1915 | born in Szczecin |
| stone sculptor apprenticeship |
| Training at the Werkschule für Gestaltende Arbeiten (school of design) |
1938-41 | studies at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts with Arno Breker and Richard Scheibe |
1939 | travels to Paris, where he meets Aristide Maillol and studies works by the sculptors Hans Arp and Constantin Brancusi |
from 1945 | freelance sculptor in Berlin |
1947-49 | lecturer at the College of Applied Arts in Berlin-Weißensee |
1949-89 | Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin |
1956 | Participation in the Venice Biennale |
| great art award of North Rhine-Westphalia |
1955/59/64 | participation in documenta 1,II and III |
from 1969 | experiments with new materials such as aluminum, plastics, wood, marble and steel |
1974 | Grand Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany |
1975 | Lovis Corinth Prize |
1995 | died in Berlin |
While Bernhard Heiliger's early sculptures, created in the 1940s and 1950s, are reminiscent in their aesthetic of works by Henry Moore, his subsequent works tend toward free abstraction. Heiliger broke away from the human figure in the 1960s and created vegetal, broken-up structures that echoed the non-objective art of European Informel.
Heiliger himself summarized his artistic objective with the following words: "Sculpture is not a game with aesthetic forms; sculpture is banished vitality and spatial reality. Groping cautiously, it grows into space, blossoms vegetatively in it, or pushes dynamically against it with great pulsations, or floats transcendently through it."