Although this work, entitled Angel on Earth by Edith Breckwoldt, may appear to be sculptd from wood, it is in fact made of bronze.
This website (
visit link) has an additional photo with a description and some history:
"St. Nikolai Memorial
Hamburg
A blackened spire lances the blue above Hamburg’s teeming docklands and city center. The thrumming of traffic on busy Willy Brandt boulevard muscles into the space below the stone needle, entering through skeletal Gothic windows, their shattered stained glass long ago swept away.
The steeple and broken sections of walls are what remain of the once majestic St. Nikolai Church, built in the mid-1800s, though its history dates to the 12th century. In July and August 1943 during World War II, the spire, the tallest structure in the harbor area, became a reference point for British and American air raids on the city’s shipyards and U-boat facilities. Inevitably, the church was hit. The tower survived, but the nave’s roof fell, and outer walls were heavily damaged. A firestorm devoured the area around.
In 1951, debris was cleared from the church, and in 1987 after restoration, the site became a memorial “to the victims of war and persecution 1933-1945.”
The space once occupied by pews, altars and congregants is open-air now, set with two bronzes by Hamburg sculptor Edith Breckwoldt that embody the memorial’s message.
A female figure stretches heavenward from a pillar on which bas-relief hands reach toward her. Nearby, a disconsolate male figure sits atop a mound of broken stones, collected for the artwork from the site of Sandbostel, a Nazi camp where an estimated 50,000 prisoners died.
In a corner, morning sun fleshes out the bones of a window, duplicating its graceful tracery in light and shadow on an opposite brick wall.
A door in the glass pyramid at the nave’s center leads to the crypt, where displays of photos and artifacts show wartime destruction, and church history is outlined.
An elevator at the base of the 483-foot-tall steeple carries visitors past a 51-bell carillon to a windy observation platform at the 249-foot level. Each opening offers an expansive panorama of the vibrant city. Panels in German and English speak unblinkingly of the war:
“The original catastrophe occurred … in 1933, when the National Socialists, with the support of large parts of the elite and the population abolished democracy and the rule of law in a matter of weeks. This catastrophe was to bring on all the tragedies that followed.”
There are no excuses at St. Nikolai, and no glorification of the conflict that left it a hulk. There are only admonitions and challenges to be carried away into the hiss of traffic outside."