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.
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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
