Denkmal für Eugen Bolz

The Denkmal für Eugen Bolz is a bronze wall relief at the Königsbau in Stuttgart, made by Alfred Hrdlicka in 1993. It commemorates a Württemberg politician whose open opposition to the Nazi regime cost him his life.

Bolz was born on 15 December 1881 in Rottenburg am Neckar and entered politics with the Centre Party. He became the state's justice minister in 1919 and its interior minister in 1923. By 1928 he was state president, the last Württemberg had under the Weimar Republic. He had a reputation for frugality and sound financial policy. His Catholic democratic convictions made him an opponent of the NSDAP, and on 15 March 1933 Gauleiter Wilhelm Murr forced his resignation. That June, Stuttgart's political police interrogated him and held him in protective custody. He kept speaking for freedom and justice, and in autumn 1941 joined the resistance movement led by Carl Goerdeler. The assassination attempt against Hitler of 20 July 1944 brought his arrest: interrogations and torture followed in Berlin. On 23 January 1945 the guillotine at Plötzensee prison killed him, the last of ten fellow sufferers to die.

The bronze at the Königsbau belongs to the Landeskreditbank Baden-Württemberg. It went up on 15 March 1993, sixty years to the day after Bolz lost his office.