Bildband / Illustrated book
Part 01
Heaven’s Cross in the Luther Garden, Wittenberg, as seen by Ralph Richter
“What was my thinking? The sculpture should exude dynamism and “timeless modernity” in every detail. Only at second glance should the cross be perceived as a Christian symbol; the first impression should be of its overall appearance as a space-creating sculptural object integrated into the entire complex yet also centred on itself. It should satisfy all the criteria of high sculptural quality and unconditionally set itself apart from devotional art, a subject of frequent criticism.”
“We have just heard from the artist that he hopes people will raise their eyes and ask themselves what these stepped crosses mean. And with this up-lifted gaze he seeks to encourage people to continue inquiring into the meaning of their lives. And for each individual, each person, it is important – important for any person of faith and for any thinking citizen in society too – that he or she asks themselves why am I here in this world and what I can give the world? May this monument inspire such and other thoughts among the people who walk here. For the ‘Lutherstadt’ Wittenberg, it has added a further attraction that fosters a contemporary dialogue with the historical sites of the Reformation.”
“When we started planting the Luther Garden many years ago, we began with a stone cross. Today we are unveiling a flying cross. A light cross. A cross that grows as our trees grow here. A cross under which one can also find shelter and gather. A cross whose lightness and meaning unites everyone.”
“I enter the garden and find myself on a narrow path between young trees of different species. Looking more closely, I notice small plaques at the foot of each tree, telling me about a ‘partner tree’ planted in another location.”
“The Luther Garden project has attracted people from all parts of the world. But it was not only bishops, pastors and their parishioners who were involved in planting the trees.”
“Both sensually perceived and rationally analysed and considered, the peculiarity and diversity of the locations are reflected. Contemporary modernity is shaped and experienced like many ancient traditions that were once new and have proven their worth to this day.”
“Thomas Schönauer, whose art I collect with enthusiasm, is one of the greatest artistic innovators of our time and is even more uncompromising in his approach. He envisages high-tech materials in completely new constellations and environments, turns things upside down, causes bodies weighing tons to float and adhesives to flow.”
“The cross will last for a hundred years and more. This work of art shows that crafting metal is a creative job with a future.”
Part 02
Thomas Schönauer CT-Universe / Luther Cycle
“After I’d become intensely preoccupied with the thematic realm of the Reformation, Luther, Wittenberg, the Luther Garden and the Heaven’s Cross, I increasingly felt the urge to devote my pictorial and painting energies within the technique I have developed to the Reformation. Ostensibly not the easiest endeavour for an abstract artist, but I found a bridge to it through the well-established colour code used by the master painters of that period, Cranach, Holbein, Dürer and others. And ultimately, what did the Reformation signify? In the broadest sense a struggle against the attitudes and pomp of the Roman Catholic Church, the venality of church offices, the sale of indulgences – that I condensed into the ‘gold formula'. This is how the ‘Luther' series came about.”
Page 47–65: CT 7–16 / 2018, Luther series, epoxy resin and pigments on stainless steel, 40 x 40 cm
“To equate art with innovation would probably be going too far, but for Schönauer art without innovation is inconceivable.”
“Heaven’s Cross in the Luther Garden impresses, awakens reverence, radiates dignity and invites us to meditate, to reflect on faith, on the meaning of human existence, alone or in communion with others.”
“A park planted with 500 trees from all over the world, whose paths were laid out in the shape of a Luther rose and led outwards from the Heaven’s Cross into the world – like the idea of the Reformation 500 years ago.”
“For Luther, pictures were value-free and religiously neutral. It is the viewer who makes them what they are. Thus the effect of a picture is left to our discretion and subjective disposition, free from any influence of authority. It is we who have the last word; the viewer not someone who unquestioningly marvels..”
“Does it make sense to point to a clump of trees and ask, ‘Do you understand what this group of trees says?’ In normal circumstances, no; but couldn’t one express a sense by an arrangement of trees? Couldn’t it be a code?”
“The Luther Garden with Heaven’s Cross exert their impact simply by their presence without recourse to words. To do justice to their unique appeal, the first volume of the publication primarily examines the site’s visual aspect. This hasn’t been done haphazardly, but photographed and “seen by” Ralph Richter who, having studied the Luther Garden in detail and in situ, knows succinctly how best to capture the impact and presence of the place in his photographs.
Wittenberg and the site of the Luther Garden are founded on a long historical tradition. Following on from this tradition, the implementation of the elaborate project ‘Luther Garden and Heaven’s Cross’ was only possible thanks to the help of numerous participants. The ensemble stands in a line of historical tradition that endures to the present and continues to preoccupy us today. To shed light on this background and reopen it to the viewer, the second volume offers a compilation of views about the project and brings various historical, art-historical and urban planning contexts into focus.”
Textband / Text book
Inhalt
Idea and background of the Luther Garden as a living monument
“The fact that the Reformation left deep traces in Germany is easy to grasp for any informed contemporary.”
Initiated by the Cardinal
How do you go about celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation? Who is the host and to whom is such an event addressed? What should be the thematic focus behind it? When do you begin preparing for the festivities and how long should they last? All these questions suddenly came to the fore when the Roman Curial Cardinal Walter Kasper in 2003, during the plenary assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Winnipeg, Canada, brought up the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. Amazed and unbelieving faces were to be seen in the plenum of the plenary assembly when of all people the representative of the Vatican voiced a public reminder of this major anniversary of Martin Luther's Reformation. Up to that time none of the delegates had yet addressed any of the above issues. But that was soon to change.
A Reformation decade presenting the history of the Reformation’s impact
The fact that the Reformation left deep traces in Germany is easy to grasp for any informed contemporary. The impact of the Reformation on culture, science and education, on law and politics, together with the emergence of freedom and equality before God, became driving forces on the path to democracy. Their effect reaches deep into the society of the present. The impression on the German language made by Martin Luther's translation of the Bible is just as significant as the commitment of municipal and state institutions to provide school education of boys and girls (!) and welfare for the poor. Finally, important impulses for the separation of state and church also derived from Luther's Reformation. In order to fully appreciate and approach this range of topics directly or indirectly initiated by the Reformation, the Protestant Church in Germany finally launched a whole decade dedicated to the Reformation. In the course of ten years, central issues such as Reformation and politics, Reformation and music, Reformation and freedom, Reformation and education were addressed in cooperation with major participants from civic society and the state. These activities were supported by the German Bundestag, which on 6 July 2011 assessed the significance of the Reformation thus: “The theses submitted by Martin Luther on 31 October 1517 are regarded as the trigger for the Reformation. Over the past 500 years, it has had a formative effect on society and politics not only in our country but also throughout Europe and the world. According to tradition, over 400 million Protestants see their denominational and important spiritual roots in the theses that Martin Luther is said to have nailed to the door of Wittenberg Schlosskirche (All Saints’ Church). The 2017 anniversary of the Reformation will be an ecclesiastical and cultural-historical event of world standing (...)” (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1: Heaven’s Cross by Thomas Schönauer in front of the neo-Gothic Schlosskirche (All Saints’ Church) in Wittenberg
The Reformation as a citizen of the world
Looking at the earlier anniversaries of 1617, 1717, 1817 and 1917, it quickly becomes clear that they were celebrated in clear demarcation from the Catholic Church and from hostile neighbouring countries such as France. Official statements and documents contain strong anti-Catholic and anti-French polemics. By contrast, preparations for the 2017 anniversary showed that cooperation and concrete collaboration between the churches and their congregations have long since become the norm. On an international level, the Vatican and the LWF have been engaged in theological dialogue for over fifty years, leading to a far-reaching form of reconciled coexistence. History was already made in 1999 with the signing of the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification”. For the first time Catholics and Lutherans worldwide agreed on a consensus concerning fundamental questions of Christian doctrine. In preparation for 2017, the LWF and the Vatican produced the document “From Conflict to Community” in which, for the first time, the history of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation was jointly reappraised and both parties reciprocally asked each other to be forgiven for past mistakes and aberrations.
The document went on to express the common faith and called for a joint Lutheran and Catholic commemoration of the Reformation. This was put into practice in a service on Reformation Day 2016 in Lund Cathedral, which for the first time was led jointly by a Roman Catholic Pope (Francis I) and a President (Bishop Dr. Munib Younan) and a General Secretary (Pastor Dr. h.c. Martin Junge) of the LWF. This also gave rise to far-reaching forms of reconciliation and mutual recognition with other church communities of the world such as Anglicans, Reformed, Orthodox, Methodists and Mennonites. One reason for this development is also the fact that the core statements of the Reformation have found worldwide dissemination and recognition: for Christians, the Holy Scripture is the key document of orientation; Christ is the unequivocal reason for orientation and salvation in the believer’s relationship to God; faith is the central medium of the perception of God. These principles can be found in the self-concept of many churches worldwide. Nevertheless, in preparation for 2017, the question arose as to how these encouraging ecumenical advances might not only be presented scientifically and liturgically, but also made enduringly and symbolically visible.
Fig. 2: The Luther monument, designed by Johann Gottfried Schadow, on Wittenberg’s market square, 1817
A symbol of reconciliation between the churches
In the 19th century, monuments to Luther in bronze were produced in numerous places to keep alive the memory of the Reformation. They can still be admired today in many central squares of German cities (Fig. 2). As a rule, Luther is depicted larger than life as an energetic, teaching, protesting figure citing the Holy Scriptures. In preparation for the first important Reformation anniversary in the 21st century, landscape architect Andreas Kipar and Norbert Denecke, a member of the High Consistory, asked themselves what manner of contemporary monument could symbolise the festivities in 2017. In any case, it would have to be located in Wittenberg as the place where the Lutheran Reformation began. At the same time, however, the monument should also lend expression to the international dimension of this global movement. The confessional character of the churches involved should be just as perceptible as their ecumenical solidarity. What had been separated in the past had now grown together. Grow! This keyword gained central importance in subsequent deliberations. It has grown a little and is supposed to keep growing. Didn't Luther also talk about the signal of hope in the apple tree? “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” Even if the authenticity of this dictum has not been verified, it nevertheless speaks of Martin Luther’s unshakeable belief in hope and faith. So why not plant apple trees? Why not let representatives of churches from all over the world plant trees as a sign of common faith and unshakable hope for a better world? Why not let a park emerge as a symbol of hope for the growth of the individual Christian churches and their communion with one another for the good of the people and for the glory of God? Why not have 500 trees planted by 500 churches, dioceses and church institutions for 500 years of Reformation, thus documenting their reconciled association with the Reformation that emerged from Wittenberg? The “Luther rose”, Martin Luther's personal coat of arms with a cross at the centre, could give the symbolic garden a focusing core. So in 2006 the idea of creating a “Luther Garden” at the place of origin of the Lutheran Reformation emerged (Fig. 3). But with this concept there was still plenty to do. For the difficult questions of how and where had not yet been answered.
