After completing an apprenticeship as a stonemason in Lörrach, Hermann Scherer moved to Basel in 1910/11, where he found work with the sculptor Carl Gutknecht. In 1912/13, he spent years traveling in Cologne and Koblenz. During the First World War, he lived in Basel again and worked in the studio of the sculptor and painter Otto Roos. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Ferdinand Hodler's "View into Infinity," which erupted in 1917, he and other young artists vehemently campaigned for the Kunstmuseum to purchase the work. From 1918 to 1921, he worked as an assistant to Carl Burckhardt, the most important Swiss sculptor at the time. A seminal experience was Scherer's visit to the Munch retrospective at the Zurich Kunsthaus in...