schrift an wand malen
to be honest, i assume that everybody has already seenthose stones in one place or another. by now there are 854 places in germany, and the total of 40,000may or may not be true. stone 40,000 will be placed in july,in oost in the netherlands, near utrecht. 150 stones shall be placed there, and it'll be one of them,we're not sure which one. by now it's 13 countries in europe, next week i'm flying to croatiato place four stones.
and in july i'll go to russia, to oryol, south of moscow. we're finally getting somewherein france, after a lot of resistance, and 2 stones in switzerland. but i also think that everybody here knows that the reason to do this projectis not a happy one. one thing i should point out, it's not as i keep hearing as of late: "hasn't your work become routine?"
of course, placing the stonesis something i can do well by now, but the underlying storiesare always new, as are the people i meet. the situations vary greatly from another, and maybe i thoughtwhen i was placing stone 36,000: "nothing can shock me now,i've seen it all", but then i find myself having to take a break. before i'll talk aboutwhat's been moving and touching me, especially in recent times,
i should add some personal background because people keep asking me,"how did you come up with this?" and people seem to think sometimes that the artist sits down,waits for the muse to kiss him, and then the stumble blocks appear. maybe this already startedwith my history teacher. he belonged to those who ignoredanything after the weimar republic. and myself, i... well, i was raised in berlinand really stumbled into it,
or was pushed into it, in 1968. basically, i was taught historyby rudi dutschke. i heard him give speeches. rudi dutschke, gaston salvatore,in the 'falcon' barracks, so i had the honorto shake hands with him. and maybe because of this work, or maybe because of my father.he was one of those, who... i couldn't get any information from him,even though i knew, what i had done. i was 18 and was expanding the attic
so that i could have my own workspace,or at least my own room -- and suddenly, there's a box of photos. my father, in trunks,sitting on a flak cannon. so i asked him,"yes, spain, legion condor." and before that, i had readhemingway "to whom the bell tolls". nothing fits anymore. five years of radio silence,no conversation was possible. then, the first work in public space. actually it was a little panel at first,
not inspired by jasper johnswho painted the american flag. it was vietnam,it was really moving us at that time. then i had my first workshopin berlin kreuzberg, manteuffelstraãÿe,at the corner of paul-lincke-ufer, that place was super cheap at that time,as you can probably imagine. there were three of us living there. so that was my workshop, this corner shop, and so i just paintedthe american flag into the window, a bit stylized.
on the third morning, at 6 am,the doorbell starts ringing like crazy. criminal investigation department:i'm supposed to remove this. i refused, and was removedfrom the scene in an open truck, very comfortable,so that all the neighbors could see. i also had a legal counsel, you may take a guess at who he was,he wouldn't do it anymore now, it was herr otto schily.(laughter) but like i said, nothing came out of it, but that was my first experienceof art in public space.
now, how did i get frompainting to sculpting... i started with the classics. it was also a bit difficult at first. i was supposed to, or actuallyi wanted to be a lufthansa pilot, then i took the test in hamburg. on the flight backi read the small print and thought, "well, 2.5 years of education,then you'll earn a bunch of money, but you will depend on flight plansfor the rest of your life, like a bus driver."
then i told my mom, "i want to study art." she told me, "dear lord, if we tell father,he will have a heart attack." we ended upwith art pedagogy as a compromise: art history, art theory, art sociology. that's not too bad for an artist,and what turned out to be useful was that i got to knowall of the artistic work methods, each one of them for a week only,but learn them i did. it was great to find outhow to deal with metal, ceramics,
all printing techniques. i also learned how to paint, i painted colorful still lives,very classic painting, and at some pointi failed at painting a brick. i had a good teacher,but he was desperate. i was desperate. at some point he said, "i guessone doesn't have to paint everything." the next morning i came in, carrying a giant board,a drill, anchor bolts, screws. i screwed the large parts tightand applied the smaller ones,
added fabric, paint,put it up on two hooks in the wall. he returns for corrections and says, "hmm... that's not quitehow i meant it." (laughter) for me, this was the third dimension. away from the panel,a completely different type of work. let's fast-forward in time.there were a lot of other works. 1980: i had the chance to take a positionas an assistant art professor at the art departmentat the university of kassel.
i was an assistantin the former art academy and slightly frustrated -- after all, it had been23 semesters as a student, and all of a sudden,i was on the other side. (laughter) and more frustrating: back then, neither art clubsnor museums cared about what actually happens in art education. i wanted to make a mark. change an institute for educationto a space for exhibitions.
