Abduction to Olympus

The bronze sculpture you see in front of you shows a young man raising one arm with an eagle by his side. That’s the statue of Ganymede! Since 1952, it has stood proudly by the lake on the popular Bürkliplatz—and is now a symbol of the square. Back in 1942, an art historian decided to donate a male figure to the city of Zurich since, at the time, public statues mostly depicted women. The artist Hermann Hubacher was the one behind this masterpiece, titled “Abduction to Olympus,” showing the young shepherd Ganymede with Zeus, under the form of an eagle, and about to carry him away to Mount Olympus. In Greek mythology, Homer describes Ganymede as the most beautiful of all mortals, taken to live among the gods to serve Zeus. Even though this myth has no Swiss origin, there lies a deeper meaning—an artistic expression of the male ideal of beauty. To understand the full message, we have to dig deeper in history: in 1942, Switzerland decriminalized homosexuality. According to the German newspaper NZZ, this statue was the first public representation of love between men, making it one of the earliest examples of art used to challenge prejudice and promote understanding.