Nicolaus Schmidt
German artist
Nicolaus Schmidt (born 1 January 1953) is a German artist, photographer and historian. He studied at the Hamburg Art Academy (HfBK) in the 1970s. In 1975, he founded ROSA, one of Germany’s first gay magazines. During the 1980s, he was a volunteer with the German branch of the children’s rights organization Terre des Hommes, serving for a time as its chairman. Since 1991, he has been living and making art in the Berlin neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg.
Public works
Nicolaus was born Arnis, West Germany. In 1982, he created the Cerro Rico Aktion with 100,000 tin cans. In this work, the artist created an outdoor installation inspired by his interest in Third World affairs. Via public media, people were asked to collect tin cans so that the artist and his team could build a shining silver mountain (“Cerro Rico”) to symbolize the Bolivian mountain of the same name. This project called attention to the historical exploitation of South America’s wealth by European conquerors, and the use of child labor in the region.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Nicolaus Schmidt” as german artist. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as german artist. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q469792. VIAF identifies the subject as 164736993. The Library of Congress control number is no2012141593. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 1975, 1991 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nicolaus Schmidt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.