Man Walking to the Sky

Aiming for the sky over Kassel: “Der Himmelsstürmer”

Man Walking to the Sky is a 80 foot (24.4 m) steel and fiberglass structure by American sculptor Jonathan Borofsky. If you arrive by train in the city center of Kassel—at the Kulturbahnhof—you won't miss this outdoor sculpture on your way downtown. It is installed on the plaza in front of the train station. The sculpture was first shown in Kassel during the Documenta 9 exhibition in 1992 on the Friedrichsplatz, the prominent Documenta location, where in 2017 The Parthenon of Books had its temporary place.

In Germany, the “Man Walking to the Sky” is known as Himmelsstürmer (“Himmel” is the German word for sky and the noun “Stürmer” derives from the verb “stürmen” meaning to run with a purpose or to attack). The movement of the Himmelsstürmer upward the steel pole has been interpreted as an escape: getting away from whatever is wrong on our planet by reaching the sky. The artist's inspiration for his sculpture with an aiming for the sky motif goes back to his childhood, when his imagination was influenced by stories about a friendly giant who lived in the sky and did good things for people. The Himmelsstürmer has been well received by the public, which cannot be said about all art objects exhibited during Documenta events.

The English edition of the MERIAN magazine featuring Kassel (Jahreszeiten Verlag GmbH, 2017) shows a bird's-eye view of the man walking up the pole to the sky [MERIAN English-Edition Kassel]. According to MERIAN, they “took to the skies - to finally see eye-to-eye with the sculpture.”