What do we know about the theft of the mini-Mozarts?<\/p>\n
The Mozarteum Foundation said 210 of the 320 figures installed in the city’s Mirabell Garden had disappeared. The theft forced organizers to end the garden display early.<\/p>\n
Organizers had kept some replacements in reserve, but not enough to offset the scale of the theft.<\/p>\n
The manufacturer is also on summer holiday, leaving no quick way to replace them.<\/p>\n
Several dozen figures remain on display at the Mozarteum and Mozart<\/a>‘s birthplace until the end of August.<\/p>\n The figures had been placed in the Mirabell Garden and at several Mozart-related sites around Austria’s fourth-largest city.<\/p>\n The polymer figures show Mozart with his dog Pimperl, a nod to the composer’s everyday life in Salzburg.<\/p>\n German conceptual artist Ottmar H\u00f6rl, who is behind the display, said he wanted to show Mozart not as a monument but “as a normal human being despite his genius.”<\/p>\n Who might have taken the mini-Mozarts?<\/p>\n H\u00f6rl is known for installations made up of large numbers of identical figures depicting famous personalities.<\/p>\n “The worst thing for an artist is when his work dissolves,” H\u00f6rl said.<\/p>\n H\u00f6rl said he did not believe tourists had simply walked off with the 50-centimeter\u00a0(20-inch) figures.<\/p>\n “This is organized theft,” he said, suggesting they were probably taken at night after the garden had closed. “I find it a bit cheeky.”<\/p>\n H\u00f6rl had planned to sell the figures after the exhibition for around \u20ac90 each, putting the loss at roughly \u20ac20,000.<\/p>\n A previous H\u00f6rl display in Bayreuth suffered a similar fate when 100 figures of composer Richard Wagner<\/a> disappeared.<\/p>\n “That’s just the nature of public space,” H\u00f6rl said. “When you work as an artist in a public space, you mustn’t\u00a0complain about what is happening there. It ranges from destruction to theft. That\u2019s just how it is.”<\/p>\n Edited by: Louis Oelofse<\/p>\nGerman artist Ottmar H\u00f6rl said he thought the theft was cheeky, and organizedImage: Matthias Schrader\/AP Photo\/picture alliance<\/p>\n