BEGAS, REINHOLD (1831-1911), German sculptor, younger son of Karl Begas, the painter, was born at Berlin on July 15 1831, and died there on Aug. 3 1911. He received his early education in the ateliers of C. D. Rauch and L. Wichmann. During a period of study in Italy, from 1856 to 1858, he was strongly influenced by the study of Michelangelo and by his admiration for the art of the baroque period. After the execution of the group "Borussia," for the façade of the exchange in Berlin, he was for a few months in 1861, professor at the art school at Weimar. The statue of Schiller for the Gendarmen Markt in Berlin, was his work. From 187o onwards Begas domi nated the plastic art in Prussia, especially in Berlin. Among his chief works during this period were the colossal statue of Borussia for the Hall of Glory; the Neptune fountain in bronze on the Schlossplatz; the statue of Alexander von Humboldt, all in Berlin; the sarcophagus of the Emperor Frederick III. in the mausoleum of the Friedenskirche at Potsdam; and the national monument to the Emperor William (see BERLIN), the statue of Bismarck before the Reichstag building, and several of the statues in the Siegesallee. Begas was a most versatile artist. If his preference was for mythological and decorative subjects, of which his Mer cury and Psyche (1874) is a good example, he was the most famous German sculptor of his time in portraiture, and executed portrait busts of many of his great contemporaries.
See A. G. Meyer, "Reinhold Begas" in ed. H. Knackfuss, xx. (Bielefeld, 19o1) .