so, why not aim for paris? like the cabman gustav hartmann,who rode his cab from berlin to paris, i printed tracks on the road. cassel-paris, odor marks deming '80,odor marks as a metaphor for what cats and dogs doto mark their territory. it wasn't all that easy.i made it through germany. but then, this young gendarme -- it was four days beforei was supposed to arrive in paris, at the beaubourg,and i knew i was being expected --
he stopped me dead. i explained to him in,might i say, best "school french", "this is action art,it's land art, it's performance." and he only said, "ah, ah, but art is onlywhat i can put up on my wall at home." it took quite a while, almost half a day, until the protocol was done. and then he asked his boss,"so what do we do with him?" "well", he said, "just add to the report,
it's chalk paint,the rain will wash it away. then let him sign itand continue with his project." it turned out a success. there were some other projects too:kassel, london, i painted a blood trail, then here, a red threadfrom kassel to venice, a red thread, ariadne's thread,to find back out of the labyrinth. all of these lead up to this work: a trail commemoratingthe deportation of thousand gypsies, of a thousand rome and sinti, in may 1940.
you could considerthis deportation in may 1940 as a sort of dress rehearsal. because you can well imagine, in orderto remove a thousand people, citizens, all at the same time,you need the logistics in place. the people had been informed, "you will be providedwith a new home in the east. you only need to pack light for the trip, so take 40 to 50 kg of luggage.the furniture will be delivered." that was a cynical lie.
they were picked upwith trucks in cologne. in other areas they hadto walk with their luggage, they were broughtto the deutz convention center. this center was a field officeof the buchenwald concentration camp. the train station was right across. without the german 'reichsbahn',the rail system, it would not have worked. so i submitted a requestto the municipality to paint a chalk trailof about 20 kilometers, "may 1940, a thousand rome and sinti."
on a sunday morning at 6i painted the trail so that it can drybefore people walk over it. the scandal followed on monday,they actually believed that i would paint these 20 kmwith chalk from school. they didn't know i had such a machine, and they couldn't know, of course, that i would pickthe best house paint available. (laughter) there was a scandal,they wanted me to pay the cleaning bill,
that would have been embarrassing. at some point,the trail had been washed away. and in some important places,in twenty-two places -- the gestapo hq,the registration office, the town halls, and here in front of our littlechapel by the station (laughter) -- in some places, i installed a permanent trail in brass. in the sã¼dstadt area in cologne,near the griechenmarkt, an elderly lady comes up to me,a contemporary witness, and says,
"good man, it's greatthat you're doing all of this, but no gypsies ever livedin our quarter here." she was very convinced. so i showed her my documents.the lady was flabbergasted. and then i realizedhow especially the sinti had been inhabiting western europefor at least 400 years. they were totally assimilated,98 percent of them catholic, just very normal neighbors. the jewish community in cologne told me,upon request, they did take their time,
their rabbi then told me,yes, not an issue from the talmud side, until '33 we celebrated our holidays together with our christian neighbors. they shared cakes, they shared matzoh, apparently, they didn't take kosherso seriously here in cologne. they were very normal neighbors, and for me, this triggered something. it had started here,where these people had been at home, auschwitz had been unthinkable,somewhere far, far away,
and just very unthinkable,especially for young people, for which i believewe must take this upon us. well, it turned out to be that easy. when this idea was first born,for me as an artist, it was concept art. something to be filedor stored in the desk drawer. looking at these numbersit didn't even occur to me to really put it into practice. it was published at some point.
karlheinz schmid of the 'kunstzeitung'art magazine had issued a book "megalomania, art projects for europe". i told him, "well, we could publish it,but we cannot really do it." the priest kurt pickof the antonine community then said, "gunter, you'll never make itto a million, but you can start small." well, you heard the numbers,and this year is fully booked. by now we're a team of five.anna warda does the scheduling. she has long forbidden meto plan anything else for this year.
the next year has been fully booked, too,at least the most important days. but here's what i wouldactually like to talk about. the biggest joy is the interestof young people, of students. in spite of the warnings of teachers: "this topic? no way! they're fed up with it,they can't hear it anymore." by now i have foundthe absolute opposite to be true. it starts when they open a book: six million jews murdered in europe,
and if they then pay a little attention,they figure it out, there was another six,if not eight million people, that was killed by the nazisfor other reasons. and i think, or i admit, that even for me, even though i can saythis is part of my daily work, this remains an abstract number. and even more for students,but i have noticed that for them, one family's fateis more exemplary, or the murders of sick individuals,the so-called euthanasia.
sometimes you need just one fate, and then they dig deep into this fate, they also have their ownenvironment, their own street, sometimes even their own house,and start to calculate: "hang on, they were born in that year, he was as old as i am nowwhen he was murdered", or "wait a minute, these two stones. my grandparents have the age of these twowhen they were deported to theresienstadt. those are the moments that i knowthey will go home as different people,
but then studentstake initiative themselves, too. and one of the best examples was in uslar, lower saxony,near hildesheim, a history intensive coursehad found my website -- it's www.stolpersteine.euas you probably know -- so we were in contact,they had researched some stuff, and then this class submitteda request to the city council, "we would liketo place some stumble blocks." the city council was gobsmacked."can they even do that?"
