“In my sculpture I have tried to show that the suffering, struggle and ultimately the victory of a person fighting for his freedom […] belong together.” Fritz Cremer summarized his creative work in this way in 1975, but the comment is also relevant to his “Freedom Fighter” dating from 1947. The male figure’s arms are crossed as if they were tied together. But the bound man’s calm face and upright pose suggest that he has retained great inner strength despite his humiliation.

Cremer came from a simple background and was always politically active. His task as an artist, or so he saw it, was to convey the principles of socialism. As in the sculpture “Mother Group” or his famous Buchenwald memorial, he created an image of mourning and accusation with the “Freedom Fighter”. The idea of collective opposition to fascism expressed in Cremer’s works became a basic principle of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).