Hommage à Mercator / Homage to Mercator

Friederich Werthmann’s sculpture is an homage to Gerhard Mercator (1512–1594). It was created for a competition celebrating the 450th birthday of the great mathematician, geographer, philosopher, theologian, and cartographer, who lived and was buried in Duisburg. After several locations and a long period in storage, the sculpture was finally installed on the newly designed Kuhlenwall-Karree, not far from Mercator’s former residence.
The sculpture’s spherical shape makes reference to the fact that Gerhard Mercator was particularly known for his globes of the Earth and the stars in his day. Friedrich Werthmann’s work is a large, freestanding, hollow sphere. The slightly irregular shape was welded together out of numerous – predominantly triangular – elements. Other than a continuous “equator,” there appear to be strong dynamic currents running in different directions, representing the fast rotation of centrifugal forces. Neither the earth nor the sky is depicted here, but instead the powerful dynamics that are fundamental to the happenings on Earth.