Sculptor's prowess got wings in India

VADODARA: Prof Hans Doring lived in dangerous times when German dictator Adolf Hitler was dreaming to rule the world. The sculptor followed his heart whether it was casting sculptures or saving his would-be wife from Hitler's Germany.
"Daddy used to make sculptures in ice in his hometown. His talent got noticed and he was selected for a scholarship to study in the Art Academy of Dresden.On his return, he cast four bronze cupids for the Town Hall's entrance in Aschersleben. After he left Germany in 1939, the two cupids were melted by Hitler's army for cannon fodder, but the hurt residents commissioned another sculptor to create those cupids again. I was told this story by a former resident of the town who was working in Vadodara for a chemical company," Doring's elder daughter Renee Shamsher Singh reveals.
The most defining moment in his life came when the Gestapo came calling one night at the house of his beloved Meta Spira, who was a Jew. "Daddy knew he had to get her out of Germany, so with the help of an Indian friend, and using the ruse of studying Indian arts, he came to India in 1939 and immediately arranged for mummy to leave Germany. They both left their families behind and could never meet them again in their lifetimes. Mummy passed away in India, and Daddy could never visit East Germany where his family lived. The Berlin wall came down a few years after his death," reveals Yvonne, who met her paternal family for the first time after the fall of Berlin wall.
Doring married Meta in Mysore where the couple first settled down. After Renee was born, they moved to Pune, Mumbai and finally to Vadodara where he was invited by Maharaja Pratapsinh Gaekwad, to design the first glider of the country.
Doring's art flourished in this town and one can still find his admirers in the Faculty of Fine arts, the department of museology as also the faculty of technology where his glider is still on display. "The technicians in the Sayajibaug Museum - where some of his works are on display - told us that daddy designed such ingenuous locks that nobody has been able to either replicate or unravel them till now," the daughters reveal with pride.