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Insight into the creation of Billy Yank from the sculptor’s great-grandson, Sept. 21
“Rudolph Thiem and Billy Yank: What the Artist’s Life Tells Us About His Magnum Opus” with Jon Thiem, great-grandson of sculptor Rudolph Thiem, 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 21, First St. John United Church of Christ, 412 South Front St., Hamilton, Free. (513) 896-9930.
Long before there was a City of Sculpture, a German immigrant and Berlin-trained sculptor by the name of Rudolph Thiem landed the commission to create a piece of art that would become a symbol for his adopted city.
The sculpture’s official title is “Victory: Jewel of the Soul,” but is better known in Hamilton as Billy Yank.
On Sept. 21, Thiem’s great-grandson, Jon Thiem will talk on behalf of Billy Yank, revealing how the story of the statue’s creator influenced one of Butler County’s most recognizable landmarks, the Soldiers, Sailors and Pioneers Monument.
His design for “Victory,” a 3,500 pound, 14-foot bronze statue of a young Union soldier standing on an exploded shell and waving his hat jubilantly, was selected in a national competition in 1906.
“There is a great deal of family lore about my great-grandfather and the statue,” Thiem said. “My father, who died in 2004, knew his grandfather and loved him and knew lots of stories about him. As I grew up, I collected stories and information about him.”
Jon Thiem is currently a cultural historian at Colorado State University and working on book about his family history, its German roots. His previous work includes “Rabbit Creek Country: Three Ranching Lives in the Heart of the Mountain West,” the history of another family that illustrates the taming of the West. It was selected as a finalist for the 2009 Colorado Book Award.
Likewise, the current project, which he said is “nowhere near finished,” will look at his own family in a cultural context, exploring its deep religious convictions and response to war up through the middle of the 20th century.
Born in Germany in 1857, Rudolph Thiem emigrated from his native Berlin to the United States through New Orleans, according to information provided by the Butler County Historical Society.
His talents as an artist were noticed by Hamilton stove-maker Lazarus Kahn. Offered a position as model-maker and designer at Kahn Brothers, Thiem relocated to Hamilton in 1886. Not long after, he established his own business as a model-maker, designer, and ornamental carver.
He served as his own model for Billy Yank and did the work in a studio across the Great Miami River on A Street, which has a special skylight built into the ceiling.
“The irony of this is that he was a German immigrant who created a patriotic work of art,” Jon Thiem said. “It was controversial at the time because most of the victory statues were allegorical, depicting goddesses with wings.
“It was a time of reconstruction in the country and there was a movement to heal wounds, but this cry of victory was pretty direct. So it was unusual to see a common Civil War soldier in such an active position.”
His work also adorns regimental monuments on Civil War battlefields such as Chickamauga and architectural details at St. John’s Church, where his great-grandson will deliver his presentation.
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