SALZBURG, Austria (AP) — More than 200 gold statuettes of Austria's most famous composer disappeared from his hometown of Salzburg, officials said Wednesday, leaving a tribute to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on his 270th birthday considerably less crowded.
The Mozarteum Foundation on July 15 unveiled 320 statuettes, barely 50 centimeters (less than 20 inches) high, showing Mozart with his dog. They were designed by German conceptual artist Ottmar Hörl.
Within two weeks, more than 80 of the polymer figures had disappeared. By Wednesday, a total of 210 were missing.
“The worst thing for an artist is when his work dissolves,” Hörl told the German news agency dpa. He said he did not believe visitors stole the works but rather that it was an “organized theft.”
Hörl intended to sell the statues for about 100 euros ($114) once the exhibition was over, meaning whoever ran away with 210 mini-Mozarts has not become an overnight millionaire.
The mini-Mozarts populated not only the garden of the composer's former house, but also his living quarters as well as several pavilions.
While the organizers put aside some spare statuettes in case of theft, there were too few to compensate for the actual losses. And in a further stroke of bad luck, the manufacturer of the statues was away on holidays, so there was no quick fix.
The exhibition of statuettes, now more widely spaced, is scheduled to remain on display until Aug. 30.
For Hörl, who is known from his sculptures made from polymer, the theft of his artworks is nothing new. At an installation in Bayreuth, Germany, a complete array of statues of Richard Wagner was stolen within 10 days.
“That’s just the nature of public space. That means when you work as an artist in a public space, you mustn’t complain about what is happening there,” Hörl said. “It ranges from destruction to theft. That’s just how it is.”
Mozart was born on Jan. 27, 1756, in Salzburg, where the Mozarteum Foundation offers concerts, maintains Mozart museums and supports research on him.
“I didn’t want to do a monument of Mozart. There are already enough of these. But I wanted to show his human side, that he was a normal human being despite his genius,” Hörl told The Associated Press.
To give the statues a human touch, Hörl depicted the composer with his favorite dog, Pimperl. Mozart and his family were known to take long walks with their dogs in the Mirabell Garden, next to where they lived.
FILE - People walk by some of the 400 gold colored plastic Mozart sculptures by German artist Ottmar Hoerl from Nuremberg for the 270th birthday of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Salzburg, Austria, Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File)
FILE - A view of some of the 400 gold colored plastic Mozart sculptures by German artist Ottmar Hoerl from Nuremberg for the 270th birthday of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Salzburg, Austria, Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File)
President Donald Trump says he slipped away from Air Force One after a trip last month in Turkey because the Secret Service and military wanted him on a “different plane” due to a threat he insisted didn’t scare him.
Trump downplayed the extraordinary nature of the subterfuge involved in his flight, which saw him stow away in an airport catering container to sneak onto another plane while Air Force One was sent into the sky, essentially as a decoy.
Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan won the Minnesota Democratic Senate primary Tuesday in the latest victory for an insurgent progressive over the party’s establishment. Flanagan defeated centrist U.S. Rep. Angie Craig with a pledge to fight the influence of corporations and confront Trump.
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Commanders in chief have sometimes kept overseas trips covert for security reasons, with schedules and logistics kept classified until after for safety reasons. But the fact that Trump’s whereabouts were concealed at the time and for weeks afterward is believed to be unprecedented.
“We have absolutely seen the president fly on unmarked or decoy planes before, into Iraq, Afghanistan, other war-zone-like places,” said Garrett M. Graff, author of “Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself — While the Rest of Us Die.”
“But this was an ongoing secret that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before.”
After hiding in the catering vehicle and being moved to the other plane, Trump stopped in Britain, sneaked back aboard the presidential plane undetected, and even later scoffed when asked about potential danger.
“If I go, you go. Right?” he told reporters then — gliding past the fact that if the plane had been shot down, the president wouldn’t have been aboard.
U.S. inflation slowed last month and a measure of underlying price pressures also cooled, suggesting higher oil and gas prices from the Iran war are only having a limited impact on broader costs in the economy.
Consumer prices rose 3.4% in July from a year ago, down slightly from 3.5% in June, the Labor Department said Wednesday. But inflation is still higher than before the Iran war began in February, when it was 2.4%. On a monthly basis, prices rose just 0.1% from June to July.
Inflation has been pushed higher by a series of shocks to the economy, including President Trump’s tariffs imposed last spring, higher gas prices stemming from the Iran war, and a surge in investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure that has boosted computer chip prices. The key question for the inflation-fighters at the Fed — not to mention for consumers struggling with high gas and grocery prices — is how quickly those one-time effects will fade.
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President Trump pivoted the nation’s attention back to vaccines this week with an executive order that aims to scale back the childhood immunization schedule and space out shots into separate visits.
After acting to overhaul the nation’s vaccine policy and guidance, the Trump administration had recently largely stepped back from additional changes to focus on less controversial subjects, raising questions over the political impetus behind and implications of the Republican president’s renewed focus on vaccines.
For well over a decade, Trump has expressed his view — against medical groups’ guidance — that childhood vaccines should be administered in smaller doses over a long period of time. The executive order sought to bear out that discredited theory.
While the move could endear Trump to some “Make America Healthy Again” voters who want more flexibility on immunizations, it’s also already attracting attacks designed to hurt Trump’s aligned candidates in November’s midterm elections.
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Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan won the Minnesota Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday in the latest victory for an insurgent progressive over the party’s establishment.
Flanagan defeated centrist U.S. Rep. Angie Craig with a pledge to fight the influence of corporations and confront Trump.
“For months now, I have been telling you that this campaign was about the many versus the money,” Flanagan said as she celebrated her victory in Minneapolis. “Well guess what? The many just won.”
The outcome was another sign of progressive energy among Democratic primary voters. It comes a week after Abdul El-Sayed won a bitter and divisive primary in Michigan that fired up the left and fueled anxiety among party leaders that Democrats will alienate moderate swing voters.
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President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he slipped away from Air Force One after a trip last month in Turkey because the Secret Service and military wanted him on a “different plane” due to a threat he insisted didn’t scare him.
Trump downplayed the extraordinary nature of the subterfuge involved in his flight, which saw him stow away in an airport catering container to sneak onto another plane while Air Force One was sent into the sky, essentially as a decoy.
He also downplayed the risk to the people — White House officials, security and support staff, and reporters — he left on the plane.
“They wanted me to go on a different flight, different plane,” Trump told reporters after returning from an event in Ohio, saying he had little choice in the matter.
“I guess there was a threat out there. I didn’t really ask too much about it,” he said. “I get a lot of threats.”
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President Donald Trump talks to reporters after arriving on Air Force One Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
