“Yes, that’s where I’m from,” says the 71-year-old man in a sleeveless shirt and trudges contentedly through the workshop, “I’m at home there.” You can tell from his strong arms that he is still working tirelessly. Georg-Peter Wimmer is a wood carver, he has turned the creative passion that fascinated him as a child into his profession and purpose in life. As a native of the Innviertel, Peter, as everyone he knows, has never moved far, the districts of Ried and Schärding are his world.
Now he lives and works in the old grandparents’ house in Neuhaus, municipality of Geinberg. A large Stelzhamer head looks out of a window next to the front door – a bust like a trademark of the artist who works here.
Wimmer was born on October 4, 1951 as the youngest of five children in Altschwendt. This date is important to him: “It’s Francis Day, World Animal Protection Day, hence my love for animals.” Peter was a “Kramerbua”. More than the business, however, he was interested in what he could create with his skilled hands. Therefore, supported by his mother, he was allowed to leave high school in Linz after the lower grades. He should become a retail salesman. However, his father allowed him to work in a studio half-day as an artist, as long as he worked the second half-day in the grocery store. A teenager’s own studio! As a child, he had practiced in a dark basement with artificial light, “but even then, the carving tool didn’t let me down”. And after completing the apprenticeship, the training at the art school of the city of Linz began. The goal of “living from and with wood” was getting closer, “and I also wanted to make other people happy with it”.
Persistent work led to success. The sculptor Karl Gruber from Hohenzell helped the up-and-coming talent. Leopold Willnauer from Haibach near Schärding, who allowed the ambitious boy to work, became a formative model artist. Supporters included the versatile people’s educator Hermann Edtbauer and last but not least an innkeeper who helped to market Peter Wimmer’s figures (“Carve what you can, I’ll sell it to people”). Apparently word of mouth for the figural depictions of the young Innviertel soon set in. He never had a “store” for potential buyers to choose from, but was happy to show off items that weren’t for sale so everyone could see how he worked. That brought orders.
Peter Wimmer was invited to Advent markets and fairs from Ried to Verona. There he carved in front of an audience. “Visitors could watch how a figure is created from a block of wood. My stands were always besieged.” His figures are in many countries, from Australia to Sweden, the USA …
For a few years now, the Stelzhamerbund has been holding a literary competition for short stories in dialect. A Stelzhamer bust of Peter Wimmer beckons as the prize. How does he manage to carve a character’s head out of a block of wood, showing the poet’s unmistakable facial features?
Carve in the soul
“I imagine the lying face as a succession of elevations, like a landscape,” explains the master carver. “The loftiest, highest point is the tip of the nose, from there it goes down into the valleys to the river. That’s how I design the profile.” It is then essential to “carve the soul into it”. It shouldn’t be a caricature. The characteristic should be emphasized sensitively. In the case of Franz Stelzhamer’s self-confident personality, the fierceness that can often be heard in his words must be meaningfully recognizable in the carved face. Peter Wimmer is up to the challenge.
He also has a family background. The attic of the house “breathes the past”, it is still full of great-grandfather’s tools, his workbench is still there. An aspect of Innviertler cultural history also plays a role. For more than two centuries, the Schwanthaler sculpture workshop provided the artistically high-quality furnishings for Innviertel churches and other buildings. With altars and figures, art made of wood that has long since gotten on in years. This means numerous restoration orders for experts of later generations. That’s why Peter Wimmer remarks with a smile: “The woodworm is my bread and butter.”
The wood sculptor and farmer Peter Wimmer – “I have both, I prefer rubber boots” – raves about the hobbies animals, nature, singing and cannot imagine a life without animals. He was particularly taken with the already old donkey that one of his grandsons gave birth to. “I gave it to donkeys”, says the grandfather with a wink, “so that I’m never completely alone. She’s already zecka-foast, but I understand that she’s great.” A 35-year-old Icelandic horse, three sheep of different breeds, a large rooster and hens also belong to Wimmer’s menagerie.
Peter Wimmer is married to religion teacher Marianne. They have three children, the daughter is a lawyer, both sons, like their father artistically talented, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and work as teachers. “One carves too,” adds the father. «
Source: Nachrichten
