These bronze statues were intended to be placed at the north curve of the AVUS, which was formerly a popular racetrack in Berlin but is now a controlled-access highway that forms part of autobahn 115.
However, the onset of the Second World War – and the resulting legislature that banned the use of bronze for private purposes – prohibited their continued manufacture, as all such metals were funnelled towards the war effort.
They are photographed here in the summer of 1957, 18 years into their lonely exile, in the same overgrown, debris-strewn workshop yard in which they were abandoned.
Read more in April’s issue of TCM