The city's ramparts as a site for the Luther Garden
The first person to turn to when it came to finding a site for the park in the “Luther city” Wittenberg was the city mayor. Eckhard Naumann was persuaded to back this idea in 2006. How would the Lord Mayor react to this proposal, while elaborated in draft designs, but ultimately still vague? At a personal meeting in the mayor's office Kipar and Denecke modestly asked whether the city could provide an area alongside the Elbe to create the Luther Garden. The Lord Mayor rejected the idea, pointing out that the site would quickly be destroyed by the next Elbe flood. But Kipar and Denecke’s disappointment turned to enthusiasm when the Lord Mayor went to the vast city map behind his desk and offered to provide the so-called Andreasbreite on the city's ramparts for this project. Even though it was clear that the various municipal bodies and authorities still needed to be persuaded to support this plan, there was no doubt that this would be an ideal location for the Reformation project.
In contact with 500 churches and dioceses on 6 continents
But how can a park express the connection of churches from all over the world with the original source of the Lutheran Reformation? How could one give visible form to the process by which churches that as a result of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation had once reciprocally condemned and split away from each other are today bound together in reconciled fellowship? The challenge was therefore to directly address these churches from different continents and to invite them to set a visible sign of reconciled solidarity in Wittenberg. To this end, the project idea was supplemented by a procedure in which in addition to the tree in Wittenberg each church would also plant a “partner tree” in a central place by their own church. In doing so, the idea was to make a clear reference to the Reformation project “Luther Garden in Wittenberg”, thus lending visible form to the interconnection between the various churches.
Even though the Reformation began in Wittenberg, it is now firmly rooted throughout the world. But the crucial question remained: how was it possible to communicate with 500 churches and ecclesiastical institutions the whole world over and convince them to actively participate in a Reformation project in Lutherstadt Wittenberg? This required a strong institutional and, above all, internationally networked partner. The LWF needed to be persuaded to make the Luther Garden its own project and to open channels of communication to its 145 member churches in 98 countries. Especially since its member churches have excellent contacts to further churches of other denominations. In 2007, a crucial meeting was held at the LWF headquarters in Geneva, where the former Lord Mayor of Wittenberg, Naumann, the landscape architect Kipar and, as a member of the High Commissary, Denecke met with the LWF General Secretary, Father Dr. Ishmael Noko. All participants quickly agreed that the Luther Garden in Wittenberg should adopted by the LWF as a central Reformation project. In the November 2007 issue of Lutheran World Information, a photo of handshakes between the participants was featured under the heading: “Wittenberg plans a Luther Garden” (Fig. 4). The project had been accepted by the LWF, opening the way to promoting tree planting in the Luther Garden and the partner churches around the world. In order to make the project known not only in Europe, but also in the many countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America, communication had to be effected in different languages. This time-consuming and personnel-intensive work was carried out by the LWF Centre Wittenberg, which opened in 2008. Over the following years its director, Pastor Hans Kasch, and his assistant, Mrs. Annette Glaubig, were in daily contact with churches all over the world to ensure that, for all the problems related to language, culture, finance and communication, the Luther Garden project became reality.
Fig. 3: Motif of the Luther rose from the entrance to the Luther House, Wittenberg
Fig. 4: Photo of the participants shaking hands under the heading “Wittenberg plans a Luther Garden”, from the November 2007 issue of Lutheran World Information: DNK/LWB Managing Director and member of the High Commissary, Norbert Denecke, landscape architect, Dr. Andreas Kipar, Lord Mayor Eckhard Naumann from Lutherstadt Wittenberg, LWB General Secretary Pastor, Dr. Ishmael Noko, Pastor Chandran P. Martin, Deputy LWB General Secretary, and LWB Communications Director, Karin Achtelstetter (from left to right).
With the blessing of popes and church leaders.
A project of this scale must be developed and maintained on very different levels. The first thing required was acceptance among the population and local authorities. The project was promoted at numerous meetings and public debates, especially as a considerable sum of public money needed to be made available for the park’s construction. The incorporation of the Luther Garden into already existing buildings, such as a neighbouring playground, also had to be dealt with. Thanks to fruitful discussions and a strong financial commitment by the Church as a project partner, this hurdle was also overcome. Accordingly, flexibility and necessary enthusiasm on the part of the landscape architect and the project's lead partner were in constant demand. They had to stick to the basic idea and the basic concept even if difficulties arose, or develop them further until a solution was found that was acceptable to everyone involved.
After all, such a global ecclesiastical project also requires the support of the heads of the churches. This was a prerequisite for all the individual churches, dioceses and ecclesiastical institutions subscribing to this project.
In the following years, meetings with important church leaders were used to promote the Luther Garden and the concept behind it. By 2009 Patriarch Bartholomew I had already given his promise to support the project for the Orthodox churches. And the Catholic Church immediately signalled its participation in the project through the person of Cardinal Kasper. The Luther Garden received additional support in the course of a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI in 2011 and during a private audience with Pope Francis in 2014. At the plenary assembly of the World Council of Churches in Busan (Republic of Korea) in 2013, the project was also presented to other leaders of the Christian World Communions. In 2014, the project received support from Archbishop Justin Welby, who as Archbishop of Canterbury is leader of the Anglican Church worldwide.
However, the idea was not merely to keep the church partners informed about the project, but also to encourage them to plant a partner tree in their own contexts with reference to the Luther Garden in Wittenberg. This occurred, for example, during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI in 2011, when the Vatican's partner tree, an olive tree, was planted in the courtyard of the Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome by Kurt Cardinal Koch in the presence of German Lutherans. It was hardly an everyday activity for a full-fledged Curial Cardinal to personally plant a tree in the shadow of the imposing basilica. But this symbolic act clearly expressed that the Roman Catholic Church also acknowledges its reconciled connection to the Lutheran Reformation.
Visits by crowned heads culminating in a Heaven’s Cross
The Luther Garden project has attracted people from all parts of the world. But it was not only bishops, pastors and their parishioners who were involved in planting the trees. Members of government, ambassadors and representatives of towns and municipalities also visited the park. During their visits to Wittenberg, the Queen of Denmark, Margrethe II, as well as the royal couple from Sweden, Carl XVI Gustav and Silvia of Sweden, also took to the spade.
In 2016, a long-awaited plan finally came to fruition: the design of the Centre in the Luther Garden. The artist Thomas Schönauer presented sketches for his design of the cross to be located in the middle of the central Luther rose.
The plans were so convincing that not only renowned sponsors, but also the “Lebendige Stadt” Foundation immediately offered their support for the “Heaven’s Cross in the Luther Garden”. Its inauguration took place in conjunction with a meeting of the LWF Council with delegates and ecumenical guests from around the world. German Federal President Joachim Gauck, who attended the inauguration ceremony, had the following to say during a subsequent discussion: “We have just heard from the artist that he hopes people will raise their eyes and ask themselves what these stepped crosses mean. And with this up-lifted gaze he seeks to encourage people to continue inquiring into the meaning of their lives. And for each individual, each person, it is important – important for any person of faith and for any thinking citizen in society too – that he or she asks themselves why am I here in this world and what I can give the world? May this monument inspire such and other thoughts among the people who walk here. For the ‘Lutherstadt’ Wittenberg, it has added a further attraction that fosters a contemporary dialogue with the historical sites of the Reformation.”
“After all, such a global ecclesiastical project also requires the support of the heads of the churches.”
A symbol of hope: an olive tree on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem
The plan worked. The Luther Garden in Wittenberg comprises 500 trees. In addition to the central Luther Garden on Andreasbreite, there are two other sections on the city ramparts, one right next to the Luther House. The trees were planted by churches from some 100 countries. Furthermore, the planting of the partner trees in many churches around the world was done very imaginatively. Churches in Africa and Latin America have for their part created entire Luther Gardens. One European church planted 500 trees at once on the grounds of its churches, diaconal institutions and training centres. Many churches were inspired by the ecumenical dimension of the project and planted their trees in Wittenberg together with their ecumenical partners. The German National Committee of the LWF has planted a partner tree on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, thus sending a signal of hope and solidarity with the LWF's work in Jerusalem and Palestine.
The Philippine Lutheran Youth League was inspired by the Luther Garden in Wittenberg and planted 500 trees all over the country. This has been accompanied by a campaign to raise awareness of climate change. As part of this, youth camps and seminars on the causes of climate change and on ways of mitigating damage will be held. In other words, the Luther Garden project continues! This worldwide exchange will keep going and the trees will also serve as enduring witnesses of the understanding behind the commemoration of the 2017 anniversary. Who can know what manner of self-image and what kinds of thematic focus will drive the 550th anniversary of the Reformation in 2067? But it can be safely assumed that the Luther Garden and its partner trees throughout the world will bear witness to the character of the celebrations in 2017.
“Who can know what form of self-image and what kinds of thematic focus will drive the 550th anniversary of the Reformation in 2067? But it can be safely assumed that the Luther Garden and its partner trees throughout the world will bear witness to the character of the celebrations in 2017.”
Heaven’s Cross in Wittenberg – a contemporary challenge
“The aim of the plan was to create a park-like garden with 500 planted trees to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017.”
Eight years ago already I met landscape architect Andreas Kipar at the “behest” of our mutual friend Werner Küsters. That was not so easy, because to synchronise my schedule with that of the Milan-based, internationally active, Andreas Kipar, who at that time also had a foot in Germany with a branch of his office in Duisburg, required quite some effort.
Our first meeting very quickly prompted us to agree that, besides sharing similar views on an array of topics and the same opinion, greater convergence was required if we were going to embark on joint action. Today we would say that no good conclusion will follow from pursuing a straight and direct course, without looking left and right, towards a purpose and goal that is defined in advance. Bringing together landscape design, architecture and art is a complex process and requires exploring many individual questions before an answer appears on the horizon.
Why do I say this? It took a number of joint projects such as our participation in the International Garden Show (IGS) in Hamburg, winning the competition to redesign the former Moscow Central Airport (Khodynka Park) and other projects to manifest the core competence, quality and source of inspiration of our cooperation: the ability to feel and appreciate the underlying vibrations of the tasks we were facing, the places and people involved.
Exactly ten years ago, Andreas Kipar was commissioned by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) to develop design ideas as a draft for the Luther Garden in Wittenberg in the centrally located Elbe meadows, a stone's throw away from the Schlosskirche (All Saints’ Church), where Martin Luther is said to have nailed his 95 theses to the main gate. The aim of the planning was to create a park-like garden with 500 planted trees to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017.
Kipar's design was wonderfully adapted to the local conditions, in particular to the overall shape of the available green space and the already existing urban structures such as roads, pathways, trees, and planned infrastructural innovation measures such as the new railway station due to be created for the festivities (Fig. 1). He developed an extremely exciting dramaturgy based on an oval, incorporating it into the overall structure, with defined curved lines of trees converging on a central point. The hub consists of a square of about 40 metres in diameter, whose centre was marked by a cross formed by large natural pebbles inserted into the ground.
