Emanuel Hahn

EMANUEL HAHN was a German-born Canadian sculptor, engraver and coin designer. His fuller name was Emanuel Otto Hahn. He was born in Reutlingen on 30 May 1881 and moved with his family to Toronto in 1888. He received artistic and technical training in Toronto and later continued his studies in Stuttgart at the Kunstgewerbeschule and Technische Hochschule. From 1908 to 1912 he worked as studio assistant to sculptor Walter Seymour Allward and contributed to several of Allward's monumental projects. Hahn joined the Ontario College of Art faculty in 1910 and became Head of its Department of Sculpture in 1922, continuing there until his retirement in 1951. In 1926 he married his former student, sculptor Elizabeth Wyn Wood. In 1928 he became one of the founders and the first president of the Sculptors' Society of Canada. In Canadian numismatics Hahn is known for the 1935 Voyageur silver-dollar design, the Bluenose on the 10-cent coin and the caribou head on the 25-cent coin introduced in 1937, as well as the 1939 Royal Visit silver dollar. He died in Toronto on 14 February 1957.