces displayed figures of
Leopold III, Margrave of Austria and of
Charles Frederick, the first
Grand Duke of Baden. Four statues in Freiburg's
Kaiser-Joseph-Straße were also taken down in 1942 and transported to Hamburg in order to be melted down. Two of these four (
Emperor Maximilian I and
Rudolf I) were also the work of Fridolin Dietsche, again with input, in the case of King Rudolf's statue, from Wilhelm Merten. The other two, produced between 1899 and 1900, were the work of . When
war ended in May 1945 all four of these bronze figures were still intact, but they were in
Hamburg and war had exhausted the city's finances. In 1950 the Freiburg city council, mindful of the high cost of transporting the figures back south, renounced any rights to have them returned. Between 1900 and 1901 Dietsche took part in another competition, this time for the creation of
Karlsruhe's
Bismarck Memorial. There was no overall winner of the competition as originally configured, but in a second version Dietsche's submission was determined to be the best available (
"relativ besten"). Subsequently, however, the memorial committee decided to go ahead with one of the (three) proposals submitted by
Karl Friedrich Moest. Despite being evidently underwhelmed by all the submissions, the committee let it be known that they favoured Moest because he was more than twenty years older than Dietsche who would, they anticipated, have plenty more opportunities to create public sculptures. Ironically, Moest would live to be 85, dying only in 1923, while Dietsche died in 1908 aged 45. Shortly before he died Dietscke was given a commission by
The Grand Duke Frederick to draft a proposal for a memorial to
Karlsruhe's founder,
Margrave Charles III William. The intention was to replace the
Karlsruhe Pyramid in the Market Square. After there was a public outcry against the idea of removing the pyramid, Dietsche submitted a proposal that combined the pyramid with the required memorial. He prepared a model which added a separated fountain and equestrian statue which won widespread support when it was exhibited, but before the project could be further progressed he died at
Hamburg while travelling to a coastal cure resort for a medical investigation. ==References==