Fig. 1: The Luther Garden in Wittenberg before the erection of Heaven’s Cross in 2017.
“I had encountered such a high degree of authenticity, identity and value that, on the one hand, it would have been a catastrophe to deviate even marginally from this level, yet, on the other, this superb overall situation had precisely the effect of a springboard capable of launching us into a focalisation of quality.”
Over the years tree after tree was planted and they grew and grew. As the anniversary year approached, the decision-makers as well, of course, as Andreas Kipar, became increasingly convinced that within the overall design of the Luther Garden and its centre the stone cross did not represent a truly outstanding, conclusive solution. On the basis of and trusting in our previous shared experience of cooperation as described above, Andreas Kipar asked me whether I was interested, whether it appealed to me, whether I would even hazard to think about a design for this central place.
My inquiries regarding clear spatial, political, religious, financial ideas or guidelines resulted in a very general picture: what was envisaged was a space of focused reflection where individuals or groups might feel comfortable, perhaps find shelter, but also where an assembly, prayers or mass could be held. And it was assumed that this object, this installation, would be built for temporary use, for the one-year duration of the festivities commemorating the “Luther Year”. What a challenge!
Before I even started forging concrete thoughts, I made my way to Wittenberg, where I had never been before in my life. Of course, I took a lot of intellectual baggage with me on my first visit to Wittenberg in December 2013: the history of the Reformation – in my view – as a precursor that prepared the way for the Enlightenment, knowledge of Luther's life and work, his anti-Semitic views, the 95 theses nailed to the door of the Schlosskirche, Lucas Cranach’s portraits, the atheistic state doctrine of the GDR era, its consequences and much more besides.
It was freezing cold on the day I was due to meet Pastor Hans W. Kasch, director of the LWF Centre in Wittenberg, in the Luther Garden. What a place, what an individual! All the mental baggage I’d brought with me instantly and completely faded into the background. Despite the cold, which is usually an anathema for me and my imagination, all I felt was the immense energy and aura of the place, the space, and the warm, engaging manner of Herr Kasch and his extraordinarily informative commentary. Two hours spent in the energetically warming icy cold of the Luther Garden, then an extended tour through Wittenberg, which was undergoing careful conservationist restoration as a historical site, followed by two glasses of mulled wine created the foundations for my first relevant thoughts.
The long return journey from Wittenberg via Berlin to my studio was highly absorbing. I could barely keep the cocktail of thoughts and feelings in check. As an artist, it was now important for me to set the priorities that felt relevant from my point of view. For me this meant above all to allow the dramaturgy, the tension, the aura and the energy of what had already been achieved in this place to flow into each aspect of my creative thinking. I had encountered such a high degree of authenticity, identity and value that, on the one hand, it would have been a catastrophe to deviate even marginally from this level, yet, on the other, this superb overall situation had precisely the effect of a springboard capable of launching us into a focalisation of quality.
An intensification of quality was my guiding idea and feeling, which per se contradicted the call for a temporary installation. It is and was about taking up the river and streams that transport and convey the curved line of trees from the periphery to the central square and letting these flow back. The dynamism of the site had to flow into and define the object, whatever it ended up being. Very quickly I was taken by the idea that the only adequate response to the horizontal dynamism of the rows of trees – fully aware that by virtue of their natural growth they also harboured a vertical dynamism – would come from developing a multi-layered structure both in lateral and upward directions.
What had been created that I had encountered thus far consisted not only of the curved rows of trees and the square with the stone cross lying in the ground. The cross itself was framed yet again in a robust, but organically shaped ornament, the so-called “Luther rose”. This Luther rose is five-leaved, interpreted here with lawn elements arranged in a corresponding shape with a lime tree planted in the space between each one of them. This altogether organic basic form never once caused me to call into question the cross as a hermetically rectangular element and hence the antithesis to the curved forms, neither in formal terms nor as a symbol, since the people responsible for the previous design of the site had had good reasons for locating it there and also it wasn’t contrary to my own opinion of what would be feasible in this overall context.
To put it in a nutshell, I “had to” formally and symbolically break with the single layer, with the single dimension of the cross lying in the ground. My decision to create a three-tiered cross was fundamentally informed by reflection on my own cultural identity with Jewish, Huguenot roots and a Catholic upbringing, by an awareness of the Christian Trinity of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but also of the trinity of the gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva in the world religion Hinduism and, fundamentally, of the ecumenical spirit of the LWF underlying the creation of this Luther Garden. But in all this it was also very important to me, corresponding to the idea of the Reformation, for the lowest level of the cross to be flush with the ground.
A three-tiered cross was a first satisfying step on the way towards the final idea. Then I soon began thinking that the dynamism of trees’ growth could be echoed in and symbolically transposed by giving different dimensions to the three crosses. And if I then let them grow from bottom to top, i.e. increase in size, not only would I create a formal arc of suspense to the thinner treetops, but would also lend my skyward surging form greater dignity and meaning, as well as, in purely functional terms, also giving them a kind of shelter (roof).
Then the question of construction and materials arose, primarily as a result of the claim to the contemporaneity of made by a two-thousand-year-old symbol. The idea of horizontally layering a cross in different dimensions was already a first step away from tradition towards modernity. My aim was now to achieve the sense of lightness that, for all their great weight, is inherent in all my sculptures and thereby also release from the weight of the Christian symbol. A first model was made with a wooden cross flush with the floor – man becomes dust. The crosses ascending to the sky stood on thin metal supports, while the crosses themselves consisted of a semi-transparent modern material, in this case acrylic glass, as this to me seemed altogether plausible for a temporary installation.
Now I had to “float” the idea, the model and my explanatory text, so I first presented it to Andreas Kipar. He was so impressed that my design was quickly passed on to the LWF's decision-makers, above all Norbert Denecke. As they gave the green light, the next step was to put together an overall package suitable for presentation to Wittenberg's city leaders and to sponsors such as the “Lebendige Stadt” Foundation. To do so I was able to draw on the help and experience of my friend, the architect Bernhard Bramlage, who had carried out numerous projects in both church and heritage conservation contexts. The outcome of the presentation was that the city leaders and all the other decision-makers involved concurred that this “Heaven’s Cross”, the name my design quickly adopted, should serve as the centre of the Luther Garden, and furthermore also in the long term, beyond the year of the anniversary celebrations.
Naturally, this decision gave me great satisfaction, but it also presented me – or rather us – with unforeseen new challenges. The materials, the statics and, of course, the budget had to be completely rethought. I quickly decided in favour of Corten steel, stainless steel and/or aluminium. Corten steel is a so-called weather-resistant construction steel, which through a special alloy forms an oxide, i.e. a layer of rust; this in turn prevents further rusting. For the cross flush with the floor we intended to use this material, which suggests transience. The crosses that were to rise up into the sky and grow in size were meant to absorb the light and disperse it over the surfaces, an effect we intended to achieve by treating the surface of the outer skin of stainless steel or aluminium sheets to a special grinding process (Figs. 2 + 3). They symbolise timelessness, eternity.
Fig. 2: Assembly of Heaven’s Cross in May 2016
Fig. 3: Assembly of Heaven’s Cross in May 2016
The material character was now largely defined and a generous donation from the entrepreneur Erika Zender had also given the project’s funding a great boost, but we still had no feasible statics and thus also lacked the ensuing construction plan. This process took longer than expected for the true challenge lay in the sheer size of the object – the top cross measures 14.5 meters long x 11.0 meters wide and 4.5 meters high – which I “insisted” should rest on supports as slender as possible. We finally managed to find a congenial partner in the metal construction company Henschel from Barby, a small town not far from Magdeburg.
Eckhard Henschel instantly understood my thinking: the sculpture should exude dynamism and “timeless modernity” in every detail. Only at second glance should the cross be perceived as a Christian symbol; the first impression should be of its overall appearance as a space-creating sculptural object integrated into the entire complex yet also centred on itself. It should satisfy all the criteria of high sculptural quality and unconditionally set itself apart from devotional art, a subject of frequent criticism – otherwise I would have failed both from my own perspective and by my own standards as an artist.
The volumes of the bodies of the respective crosses took shape as the core of what was statically feasible and of the above-described aspirations. The cross bodies we developed resemble a modern jet wing and in constructional terms are also very similar to the frame structures of an aircraft wing. This statically extremely dynamic form capable of bearing considerable loads, which over a width of three metres tapers from a voluminous centre almost to zero towards the outer edges, thereby also counterbalancing wind loads, made it possible to dispense with a support at the centre of the cross as had originally been thought necessary. For me this represented a great breakthrough, to breathe lightness into the overall sculpture as I’d dreamt of doing. For reasons of cost and handling we opted for an outer skin made of stainless steel sheet, which, as previously mentioned, uses a special finish to disperse existing natural light into the surface, hardly reflecting it and thus contributing to the sense of lightness.
Producing good plans, drawings and construction plans is one thing. But to construct and ultimately assemble such a complex, multi-component object consisting of altogether twelve tons of steel is a further, major challenge. Here too, Herr Henschel, his splendid team of employees and I discussed and smoothly fine-tuned numerous details. During the crucial stages of pre-assembly, the way to Magdeburg was never too far for me to go – nor, of course, were the two final assembly days in Wittenberg itself. With an inauguration event that was perfectly organised by the LWF and attended by the German Federal President and many distinguished figures from churches, civic life and politics, the entire process that had taken almost three years came to a very worthy and thought-provoking conclusion.
To conclude, it remains to be said that “Heaven’s Cross” was certainly one of my greatest artistic challenges with regard to the contexts of landscape design, urban planning and in historical, spiritual and ideological terms, as well as in relation to its formal and constructive complexity (Fig. 4). And without hesitation I can also say that I consider “Heaven’s Cross” to be the most important work in my artistic career so far. My thanks go to everyone involved!
Fig. 4: Heaven’s Cross in the Luther Garden from a bird's eye view
“My thanks go to everyone involved!”
“The aim of the plan was to create a park-like garden with 500 planted trees to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017.”
Eight years ago already I met landscape architect Andreas Kipar at the “behest” of our mutual friend Werner Küsters. That was not so easy, because to synchronise my schedule with that of the Milan-based, internationally active, Andreas Kipar, who at that time also had a foot in Germany with a branch of his office in Duisburg, required quite some effort.
Our first meeting very quickly prompted us to agree that, besides sharing similar views on an array of topics and the same opinion, greater convergence was required if we were going to embark on joint action. Today we would say that no good conclusion will follow from pursuing a straight and direct course, without looking left and right, towards a purpose and goal that is defined in advance. Bringing together landscape design, architecture and art is a complex process and requires exploring many individual questions before an answer appears on the horizon.
