Hermann Gurfinkel . . .

. . . is an American sculptor of rare and noble art. Born in Germany, Hermann studied art and sculpture before emigrating to New York City prior to World War II. He worked in the city for a year but he desired to paint Indians and headed west for Arizona. His money ran out in Detroit and left Hermann looking for work. He became a metal machine worker and studied his art on the weekends.

After three years in the Detroit tool shop, he applied for and won a fellowship to the elite Cranbrook Academy of Art, near Flint, Michigan. His second year, Hermann was granted to re-open and run the metal sculpture shop at the academy. He taught metal sculpture for a couple years until he followed some of his brightest and creative students to the Chicago School of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. It was here that he met and worked with F. Buckminster Fuller. The two became partners for a year and a half and collaborated together on the creation of the first geodesic dome.

Hermann has been sculpting in Northern Indiana for more than thirty years, limiting his latest work to special contract pieces. He has works in Indiana, in private collections and public displays, and most recently, in Cologne Germany. It is here, in his former home town, that his "Lion of Judah" stands atop a memorial fountain comemorating the principal of Hermann's old high school. The principal saved the lives of almost 200 Jewish students before the Nazis sealed the fate of the Jewish community in Germany. The memorial fountain also bears the names of a thousand souls who, along with the principal, disappeared from Cologne at the hands of the SS, in the summer of 1942.

At 83, Hermann is limited to the use of only his left hand, a victim of a stroke a few years ago. Still, he works diligently and patiently with his disability, creating a work for a retirement hospital. And, in his portfolio, lie sketches and a watercolor painting of a future work in process, a stainless steel piece to ring in the new millennium, the "Man of Steel 2000". One need only see the excitement in this man's eyes when he speaks of the sheer size of this million dollar project to know Hermann's drive and passion for his work.

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