The material is destined, in the end, to remain a mere auxiliary, just good enough to enable stammering to become speech. - Fritz Wotruba

The sudden change [Wotruba and his wife returned to Vienna in December 1945, at the end of the war; there he started to direct a class for advanced students on the Akademie der Bildenden Künste of Vienna] has had a shock effect on me and on my work. The almost sensual excitement caused by the destruction around me wears off rather quickly. It is not my duty to give this past [of Nazism and the war-years, fh] more significance than it has already been given in literature, on the stage and in the cinema. I am concerned with the figure, with the statuary, i.e., with statics, measurement, equilibrium, and with unity.

At the present time the artists stands alone.. ..no ideology can be of help to him.

Culture can flourish only under the protection of a society with aristocratic characteristics.