Why do I say this? It took a number of joint projects such as our participation in the International Garden Show (IGS) in Hamburg, winning the competition to redesign the former Moscow Central Airport (Khodynka Park) and other projects to manifest the core competence, quality and source of inspiration of our cooperation: the ability to feel and appreciate the underlying vibrations of the tasks we were facing, the places and people involved.
Exactly ten years ago, Andreas Kipar was commissioned by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) to develop design ideas as a draft for the Luther Garden in Wittenberg in the centrally located Elbe meadows, a stone's throw away from the Schlosskirche (All Saints’ Church), where Martin Luther is said to have nailed his 95 theses to the main gate. The aim of the planning was to create a park-like garden with 500 planted trees to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017.
Kipar's design was wonderfully adapted to the local conditions, in particular to the overall shape of the available green space and the already existing urban structures such as roads, pathways, trees, and planned infrastructural innovation measures such as the new railway station due to be created for the festivities (Fig. 1). He developed an extremely exciting dramaturgy based on an oval, incorporating it into the overall structure, with defined curved lines of trees converging on a central point. The hub consists of a square of about 40 metres in diameter, whose centre was marked by a cross formed by large natural pebbles inserted into the ground.
Fig. 1: The Luther Garden in Wittenberg before the erection of Heaven’s Cross in 2017.
The meaning of trees. 500 years Reformation: how Wittenberg with its interactive Luther Garden embraces the world
In the beginning was the tree
The archetype of the tree stands at the hub of the cosmos and connects heaven and earth. This archetype spawned the sacred groves of antiquity and gave rise to the Garden of Eden as an image of paradise. Light and shadow, life and change, fruit and temptation play a special role not only in Christianity. Gardens, “girded land”, are a symbol of people’s quest for an ordered world, an expression of a longing for peace. Maria Jepsen, a Protestant Lutheran theologian, once wrote that the garden was “a gift of God to us human beings”. A “vaccine” which makes us aware of life, its pleasures and dangers, “and which teaches us to be more patient”.
Gardens inspire. They combine cultural needs with natural conditions. They are places of social attachment and societal exchange. In a sense, every garden is unique. It intrinsically harbours an overall historical and spiritual dimension, yet at the same time has to compete very concretely with reality in situ and engage in a dialogue with both the urban and the social environment.
In the shadow of a cedar
The Luther Garden in Wittenberg belongs to the tradition of gardens as places of encounter and reflection. It reflects the notion of togetherness. For this garden’s particular feature is that with its trees it is growing not only in the Lutherstadt on the Elbe but also in numerous other places all over the world. The idea is that any church and religious community throughout the world can sponsor a tree in the Luther Garden and that each tree they plant in Wittenberg is matched by a partner tree planted in a garden of their home parish or community (Fig. 1).
It was perhaps no coincidence that this idea was born in the shadow of a 150-year-old cedar in the small churchyard of the Lutheran Reformed Congregation in Milan. It occurred in the very centre of the Lombard metropolis in summer 2006, shortly before the so-called Reformation Decade 2007–2017: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree”. The sentence attributed to Martin Luther is an appeal to unconditional trust in everything that can grow beyond us. Similar to Luther’s reform movement, which started from the small town of Wittenberg and grew to span the whole world, giving the city its historical significance.
Fig. 1: Planting plan of the Luther Garden at Andreasbreite, tree no. 1 – 292
As a landscape architect you learn to think in images, to draw plans, to design and plant gardens and parks. But how do you transport an idea from Milan to Wittenberg? Who could open doors for me there, who was likely to show any interest at all in an interactive, growing and world-spanning monument to the Reformation anniversary? These were questions I could discuss with Norbert Denecke. For many years he had been pastor of the Milan congregation and is now active as a member of the High Consistory and as managing director of the German National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Hanover. And it was Norbert Denecke who helped me open the first doors.
The language of the garden
Within just a few months the idea grew into a project. Talks with Ishmael Noko, then General Secretary of the LWF, Eckhard Naumann, former Lord Mayor of Lutherstadt Wittenberg, and Siegfried Kasparick († 2016), then the local provost, signalled general agreement.
The first project sketch was accomplished in autumn 2006. The basic oval shape reflects the site in the ramparts and the symbolism of the garden. At the centre of the design is the circular shape of the Luther rose with a diameter of 40 metres. It represents the 40 days Moses spent on Mount Sinai as well as the period Jesus fasted in the desert. It develops into an ellipse with a width of 70 meters – a number generated by the product of the prime numbers 7 x 5 x 2. The distance between the focal points of the ellipse is 95 metres and stands for Luther’s 95 Theses. The inner structure is made up of a celestial arch – it too spans from the zenith to the edge of the ellipse, 95 metres in each direction – and of the five avenues of the worlds, which point from the Luther rose towards the Elbe and symbolise the connection to the five continents.
This is the language of the garden, the meaning of the trees: they were to be 500 in number, commemorating the Reformation of 1517 in the Luther Garden and the city. So churches from all over the world were invited to sponsor a tree and, parallel to this, to plant a tree in the grounds of their own churches at home. The idea had become a project and was taking shape.
But it was still two years before the foundation stone of the Luther Garden was laid. Plans were yet to be approved and binding sponsorship commitments between the LWF and the City of Wittenberg signed. And on a local level much was done to promote sympathy and support within the city community.
A place of encounter and change
But finally, on 20 September 2008, the foundation stone, or rather the cornerstone, was laid in the central cross of the Luther rose. The American bishop and president of the LWF, Mark S. Hanson, had travelled here for this purpose. Together with him, the leading bishop and chairman of the German National Committee of the LWF, Johannes Friedrich, and the former mayor of Wittenberg, Eckhard Naumann, laid the cornerstone of the cross. The artistic design of the centre of the Luther rose was at first deliberately left open – but the shape of the cross was clearly established.
The first trees were planted on 1 November 2009 by representatives of the Christian world churches. The five lime trees within the Luther rose – the lime tree symbolises community, justice and assembly – are each dedicated, respectively, to the Roman Catholic, the Orthodox and the Anglican Churches as well as to the Reformed and Methodist World Federations. By now, at the latest, it became clear to everyone that no further monument of the conventional kind was to be erected here; instead, however, there would be something of an interactive, international and ecumenical nature – a place of encounter and of change (Fig. 2). And indeed, churches from all over the world accepted the offer to plant a tree, thereby underlining their direct connection to the Reformation and to the Lutherstadt Wittenberg. Beginning as a ripple in Wittenberg, waves have now spread out as far as Rome, Jerusalem and Australia.
Fig. 2: The Luther Garden in Wittenberg with the planted Luther trees
“The artistic design of the centre of the Luther rose was at first deliberately left open – but the shape of the cross was clearly established.”
“The establishment of a centre of the Lutheran World Federation in Wittenberg was important both for local cooperation and worldwide contacts. With loving care and pragmatic work, Pastor Hans W. Kasch, as its director, and his staff have built up a service centre for visiting groups from all over the world, a place we would not want to do without again”.
The establishment of a centre of the Lutheran World Federation in Wittenberg was important both for local cooperation and worldwide contacts. With loving care and pragmatic work, Pastor Hans W. Kasch, as its director, and his staff have built up a service centre for visiting groups from all over the world, a place we would not want to do without again.
Heaven’s Cross as roof and prayer
Lime trees on the celestial arch, meadow orchards between the avenues and small-crowned tree species such as maple and ash, whitebeam and trumpet tree were gradually growing into unity in diversity, while a privet hedge marked the outer frame. The monument came alive and swelled. Just the design of the centre still remained open. A tender for design proposals was rejected. I was hoping that the site would have an inspiring effect and invited Thomas Schönauer to come and visit Wittenberg and its Luther Garden. As a visual artist he had long devoted himself with his enamelled steel sculptures to the tension between corporeality, free space and spiritual expression. Would he respond to the genius loci?
We weren’t disappointed. Thomas Schönauer’s sensitive yet persistent work, his ceaseless exploration through contacts and conversations finally gave rise to his three-part work Heaven’s Cross, which congenially combines the principle of growth and the lightness of the garden’s layout with the idea of a new, sweeping sky to provide shelter and shade at the same time. A roof for meditation, for coming together and for prayer. It was inaugurated on 15 June 2016 in the presence of the then German Federal President, Joachim Gauck.
In the meantime, all 500 sponsorships have been awarded. This partnership concept has initiated numerous communicative processes and interactions over the past ten years. The Luther Garden, maintained by the city of Wittenberg and frequented by residents and visitors alike, is an expression of common growth achieved in addressing the challenges of ecumenism.
There are Luther Gardens are everywhere. Wittenberg is everywhere. As an expression of finding hope in a future of peaceful coexistence on this planet. Growing together and growing closer are the two most important aspects to have accompanied and inspired me in this project.
Supporting the arts from an entrepreneurial perspective
Successfully managing and developing a company over decades means being able to remain true to yourself as you constantly change. Entrepreneurs do not use crystal balls to stay ahead of market demands and customer needs. Successful companies never tire of seeking new ways to imagine and view a given situation. This attitude is the fertile ground from which many German companies draw their considerable innovative strength. Germany’s family-run middle class businesses in particular thrive on this inexhaustible power of renewal. Such medium-sized companies are often not especially glamorous, yet without their engineering skills many a great innovation from Silicon Valley, for example, has often remained a mere pipe dream.
I come from such a family business. Our company had long belonged to Swiss corporations until my father, Dr Alois Franke, dared to undertake a management buy-out in 1993. Even while employed as a managing director, he was an entrepreneur through and through. He felt committed to the company location, its staff and the services they provided. While my brother and I are “only” the second generation to be working for Aluminium Rheinfelden, there are other employees who have remained loyal to our company for five generations already. A family business is not just an entrepreneurial family; a workforce that has grown like this is a family in itself.
Being bold, willing to take risks, yet also maintaining moderation, bringing on board everyone involved, even enthusing and galvanising them, injecting experience and insights into new contexts, remaining undaunted, persevering and tireless, possessing great stamina to endure frustration, fascinated by detail, humorous and holistic, yet with meticulous knowledge as to the core of success, nurturing and protecting – this is the soil in which established companies foster innovation.
Thomas Schönauer, whose art I collect with enthusiasm, is one of the greatest artistic innovators of our time and is even more uncompromising in his approach. He envisages high-tech materials in completely new constellations and environments, turns things upside down, causes bodies weighing tons to float and adhesives to flow. It is as if he had abolished the laws of nature, or at least overridden them, and thereby opens the viewer’s eyes to a completely new universe. His work is the best example of how art and research can join to create success. For me, THE decisive detail in his procedure for creating art – and every R & D department, including their management, could take a leaf from his book: Thomas Schönauer is deeply preoccupied with the very essence of matter, he feels his way into it, grants it the freedom to unfurl under his guidance, subordinates himself at the right moment to the process of creation, relinquishes control to allow what is new to break ground – is that, besides all his creative input, he is an entrepreneur willing to take risks, who works with all the factors familiar to us and connecting us. We can still learn plenty from Thomas Schönauer’s radicalism.
