Will Elfes

Will Elfes (* 29 February 1924 in Mönchengladbach; † 20 November 1971 in Munich) was a German sculptor and musician.

Life

His parents were Elisabeth and Wilhelm Elfes. After graduating from high school, he was drafted into military service, took part in the Battle of Stalingrad, and later became a prisoner of war.

For three years Elfes hitchhiked through post-war Germany with a friend. Then he began to model homecoming figures; his father packed them in a suitcase and showed them at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, whereupon Will Elfes was able to begin his studies there immediately. Later he went to Karlsruhe, where, however, he hardly studied at all. He built a cottage on the Rhine and moved to Hamburg three years later. In 1955 Elfes went to Munich to study music. He set to music, among others Texts by François Villon, Christian Morgenstern, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Tucholsky, Erich Kästner, Joachim Ringelnatz, H. C. Artmann. He sang to the guitar himself, and some of his songs were published on record

The city of Munich gave him numerous sculpture commissions for schools, churches, kindergartens, hospitals and other public buildings. Exhibitions of his works took place at home and abroad. There was an exchange exhibition with artists from the GDR in Rostock. In 1964 Elfes created a memorial stone for the Dachau concentration camp memorial.^[1]

In 1965 Elfes was awarded the Schwabing Art Prize in the sculpture/sculpture category.

In 1968, he appeared in the twelve-part television series Telekurs für Autofahrer, produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk, alongside Friedrich von Thun as a morality singer.^[2]

Web links

• List of the winners of the Schwabing Art Prize at www.muenchen.de
• additional information about his work in the Digital Christian Morgenstern Archive
• Gallows songs, set to music and sung on guitar by Will Elfes

Individual references

1. ↑ Ernst Antoni The long road to the place of remembrance in Antifa Issue 2014-07
2. ↑ alpha-retro: 1968 – Telekurs für Autofahrer.In: alpha-retro(Series on ARD-alpha). Retrieved June 25, 2019.