The German art world got knocked off its rocker earlier this year when two massive bronze horse sculptures were discovered unexpectedly during a series of raids aimed at smashing an underground art trading ring.

The horses were sculpted by Josef Thorak, one of Adolf Hitler's personal favorites, and were given a very prominent position in the Third Reich - on either side of the entry to Hitler's chancellery in Berlin, effectively guarding the Führer's personal office.

Nobody really knew until now that there was a third Thorak horse, and certainly not that this bronze stallion has been standing guard in the open at a schoolyard in Upper Bavaria - and that for the past 50 years.

"There was no information on the sculpture, and so there it stood," said Kia Vahland of Germany's daily Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), whose research led to the surprise discovery.

"After the two other horses were unearthed this May, we did some more digging and found footnotes from a dissertation published in 1992 indicating that another Thorak sculpture had changed hands in 1961. We tracked this to a catalogue of the 'Great German Art Exhibition,' where the third horse was unveiled in 1939, and eventually its story became clearer," Vahland explained to DW.

That story goes as follows. In 1939, incidentally the year the other two horses were presented at the chancellery in Berlin, Thorak exhibited this third sculpture at the "Great Exhibition" in Munich. After that, the horse stood outside his massive sculpting studio (incidentally a personal gift from Hitler) in a Munich suburb, where it remained until the end of the war. After that, the horse was in the possession of the Thorak family.

In 1961, Thorak's widow used the sculpture to pay tuition fees for her son's education at the Gymnasium Landschulheim Ising, where the horse has stood ever since - bearing only the name "Thorak."

Changing of the guard

So that's how it wound up in the schoolyard; the school doesn't contest that the work is Thorak's. As to why a work of incontestable Nazi propaganda is still there, without any historical explanation, the school hasn't issued a comment, however.

But that's soon to change.

When the SZ published its report on the "emergence of the third horse" this past weekend, significant waves were made. The Bavarian culture ministry said Tuesday that it had contacted the institution and would offer assistance needed with regard to "proper documentation" of the artwork.

Kathrin Ann Gallitz, deputy spokeswoman for the ministry, told DW that emphasis would be placed on providing "a pedagogical concept for contextualizing this work of art," adding that no details could be released at the moment as to what that could mean.

"Ultimately it is up to the school to decide how to proceed, but the [culture ministry] would like very much for this work to contribute to the process of dealing with the past."

Only the beginning

That rhetoric echoes the sentiments emanating from Berlin in May after the discovery of Thorak's "Walking Horses," when federal minister of culture Monika Grütters announced that they belonged nowhere else but in a museum.

"The art of the [Third Reich] was an extremely important part of its propaganda, and this can teach us the extent to which it was utilized," said Grütters, in response to the question of what to do with the surviving work of artists such as Thorak.

In Bavaria, the culture ministry said it was "extremely important" to establish guidelines with regard to dealing with Nazi art, due to the unprecedented nature of the schoolyard find.

Kia Vahland, whose work led to that find, said Bavaria - and by extension Germany - was only at the beginning of coming to terms with Nazi art.

"There is a lot of Nazi art, especially in Bavaria seeing as though the movement really started in Munich. Much of it has been destroyed, or hidden away in dusty basements. Thus I really applaud the culture ministry's reaction and willingness to work with the school on documenting the Thorak horse. This is very positive indeed."

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