The lasting success of Aluminium Rheinfelden has provided us, a family of entrepreneurs, with the generous financial means to support Heaven’s Cross. To enable and to promote art in public space is in our view a vital contribution both to the enrichment of our society and to the success of socio-cultural encounters “beneath the open sky”. With these Heaven’s Crosses we wish to lend expression to our conviction and to our deep roots in the Western Christian culture. We bow to the achievements and immense courage of Martin Luther, whose enormous innovative power we are celebrating today, 500 years later, in such a great, peaceful and ecumenical way. Being part of the newly built park fills us with tremendous pride.
“May the Heaven’s Crosses in their reclined, floating beauty surging to the heavens open the eyes of many visitors to repeatedly see and reflect on the familiar over and again.”
Heaven’s Cross in the Luther Garden
On the site of the city’s ramparts near the Schlosskirche (All Saints’ Church), made famous as the place where Martin Luther nailed up his 95 Theses, the Luther Garden forms a verdant gate into Wittenberg’s Old Town. It was created to commemorate the revolutionary event that took place 500 years ago inside the city walls and which changed the world.
In spring 2014, when landscape architect Andreas Kipar presented his plans for the Wittenberg Luther Garden to the board of trustees of the “Lebendige Stadt” (Living City) Foundation, and requested our financial support for Heaven’s Cross, the anniversary of the Reformation was already looming large on the horizon. It did not take long for Andreas Kipar to captivate the trustees with his enthusiasm for the Luther Garden: a park planted with 500 trees from all over the world, whose paths were laid out in the shape of a Luther rose and led outwards from the Heaven’s Cross into the world – like the idea of the Reformation 500 years ago.
Designed by artist Thomas Schönauer, the monumental cross is made of polished steel and forms a pendant to the greenery of the surrounding garden, whose design is itself a work of art. Despite its size, the Heaven’s Cross has a lightness and reminds one a little of balancing wings. And it is precisely this balance that visitors experience in this inspiring place of nature and art, in the form of inner harmony and tranquillity. Walking towards the Heavenly Cross, we feel the cohesion of the many Christian world communities that have planted trees with plaques of origin on the left and right. The large number of trees illustrates this global fellowship. Beneath the Heaven’s Cross, our eyes turn heavenwards wholly of their own accord.
The Luther Garden is an inner-city green oasis that invites people to slow down, reflect and exchange ideas – preferably also in fellowship with others: cross-generational, gender-independent, intercultural and cross-denominational. That is what distinguishes the vibrancy, diversity and tolerance of a city. And that is also precisely what the Lebendige Stadt foundation is all about. The foundation has already supported the Essen Krupp Park designed by Andreas Kipar and the restoration of the Civic Gardens in Arnsberg. The Luther Garden in Wittenberg is thus a continuation of its commitment to the care and design of inner-city green spaces.
The artistically designed garden may not ring in a new era like Luther’s Theses, but it will most certainly have a lasting effect. With the Luther Garden, a piece of “living city” has been created that symbolises the importance of the Reformation in an outstanding way. The “Lebendige Stadt” Foundation is delighted to have been able to make a contribution to this.
“And it is precisely this balance that visitors experience in this inspiring place of nature and art, in the form of inner harmony and tranquillity.”
Heaven’s Cross and the Luther Garden: The urban planning, architectural and artistic relevance of the project. An example of a new school of thought on the sculptural design of urban and landscape spaces.
Wittenberg did not suffer extensive destruction during World War II. Following German reunification, developmental projects for urban renewal in the city had to take into account particular tensions between, on the one hand, historical and cultural achievements with a European dimension in the fields of art, religion and science; and on the other, the authentic phenomenon of an original European city in the Elbe landscape.
From the early 1990s on, gaining official recognition for the ramparts around Wittenberg’s historic old town had also been on the agenda. Between 2008 and 2016, the Luther Park and the Luther Garden were established here, and on 15 June 2016, the sculpture Heaven’s Cross was unveiled in the centre of the Luther Garden. Wittenberg had a new “gesamtkunstwerk” (total work of art).
Tasks and expectations
In early 2008, the city of Wittenberg and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) began putting serious thought into how the 500th anniversary of the events of 1517 should be celebrated in 2017. In Wittenberg, professing Christians make up around 14 percent of the population, but the whole city was keen to host the celebrations. A lively discussion got underway. The idea that ultimately took hold was to combine the renewal of the ramparts, which had been declared a garden monument, with the erection of a modern “monument to the Reformation”. And this was to be installed very close to the central market square with the Luther monument.
It was a twofold task. The city’s politicians and administrative bodies wanted to have the area around the city ramparts officially designated a public park. As a new recreational site close to the city centre, the Luther Park would improve the quality of life far beyond 2017 and be used by the whole of Wittenberg. What was planned for the city’s big event would later prove its worth in everyday life. The LWF, a church community, regarded this park as the ideal site for a symbolic memorial with global appeal. It was not to be a conventional monument, which above all stimulates memory, and thus a retrospective view. Instead, building upon the historical force of ecumenism, it should look to the future. People from different Christian churches on all five continents should be able to meet there. The communal bond with the birthplace of the Reformation should be anchored in heads and hearts in such a way that it is also effective at a distance.
To sum up the situation: on the one hand, a city park was to be developed in Wittenberg; on the other, the development of Christian congregations as part of world history was to be marked by creating a visibly dominant, ecumenical monument in and with the park for the celebrations in 2017. This presented a particular challenge in terms of creative design, even without the need to define the conditions for the project’s realisation and deal with the uncertainties of its implementation. The developers in Wittenberg – the city authorities and the LWF – had set a task and outlined quality expectations that demanded more than technical or functional urban planning and architectural competence, from the overall concept through to the finer details. The result should be able to assert itself alongside the city’s other historical and cultural achievements. The decision-makers and the citizens of Wittenberg – the later beneficiaries of the new urban space – were thus also given a task: they had to support the project and its results. This meant establishing and shaping communication.
The Luther Garden – finished but not complete
Andreas Kipar cut the Gordian knot. With his ingenious idea, he fulfilled the wishes of both the city authorities and the Christian community. Kipar conceived a permanent site based on the idea of planting an apple tree – a confession of faith that is ascribed to the reformer Martin Luther and can be applied to all human times. This site was created with growing, living nature and incorporated creative motifs from garden art of the baroque and Renaissance periods. With this modern “architectural garden”, it is as if Andreas Kipar wanted to fulfil Marie Luise Gothein’s hope for her “History of Garden Art”, which was first published in German in 1913: “My wish is that they [the artists of today, D. M.] may find not so much a storehouse of the ideas of great masters of the past, as an abundant harvest for their own creations in the present day!” (Gothein 2014, foreword).
Andreas Kipar designed a very special city park, also with regard to the realisation process, as it was to be planted with the participation of different Christian communities from all over the world: the Luther Garden. The Luther rose on the ground with its embedded stone cross marks the central space. The symbolic and iconographically formed elliptical paths give structure to the park with its lightly modelled terrain. From the outset, the successive planting of young trees guaranteed an animated process of growing and becoming.
“A lively discussion got underway. The idea that ultimately took hold was to combine the renewal of the ramparts, which had been declared a garden monument, with the erection of a modern ‘monument to the Reformation’. And this was to be installed very close to the central market square with the Luther Monument.”
“The architectural/urban planning objective underlying this idea was that the garden should one day be a new, tangible landmark, along with Wittenberg’s two other symbolic Christian buildings that are visible from afar: the Schlosskirche (All Saints’ Church) and the Stadtkirche (St. Mary’s).”
The image of the garden inside and beyond the city walls is deeply rooted in our minds. The name “Luther Garden” already defined this area before a single tree had been planted. The optimistic and hopeful idea of the Luther Garden was spread and became firmly established through informal conversations as well as formal discussions accompanied by texts and pictures. Although there was some initial resistance against the idea of creating an “orchard” in the park around the city ramparts, with the possibility of a wasp plague at harvest time, the local politicians were convinced by and gave their backing to the dynamic design concept. The idea of erecting a monument in the form of an ecumenical Luther Garden “as a symbol of reconciliation and mutual understanding” was adopted and promoted not only by the LWF, but by Christians from all over the world. This garden idea was to be carried around the globe by planting a second “little tree in kindred spirit” in the home parish of a distant country. The Luther Garden is a work of garden art for our time.
The Luther Garden had to be large enough to plant a total of 500 trees. The “Luthergarten an der Andreasbreite”, located close to the market square and beyond the city moat, had space for 292 trees, 80 of which were to be fruit trees. The city’s concept for the park around the city wall aimed to create a tour of the old town. The consequences for the Luther Garden project were obvious: in addition to the area around the fortifications, two further areas were allocated to enable 500 trees to be planted by Christians from all over the world – the Luther Garden by the new Town Hall in the north, and the area by the Luther House in the east. The Luther Garden took on a whole new dimension: it was now present in the everyday life of the whole city. A Luther Garden triad in “Lutherstadt” Wittenberg.
The “Luthergarten an der Andreasbreite” is the central outdoor venue for Christian events in the city. Here, in the area around the Luther rose, the foundation stone for the new garden was laid on 20 September 2008. A number of events proved the suitability of the location. The Christian symbol on the ground transformed it into a place of devotion. The site was far from complete, however, as can be seen in photographs taken at the inauguration on 1 November 2009, when the first 25 trees were planted. Even later, when many fruit trees had already borne fruit, the central area marked by five symbolic lime trees looked like an empty space in the overall structure of the garden. This emptiness was also emphasised by the fact that all the paths led to the Luther rose. If you did not look down at the ground when you reached this spot, your (unconscious) expectations of this central location were not met. The dimension of volume was missing. The site did assume voluminous form and seem more complete, however, when people stood in a circle while a church service was being held. The landscape architect was not the only person who felt that the Luther Garden was not yet finished.
What was missing from the Luther Garden?
The architectural/urban planning objective underlying this idea was that the garden should one day be a new, tangible landmark, along with Wittenberg’s two other symbolic Christian buildings that are visible from afar: the Schlosskirche (All Saints’ Church) and the Stadtkirche (St. Mary’s). Towering above the historical cosmos behind the city wall and ramparts, these symbolic cornerstones of the Reformation still provide orientation within the city. Not only intellectually, but also visibly and spontaneously perceptible, the Luther Garden was intended to be experienced as part of the Christian-influenced symbolic trinity. Non-Christians and atheists, however, may perceive it differently – perhaps only as part of a triad of dominant urban landmarks.
Invisible elements also had to be incorporated into the design. Questions arose. What volume could fill this space around the Luther rose without “occupying” it? What should this “something” be which – rationally understood and emotionally experienced – embodies the overall ecumenical idea without questioning the Luther Garden’s function as a secular element of Wittenberg’s new public park? Don’t the adjoining spaces on every side of the Luther Garden and its new paths demand even greater and lasting presence in what is supposed to be its centre?
