Eight additional busts were added to the art collection through a donation from the artist’s widow. The spectrum of techniques used, from reshaping and wrapping in ribbons to adding attributes until the model is almost unrecognisable, gives an insight into both the diverse biographical and scientific life of the Humboldts and the imagination and expressiveness of the artist, who was trained in Vienna and Berlin and worked for many years as a freelance artist in Berlin. Not only are the subjects closely associated with the university, Matzner began his series of sculptures in 1990 – at a time when the liquidation of Humboldt Universität was on the agenda. It is, so to speak, an artistic commitment to the two scholars and their ideals, but also to the tradition of Humboldt Universität and its continuation into the present and future. Matzner himself was drawn to Berlin by the student revolts of 1968. He worked primarily in terracotta, although in the 1980s he began to produce larger formats for public spaces, including the Corinthian column for the Rostlaube building at Freie Universität Berlin and the series of pocket pyramids.

The titles alone – such as Humboldt bucht eine Reise (Humboldt books a trip), Im Insektenschwarm (In the swarm of insects), Nach Worten ringend (Struggling for words), Die Vermessung des Alexander von Humboldt (The measurement of Alexander von Humboldt), Humboldt mit Reisetasche (Humboldt with travel bag) or Abgewickelter Humboldt (Unravelled Humboldt) – refer to the creative and sometimes ironic treatment of these great men. The Humboldts are populated with plants, animals such as frogs and beetles, but also with bags, telephone receivers and garden gnomes. Amusing, sometimes sombre, not always immediately aesthetically appealing, the busts are intended to stimulate reflection. What do the scientific curiosity and industriousness of the Humboldts mean to us today? Which of their achievements do we recognise in the narrative portraits, and what impact do they (still) have? Furthermore, the alienations refer us back to ourselves; Matzner’s distortions are ‘the “natural cast” of our civilisation, the portrait […] of our world, frightening and bitterly amusing’ (Sperlich 1991, p. 24).