Ehra oder Kind mit Ball

This bronze sculpture by German Expressionist Otto Pankok (1893–1966) depicts a Sinti girl named Ehra, one of the Roma and Sinti community members Pankok documented through drawings and sculpture during his time living among Sinti families in Düsseldorf's Heinefeld district in the 1930s. The communities he portrayed were later systematically persecuted and largely murdered under National Socialism, giving the otherwise tender image of a child with a ball a profound memorial dimension. The work sits in Cologne's public space as both an example of Expressionist sculpture in bronze and a quiet marker of the Porajmos — the genocide of Sinti and Roma — making it a rare intersection of art history and commemorative culture.