To the east of the garden is the popular and much used playground “Spielpark am Lutherpark Andreasbreite”; redesigned with sculptural wooden elements under the heading “Microcosm” and subsidised by the LWF, it reopened on 23 July 2014 and seems like a natural part of the Luther Garden. To the west is the adjoining meadow whose expanse makes the approach to the Luther Garden such a unique experience. To the south is the viewing and walking axis that leads from the railway stop “Wittenberg-Altstadt” on the Old Town through the middle of the Luther Garden to the city centre. And to the north is the entrance flanked by two magnificent old trees, a dam in the city moat that leads directly to the Luther rose laid out on the ground, along with the “Wallgarten” (rampart garden) circular path that passes by here.
Last but not least was the question: how can the designation “The Luther Garden – a living monument of the Reformation”, which was already being used for city marketing purposes, be made more visible, more memorable and thus perhaps more comprehensible for the naive eye, in accordance with its international significance?
The Luther Garden, especially its centre, was however not intended to be a “sacred grove” or a “place of God”. It was to be a place of encounter, but a special kind of encounter. Devout visitors from all over the world and Christians from Wittenberg should be able to sense why they are gathering under the treetops of the Luther Garden, rather than on the city’s market square, just 400 metres away, where the Luther Monument stands that was created in 1821 by the artist Johann Gottfried Schadow and the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Even if they don’t know it, walkers in the park should sense that they are approaching a place of special importance.
Such a task cannot be achieved solely with technical, functional and constructive thinking and action. It also requires artistic creation. The architect Bruno Taut summarised the effects of different forms of artistic creation in his “Lectures on Architecture”, which were written in 1936/37 while he was in exile in Istanbul, but were not published in German until 1977 and are far too rarely studied. At the end of the last chapter, “Relations to society and to the other arts”, he writes: “The forms of art provide support for emotion, those of architecture support a sense of proportion, i.e. a sense that something is well ordered, divided and structured” (Taut 1977, p. 192). It is an appeal for collaboration.
Questions regarding the completion of the so carefully developed Luther Garden, which became increasingly visible with new tree plantings and thus easier to assess within its surroundings, increased and became more concrete. Did the Luther Garden lack “the forms of art”? Many discussions with the clients yielded ideas for the space around the Luther rose. For example, that of building a stone cross on which people could sit. All of these ideas were dismissed, however, and the decision was made to ask artists to become involved. It was and still is quite common to find a solution by holding an (international) art competition, but this plan had to be abandoned due to cost and time restrictions.
The idea: “Heaven’s Cross”
It is, and always has been, possible to find a way when people come together “who speak the same language” and are above all committed to finding the best – the most ideal – solution to a problem. The discussion between the landscape architect Andreas Kipar and the artist Thomas Schönauer, which also deepened in the Wittenberg project, ended with the architect’s request: “Go and have a look at this in situ.” Thomas Schönauer did precisely that. After three days, it is said, he presented his ingenious idea and named what could perfectly complete the Luther Garden: “Heaven’s Cross”. He described the idea as follows: “Based on the idea of the Holy Trinity and, in formal terms, the skyward growth of the trees, two additional, diverging cross structures hover above the cross construction that is set into the ground.”
This basic idea, which Thomas Schönauer presented with the aid of a small model, was already contained like an invisible seed within Andreas Kipar’s concept for the Luther Garden. It was as if it had needed time to grow, and above all the help of his artist friend Thomas Schönauer, to bring it to life and give it a name.
Not only the architect, but all decision makers in the LWF and the city’s various political factions quickly agreed that the “Heaven’s Cross” idea provided the perfect solution. Such unanimous agreement was surprising. Pastor Hans W. Kasch, who is in charge of organisation in the LWF’s Wittenberg branch, believes that people were prepared to accept the “forms of art”, as the previous process of planning the Luther Garden had promoted understanding and changed perceptions. Which definitely sounds plausible.
The majority of those involved may not have perceived one fundamental quality of the “artistic architectural installation”, but they probably sensed it. Even just the model of “Heaven’s Cross” unconsciously signalled a psychologically justifiable change of behaviour towards the cross embedded in the ground inside the Luther rose. Devout Christians may have perceived it as a message. The head and gaze look down upon the cross on the ground – a symbol of faith – like a gravestone. This posture corresponds to and signals grief or aversion – a turning away. Thoughts are directed into the past. But now the cross was suspended in the sky. The cross in the earth had not been replaced. It was raised up as the phenomenon of a double cross. Whether viewers are standing or sitting on this spot, their gaze can soar upwards, past the gleaming, suspended crosses and into the clouds. This signals a turn towards the world – a future. It can also mean hope. Christians might think of the joyful Easter message of the resurrection when they see the crosses. Spreading hope was a central theme of the Luther Year 2017.
“Even if they don’t know it, walkers in the park should sense that they are approaching a place of special importance.”
The implementation of the idea
The will to implement the idea was as strong as the financial situation was weak. Many people helped to make it happen. The project title in the funding application submitted jointly to the Hamburg foundation “Lebendige Stadt” at the beginning of 2014 by the LWF, Oberkirchenrat Norbert Denecke, and the Lord Mayor of the City of Wittenberg, Eckhard Naumann, was: “Luthergarten 2017. Central venue with art installation in the Luther rose”. The aim for the “art installation” was outlined as follows: “For the festivities in 2016 and 2017, the heart of the Luther Garden in Wittenberg is to be accorded special significance.” Andreas Kipar presented the overall concept. The idea of Heaven’s Cross and the commitment of the various protagonists were convincing. Nevertheless, there were some sceptical questions with regard to as yet unsolved technical or functional issues (materials, rain drainage, wind loads, soiling and vandalism). Even a “Heaven’s Cross” needed time to grow.
As with any building, in addition to the main problem of financing, there were more things to consider and clarify than initially expected. Facing these challenges required more than just the artist’s own work in his Düsseldorf studio. Teamwork was called for. The responsible authorities and individuals in Wittenberg, along with the sponsors and the artists, convened in a new project group called “Artistic Design of the Luther rose in the Luther Garden in Wittenberg”. When this group first came together on 23 July 2014, the day of the reopening of the playground “Spielplatz am Lutherpark Andreasbreite”, one of their first tasks was to come up with an “official designation” for the process that was getting underway. What is the essence of Heaven’s Cross? The members of the project group calmly and confidently agreed upon “The artistic architectural installation: Heaven’s Cross in the Luther Garden”.
Patience and a great deal of effort were required before the model presented by Thomas Schönauer finally became the Heaven’s Cross sculpture in the Luther Garden. It was a purpose-built structure. Without a design concept, official approvals, political will, civic participation, financiers, execution plans, structural engineers and craftsmen, all of whom identified with the work, as well as artistic supervision and site management, Heaven’s Cross in the Luther Garden would never have been completed on schedule. Some fundamental issues also had to be addressed before the process could begin. For example, it had to be ensured that this “artistic architectural installation” would not be a fixed structure, which would not have been permitted under the terms of a contract between the city and the German National Committee of the LWF. It also had to be clarified whether the political resolution on the Luther Garden project that had been passed by the city council in 2009 covered the changes to the project concept, or whether new approvals and participation procedures were required. They were. Through all of this, the artist and the architect proved that they are also expert communicators.
By the time the project group met for the second time, Thomas Schönauer, in collaboration with the architect Bernhard Bramlage, had concretised the design for implementation. This made an exact calculation of the projected costs possible. The final sum caused a tremendous shock, but it seemed that the idea had the power to move mountains. On 26 March 2015, at the second meeting of the project group, the course was set for financing, further procedures and implementation. Above all, the inauguration date was set: 15 June 2016. The Federal President had agreed to attend. This date was less than three months away.
The actual transformation of the “artistic architectural installation” into the Heaven’s Cross sculpture kept the core team – artist Thomas Schönauer, architect Bernhard Bramlage and the boss and employees of the metalworking firm Henschel Metallbau – in suspense right up to the last minute. The floating crosses with their supports that had appeared lightweight in the initial model still resembled a statically dominated roof construction. It could be imagined how many tons of metal were going to have to be held suspended. It is largely thanks to the skill of the engineers that it was possible to change the feeling of the piece being “more like a building” into being “more like an artwork”. The protective function of the “Heaven’s Cross” as a kind of roof, for example during rain showers or extreme heat, was, however, to remain. On 15 June 2016, the work was successfully completed.
“Christians might think of the joyful Easter message of the resurrection when they see the crosses.”
“It is a pleasure to walk through the park in the Luther Garden. It’s exciting to approach the tree-lined spot where Heaven’s Cross shimmers through branches that are more or less concealed, depending on the time of year.”
Completion: the sculpture in the garden park
Heaven’s Cross radiates the special power and energy that characterise all the works in Thomas Schönauer’s artistic universe. They enable us to sense, discover and wonder at inexplicable, ancient traditions and knowledge, in the same way that stone sculptures in the ruins of recently excavated early Neolithic temples touch us inwardly. In Heaven’s Cross, our perception is dominated not only by the Christian symbol of the cross, but also by the work of art – the welded metal sculpture created by Schönauer in 2016. In the city park, the new Heaven’s Cross stands out and functions as it was intended, and at the same time appears to be an unusual but natural element of the Luther Garden. It is now hard to imagine Wittenberg without it.
It was possible to complete the “gesamtkunstwerk” (total work of art) by sculpting the most famous of the Christian symbols – faith: the cross; love: the heart; and hope: the anchor. The hidden world of experience, in the sense of Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms, can be rediscovered and perceived: “No longer in a merely physical universe, man lives in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art, and religion are parts of this universe. They are the varied threads which weave the symbolic net, the tangled web of human experience.” (Cassirer 1972, p. 25).
Considering what crosses can represent, it is a particular achievement on the part of the artist that the three crosses here make us forget their connection to oppression, domination, power and death. The feeling of hope and freedom, the sense of being protected, safe, and alive, which Heaven’s Cross symbolises, was inherent in Andreas Kipar’s concept for the Luther Garden. This was shown by the appropriation of the Luther rose, surrounded by a living, natural environment, as a place of worship before the Heaven’s Cross sculpture was erected. But the gaze was directed downwards and the inside was less supported by the outside. Both artists felt that the work was incomplete because they speak the same language – each in their chosen profession.
It is a pleasure to walk through the park in the Luther Garden. It’s exciting to approach the tree-lined spot where Heaven’s Cross shimmers through branches that are more or less concealed, depending on the time of year. It suddenly rises up after a bend in the path, or has long been visible in a viewing axis. A poetic and contemplative mood can be felt. Tension and harmony can be experienced in this new site in Wittenberg, in the spaces and things that two people have devised and many have brought to reality. Contemporary images are evoked: “It’s like a double-decker aeroplane,” people often say when they see the elegant sculpture. The shiny metal of the children’s slide in the nearby playground – the only inorganic material among the wooden trunks – can be regarded as a small signpost to Heaven’s Cross. There are no limits to how this sculpture can be perceived in different seasons and times of day.