"sure", i said, "of course.they are citizens of your town." the request was sent backand then went to the principal, who could then write this on his flag, and i think he can,with students like that. this is a picture froma secondary school in leverkusen, i had a long presentation --normally, if i explain how the stumble blocks came about, i need about 100 images and 45 minutes. we needed further work and writing,
otherwise i'd have never had the idea to inscribe this in metal. this was the big presentation. a work group formedand came into my workshop, then i explained themall of the necessary steps, starting with research workup to the legal permit from the city council, the mayor, etc., and then the agreementswith the public engineering office. they pulled this through,they implemented it,
and it actually went to farthat two female students developed a courseabout the stumble blocks project and went to other schools, presented it on their own, so that the teacher had to admit, "what they didwas on student teacher level." here is a small side note,maybe it helps to explain some things. i just heard this a while ago, "yeah, but all of thisis only done for the jews."
this project had been conceivedfrom the beginning for all groups of victimsand for all of europe. there was also an element of --let's say it like this: i was quite annoyed by the memorialto the murdered jews of europe in berlin, there were other drafts, that would have, in my opinion,included all groups of victims, and would have been more effective. the first thought i had was taking those stones,those names, back to where these people
had been at home: "here lived ..."where the terrors started. this is where the idealightened up a little bit, or this is where i hadthe idea to extend it. after it had appeared in the press,i get a call from the university. can you give sponsorships as a present? as i said, the city or local institutionsnever helped finance the project, it was always done via private donations, so i was a little surprised and said, "sure, why not? what is this about?"
"we would like to give our professor,who's retiring, a present. she already has all of the books."(laughter) "we would like to give hertwo sponsorships for two professors who were disallowedto continue work in 1933 and were later deported and murdered." and yes, i have to admit,i was really touched and said, "okay, you do those two stones, and i'll add two stonesfrom my side, 'here taught ...', and we'll put themby the university's main entrance."
it went well at first. we had the ceremonyand then wanted to place the stones. the dean was informed and then he replied, "oh, but we don't need this,we already have a showcase." the students then also foundthe showcase, it really existed. it was on the first floor,stored in a dead-ended hallway. then we wanted to place the stonesand the dean believed that the entire main entrance area,and the cafeteria, was his. but then, the land registry office
showed me wherethe building lines were. (laughter) and the stones are now rightbefore this line, in public space. nobody from the rector's officeshowed up for the placing of the stones. a story from cologne. (laughter) i much prefer the stories of students, here's a picture from potsdam, i'll mention this to close the talk, but here's something great too,a presentation in neuss, a high school. afterwards, work groupsformed in three classes,
and they, well,they researched themselves. we placed the stones together. there was a publicclosing ceremony in the school, the registrar gave a speech,of course, because he had helped them. and he started out like this: when they had initially approached himwith this request, he had said, "oh my god. the students,my archives, they'll destroy it!" and his final conclusion was this: "what the students didwas a true research work,
i would never havemanaged this from my desk, because they hadall the names and addresses, and ventured out,rang the doorbells, and asked." all of a sudden, letterswith their neighbors show up, they were their neighbors after all. a whole box of negativeglass plates, family photos, and in the end he says, "who knows what those people would have said if i had rung their bell."
and this here, this experienceis a very recent one. in potsdam, we placedthree stones, two families, an 8th class had prepared everything and they also hada little event, a performance, and had started to listthe two family trees in great detail. they had done this in their own time, had contacts to london, they had even found some relatives, and when the stones were placed,
they had organized an eventat the 'glienicker brã¼cke' bridge. you can see that they haddressed up for their performance, 1930s, they had the family trees and here they had the current state, how these familieshave been scattered globally, and that's my experience, too. so that's something that brings joy,in spite of all sadness that is of course presentwhen relatives join the event. and this is very global.
i had an examplewhere two sides of the family united over the placing of the stones, they didn't knowanything about each other, they only noticed when they were there,oh, we're related to each other. and in the end, that crowned the ceremony, they had a little role play game,she plays the jewish baker woman, and then we have the audience in 1932, foreshadowing 1933. there's a guy in a black coat
and the supportive commentsfrom her customers, or also the ones who say."we don't want those jews anyway." and in the end, a song they composed. those are the kind of experiences where i can safely saythat i know why i do this, and especially mã¼hlhausenwas an experience where the victims' grandchildren,three of them had come from israel, where they say, "yes, now it's finally possible,with our grandfather,
shortly before he was, let's say,saying his last goodbyes, he finally spoke out." and then they came and wanted to knowwhat this home was where he came from, and that really works welltogether with the students who want to know, how could something like this happenin the country of poets and thinkers. thank you. (applause)