Another unusual freedom offers visitors pleasure and enjoyment. In the autumn, the Luther Garden is reminiscent of paradise when apples, plums, pears, quinces, medlars and whitebeam berries can be eaten straight from the trees. There is no such thing as forbidden fruit. Pupils from the Evangelische Gesamtschule Philipp Melanchthon in Wittenberg have been harvesting fruit every year since 2015 as part of school projects. But not without first of all saying a short prayer at the Luther rose and the “Heaven’s Cross”. They make jam and sell it in small jars, for example at the Wittenberg Christmas market. Under a small, coloured Lutheran cross, the label proudly reads: “Our harvest 2017 from the Luther Garden”.
The Luther Garden and Heaven’s Cross:
An example of a new school of design thinking
Anyone who compares the Wittenberg project with the two artists’ works in other cities inevitably reaches this conclusion. In the Wittenberg Park, too, elements of natural beauty and artistic beauty are used to compose a novel living environment that nevertheless seems familiar in its usability. Both sensually perceived and rationally analysed and considered, the peculiarity and diversity of the locations are reflected. Contemporary modernity is shaped and experienced like many ancient traditions that were once new and have proven their worth to this day.
“Thomas Schönauer and Andreas Kipar do not dread uncertainty, are not afraid of life and do not stick rigidly to theories. The urban and landscape spaces they create continue to grow vibrantly. Their most recent creation can be studied in Wittenberg. Its essence is clearly perceptible. This contemporary art of design promotes quality of life.”
Andreas Kipar and Thomas Schönauer want to jointly design environments for a democratic public. “All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist,” is Paul Klee’s timeless definition (“Paul Klee, 1879–1940”, p. 15), while Bruno Taut stressed that: “Architecture is an art” (Whyte, 2010, p. 73). Both Schönauer and Kipar are committed to these principles, which form the basis of their thinking.
It remains to be seen whether the works designed and realised by Thomas Schönauer and Andreas Kipar will set a precedent and teach people how to create. That is not their responsibility. People have to either want to learn or be forced to. Paul Klee, a student at the Bauhaus in Dessau, the completely new art school founded by the architect Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919, noted almost 100 years ago: “Education is a difficult chapter. The most difficult. The education of the artist above all. Even if one supposes it to be continuous, even if one supposes that there might be a certain number of real educators, many remain within the realm of the visible, because it is enough for them. Few get to the bottom and begin to create. Most stick rigidly to theories because they are afraid of life, because they dread uncertainty” (Klee, 1961, p. 33).
Thomas Schönauer and Andreas Kipar do not dread uncertainty, are not afraid of life and do not stick rigidly to theories. The urban and landscape spaces they create continue to grow vibrantly. Their most recent creation can be studied in Wittenberg. Its essence is clearly perceptible. This contemporary art of design promotes quality of life.
Literature:
Ernst Cassirer, “An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture” (1944), New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1972.
Marie Luise Gothein, “A History of Garden Art: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day”, Volume 2, ed. Walter P. Wright, trans. Laura Archer-Hind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Paul Klee, “Notebooks. Vol. I: The Thinking Eye”, ed. Jörg Spiller, trans. Ralph Manheim, London: Lund Humphries, 1961.
Paul Klee, quoted in “Paul Klee 1879–1940. A Retrospective Exhibition”, exh. cat., New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1967.
Bruno Taut, “Architekturlehre. Grundlagen, Theorie und Kritik, Beziehungen zu den anderen Künsten und zur Gesellschaft” (published in 1936 in Japanese translation, in 1938 in Turkish translation), German edition: Hamburg/West Berlin: VSA, 1977).
Iain Boyd Whyte, “Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Activism” (Cambridge Urban and Architectural Studies), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
The cross and art – historical reflections on a Christian symbol
A cross in the Luther Garden?
Anyone who installs a sculpture in the form of a monumental cross outdoors in nature to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 is entering new territory in the 21st century. As a contemporary, one rubs one’s eyes in amazement: how could this absence from the public arena of the central symbol of Christ have lasted so long? More self-explanatory, on the occasion of such an anniversary, are the strikingly conformist busts of Luther which more or less follow Lucas Cranach’s portraits and which sculptors have produced in vast numbers. Not to mention the reformer-themed kitsch, ranging from Luther socks and Luther tomatoes to a Luther condom – stopped before it reached the shelves – bearing the declaration “Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders” (“Here I stand, I can do no other”), and even a plastic duck dressed as a Renaissance preacher.
The spectacular symbolism with which the sculptor Thomas Schönauer imbues his Heaven’s Cross (the uppermost, largest cross is 14.5 metres long, 10 metres wide and 4.5 metres high) is one that Martin Luther would undoubtedly have found wholly convincing: a cross that grounds and on which we stand with both feet. At the same time, we stand underneath the cross, protected and shielded by a floating cross, or more accurately two floating crosses, which together with the cross on the ground imply Trinity (Fig. 1). A Christian would need no more than this, even if one took away the overwhelming aesthetics of this monumental installation. Theological impulses arise here all by themselves.
The cross was unknown to the early church as a symbol of Christian faith. Although historically not verifiable, it can be assumed that during the period of the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire (1st to 3rd century after Christ), the fish served as a sign of recognition. Not only because fishermen made up the core of Jesus’s disciples, but also because the Christian affirmation “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour” can be derived as an acronym from the Greek word for fish, “ichthýs”. The fish motif can be found as a visual abbreviation in frescoes inside Roman catacombs and on sarcophagus reliefs.
In 312 Constantine succeeded in defeating his opponent Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge, north of Rome. According to tradition, this victory was achieved with the help of the Christogram XP (chi and rho), a sign which appeared to Constantine in a dream on the eve of the battle and which he immediately had affixed to the military standards of his legions. Under Constantine’s reign (emperor from 324 to 337), the persecution of Christians in Roman antiquity came to an end. From this time on, the fish motif, as a symbol of early Christianity, played an increasingly subordinate role, and in the 5th century it relinquished its place entirely to the cross. Making the sign of the cross is a gesture alleged to have already been in use in the Mithras cult. For Christians in the 4th century, it was part of the ritual of baptism: newly baptised individuals were marked with a cross on their forehead. The cross as a sign of salvation was appropriated by imperial military propaganda and integrated into the language of political symbols: the significance of Victoria, the goddess of victory, diminished in line with the rise of the cross as a guarantor of eternal victory; even though there was as yet no theological basis for this. It is highly probable that the mosaic decorating the apse of the Lateran Basilica built by Constantine already featured a cross as part of its visual imagery. The Christian symbolism of the cross developed into the distinguishing mark of Christians and as an authentic sign of the martyrdom of Christ.
“How could this absence from the public arena of the central symbol of Christ have lasted so long?”
Fig. 1: Thomas Schönauer, Heaven’s Cross in the Luther Garden, 2017, Wittenberg
“The question of why Jesus was not allowed to die a less dishonourable form of death would preoccupy theologians for centuries.”
Public worship of the cross was initiated, or at least significantly fostered, by the legend of the discovery of the True Cross by Empress Helena, a find that Ambrose of Milan dates to 328. Precious reliquaries were made, housing splinters of the cross, and attracted the enthusiastic veneration of contemporary Christians not just in Rome, Jerusalem and Constantinople.
Whether crucifixion was abolished as a form of execution even under Emperor Constantine is disputed. The thesis that, in view of the high symbolic power of the cross, crucifixion would have unduly honoured criminals sentenced to death, is countered by sources that testify to this form of death penalty in the Byzantine Orient even in the late 6th century.
As from the 6th century onwards, the cross advanced to become probably the most frequently portrayed object in Christian art. Antiquity now lay too far in the past for people still to be aware that crucifixion had represented an extremely inglorious form of execution: by suspending a person from a post by means of a crossbeam, the duration of their agony was significantly extended compared to alternative death sentences such as burning, impaling, beheading or hanging. Hundreds of thousands died by crucifixion in antiquity – in the Persian Empire in the 5th century BC, in the Empire of Alexander the Great, in Phoenicia and finally in ancient Rome. The Romans, however, carried out crucifixions in a particularly cruel way, especially in the case of non-Romans and slaves, namely by nailing the condemned to the cross. After defeating his opponent Sextus Pompey, the later Emperor Augustus sent 30,000 run-away slaves who had served in Pompey’s army back to their owners in Rome and crucified 6,000 masterless slaves.
The fact that an all-powerful Christian God wanted to lead his son into the Kingdom of Heaven via such a humiliating death, with its slave connotations, contradicted all then current notions of power and glory and was regarded as a paradox by contemporaries. The question of why Jesus was not allowed to die a less dishonourable form of death would preoccupy theologians for centuries.
Delinquents were crucified in all sorts of positions, so that the constellation of two beams crossing at an angle of 90 degrees (one vertical upright, one horizontal bar) did not necessarily have to take the shape of a cross, but could equally well form a T. In western culture, however, the crucifix is synonymous with the so-called Latin cross: a long stake with a short crossbeam in the upper third. This Latin cross appears around the middle of the 4th century in a mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna: the Good Shepherd leans on a Latin cross, as if on a staff, amidst his flock.
The four canonical gospels in the New Testament soberly describe the Roman practice of crucifixion: in the Jewish season of Passover during the tenure of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate (AD 26–36), Jesus of Nazareth voluntarily delivered himself into the hands of his judges. Having been sentenced to death by crucifixion, the typical Roman punishment of the day, he carried his cross to Calvary Hill, an elevated execution site outside Jerusalem’s city walls, where people could watch the death throes of the condemned from afar. There they nailed Jesus to the cross with his arms outstretched. A trilingual inscription (in Greek, Hebrew and Latin) proclaimed the charges on which he had been found guilty and for which he had to atone through this extremely shameful execution: religious fraud, insolent blasphemy, political rebellion.
We have no historical sources other than the gospels, and cannot even be certain of Jesus’s year of death. According to astronomical calculations, it falls somewhere between AD 27 and 34.
Fig. 2: Four medieval processional crosses from the Ottonian period from the Essen Cathedral Treasury, 10th and 11th centuries
After Christianity had become a recognised state religion, the cross could be viewed and used in symbolic reproduction not only as an object of private devotion on coins, pieces of jewellery and sarcophagi, but could even assume monumental character, for example in baptisteries and apse mosaics, and as three-dimensional triumphal crosses on rood screens. The cross’s contexts of use were just as varied as its forms and designs.
Even during the reign of Constantine, and increasingly in the art of the Middle Ages, crosses became more and more lavish in their decor: in religious use in abbeys and monasteries, as a semi-public art object such as a liturgical processional cross with filigree gilding, studded with antique gems, pearls and precious stones. Magnificent testaments to Ottonian goldsmithery have been preserved in the Essen Cathedral Treasury, for example, in processional crosses with and without a sculptural representation of the crucified Christ (Fig. 2).
Up to the 13th century, the representation of the victorious Christ, sometimes crowned and clothed in the robes of a ruler or priest, standing alive on the Cross with his eyes open as victor over pain and death, was widespread in the West. Towards the end of the 10th century, this vision was countered by a second image, that of the dead, tormented Christ, as shown by the monumental Gero Cross in Cologne Cathedral: Christ with bowed head and eyes closed, slumped lifeless on the cross (Fig. 3). There is no doubt that he is dead. But he is not yet shown as a figure in pain. It would be the artists of the Gothic era who lent dramatic expression to Jesus’ suffering: wracked with pain, his body twisted and streaming with blood, a person tortured to death (crucifixus dolorosus) hangs on a forked cross (Fig. 4).
In contrast to the Calvinists, Luther saw no danger in the worship of crucifixes that were late medieval in expression, complete with crown of thorns, wounds and suffering, as were in use in the 16th century, too. Luther was not one of the iconoclasts. On the contrary, the crucified Christ is a frequent subject in Lutheran-influenced painting, e.g. in early Reformation altarpieces. An exaggerated baroque or rococo piety, on the other hand, which elevated the lance wound in Christ’s side to a cult symbol and a source of spiritual experience, would have been much too passionate for the sober Luther.
Fig. 3: The Gero Cross (detail), ca. 970, painted and gilded oak (figure and cross) on a 17th-century mount, Chapel of the Cross, Cologne Cathedral
Fig. 4: Forked cross (crucifixus dolorosus), c. 1300, on a 15th-century mount, St. Maria im Kapitol, Cologne
“The crucified Christ is a frequent subject in Lutheran-influenced painting, e.g. in early Reformation altarpieces.”
The Enlightenment finally put an end to all symbols suspected of superstition. Crucifixes, too, were abolished, after Frederick William I of Prussia in 1722 adopted strict measures to abolish the “puppet theatre” dimension of religious practice.
Under the influence of philosophical reflections by revival theologians and Neo-Lutherans, the 19th century saw the reawakening of a historical consciousness, accompanied by the revitalisation of rites and symbols. In the wake of Romanticism, the cross, too, was rediscovered, as can be seen in Caspar David Friedrich’s 1815 painting “The Cross beside the Baltic” (Fig. 5). In religious use, the representation of the Crucifixion with its emphasis upon Christ’s suffering remained indebted to the Reformation and Baroque eras.
In the 20th century, an epoch marked mainly by atheism, the Expressionist art movement and abstract art created their own interpretations. The monumental wooden cross made in 1921 by sculptor Ludwig Gies, commissioned by St Mary’s church in Lübeck as a memorial to those who fell in the First World War, met with violent rejection immediately after its completion: it was beheaded and denounced as “over-Expressionistic”" and and the work of a “"cultural Bolshevist”." until it was shown in In 1937, under the National Socialist regime, it was shown in the Degenerate Art campaign exhibition and then afterwards presumably destroyed.
George Grosz’s 1927 drawing of Christ on the Cross wearing a gas mask, captioned “Maul halten und weiter dienen” (“Keep your mouth shut and continue to serve”), was at the centre of a trial that dragged on for many years under the Weimar Republic, until in 1931 the courts finally ordered the destruction of the drawing together with its printing plate. Grosz himself subsequently emigrated in 1933. Martin Kippenberger’s 1990 sculpture “Feet First”, which shows a crucified frog with an egg in one hand and a beer mug in the other, holds far less potential for outrage (Fig. 6).
Crosses that stand unprotected outside, independent of religious buildings or specific sites (such as cemeteries), are particularly exposed to weathering and the danger of destruction. Penitence crosses and crosses commemorating miracles are usually found by the side of paths – something they share with wayside crosses, which provided travellers with points of orientation, demarcated territories and, as from the Middle Ages, could also be places of asylum. Here legal and religious functions became mixed together. A market cross, too, erected on a town’s central trading place, was on the one hand a political emblem of the local ruler, but on the other hand also had a religious function on certain feast days. Only very few medieval Crucifixions carved in stone have survived at all. Not until 2016 was the early Romanesque “God of Bentheim” stone crucifix moved from its outdoor location into a church (Fig. 7).
Fig. 5: Caspar David Friedrich, “The Cross beside the Baltic”, 1815, Neuer Pavillon, Schloss Charlottenburg, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Fig. 6: Martin Kippenberger, “Feet First”, 1990
Photo: Barbara Schildt-Specker
Fig. 7: “God of Bentheim”, stone crucifix, c. 1000, formerly outside at Bentheim Castle, today in St Catherine’s Church, Bentheim
And now, in the 21st century, Thomas Schönauer – an artist with Jewish-Huguenot roots, predestined for ecumenism – has at last once again created an unmistakable Christian symbol for the public space. With Heaven’s Cross, he has delivered an compelling, brilliantly exceptional monument of Christian culture (Fig. 8). It stands, in uncompromisingly distilled form, on a square about 40 metres in diameter and interacts with nature: designed by landscape architect Andreas Kipar, a grass area in the shape of the so-called Luther rose – a heart and five petals – surrounds Heaven’s Cross. A total of 500 trees grow in the Luther Garden, as a reminder of the anniversary. The harmonious installation is particularly impressive from a bird’s eye view. Stainless steel (outer skin and supports; the interior supporting structure is made of galvanised steel) – a modern material with which Thomas Schönauer has been working for decades and which he shapes into sculptures that suggest lightness – establishes, in its contemporary presence, a contrast rich in tension with the historical sites of the Reformation. It thereby makes a religious reference to the Wittenberg Stadtkirche (town church), where Luther preached, as well as to the Schlosskirche (Castle Church) where Luther is believed to have published his 95 Theses and which lies within sight.
Heaven’s Cross in the Luther Garden impresses, awakens reverence, radiates dignity and invites us to meditate, to reflect on faith, on the meaning of human existence, alone or in communion with others. In Wittenberg’s Luther Garden, a space, a spiritual meeting place and place of refuge has been created pervaded by a heavenly atmosphere, thanks to the gifted creativity of the sculptor Thomas Schönauer in collaboration with the landscape architect Andreas Kipar.
Fig. 8: Thomas Schönauer, The Heaven’s Cross in the Luther Garden, 2017, Wittenberg
“Heaven’s Cross in the Luther Garden impresses, awakens reverence, radiates dignity and invites us to meditate, to reflect on faith, on the meaning of human existence, alone or in communion with others.”
Luther and the consequences for art
“Luther and the consequences for art”: Thus ran the title of a highly-regarded exhibition staged in 1983 at the Hamburger Kunsthalle. In the exhibition, Werner Hoffmann, the then director of the Kunsthalle, explored the question of what influence the Reformation had on the relationship between art and its recipients. For Luther, pictures were value-free and religiously neutral. It is the viewer who makes them what they are. Thus the effect of a picture is left to our discretion and subjective disposition, free from any influence of authority. It is we who have the last word; the viewer not someone who unquestioningly marvels. Hence the recipient is a potential interpreter who – according to Hoffmann – critically interrogates the origin and purpose of the work of art.
The exhibition was intended to make it clear that Protestantism can be understood as an important historical driving force in questions of art, too. With the Reformation, thus its central thesis, emotion was stripped out of the way in which images were treated, which latter became a purely subjective and private affair.
From today’s perspective, this may sound self-evident. But in the historical context of the time, it marked a dramatic caesura. For the Catholic Church, religious images and their veneration were indispensable tools in the proclamation of faith. In the late Middle Ages, churches and monasteries were places of fervent worship of pictures and relics.
The people believed with unconditional piety that visible and tangible images and shrines granted salvation. And last but not least, during Luther’s lifetime preachers of indulgences travelled the countryside, selling devotional pictures and relics with the promise that sins would thereby be forgiven and the buyer saved from the torments of Purgatory. For Luther, this was a religiously camouflaged commercial swindle that was ultimately intended to finance the construction of the new St Peter’s Church in Rome. This treatment of art by the Church, which reduced images to idols, prompted all three reformers, Luther, Zwingli and Calvin, to explore the question of images in great detail.
For the reformers, the viewer decides what a picture says, what it means and what it is. The picture is thus not a given, dogmatic something that cannot be questioned, but for Luther becomes an offer that only acquires its meaning in “dialogue” with the viewer. This seeming devaluation of pictures ultimately proved to be a liberation for art. Just as Luther liberated believers from the intermediary authorities of the Church hierarchy and allowed them to enter directly into contact with their God, so he liberated viewers from an orientation towards formal dogmas. They were to experience their freedom in front of the work of art. Art and devotion were no longer to have anything to do with each other and, in a logical extension to this, kneeling, too, was now forbidden.
Naturally the artists, too, profited from this liberation. Cranach, a good friend of Luther’s, and later Rembrandt, to name only the best-known painters of the time, began to paint increasingly for private use and moved away from religious art. Although, in the Baroque era, the Catholic Church made another effort to oppose the wave of iconoclasm sweeping Europe, in the end the “free” artists and viewers won through.
Hence 500 years later we are celebrating not only the Reformation, but also, in a way, the liberation of art.
“For the Catholic Church, religious images and their veneration were indispensable tools in the proclamation of faith. In the late Middle Ages, churches and monasteries were places of fervent worship of pictures and relics.”
The Heaven’s Cross by Thomas Schönauer in the Luther Garden can be seen in this historical context. The cross, which undoubtedly has the highest symbolic value in the Christian church and continues to serve as an indispensable tool in the proclamation of faith in Roman Catholic doctrine, is here put up for discussion by the artist. Schönauer takes the three crosses standing – in an image familiar to us all – on Calvary hill, tips them over and represents them one above the other. The wooden beams become metallic wings, and at first sight the whole thing seems more like an airplane rather than calling to mind the image of Christ’s suffering. The project, to which the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) as patron has committed its support, is certainly very daring. But in true Lutheran tradition and as befitting the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the LWF has given the artist the freedom to implement his vision for the Luther Garden cross, and leaves it up to us, as viewers, to decide how we want to absorb and process the work. We may perhaps call this part of the culture of the LWF, which is a global communion of 145 churches of Lutheran tradition, to which over 74 million Christians belong.
The LWF is one of the world’s leading non-government organisations in the field of international humanitarian aid. Christian charity, freedom of thought and faith, and artistic creation at the highest level thus come together in Schönauer’s cross.
“Schönauer takes the three crosses standing – in an image familiar to us all – on Calvary hill, tips them over and represents them one above the other. The wooden beams become metallic wings, and at first sight the whole thing seems more like an airplane rather than calling to mind the image of Christ’s suffering.”
Reformation as innovation from the perspective of Thomas Schönauer’s
epoxy resin painting
With Heaven’s Cross, Thomas Schönauer undoubtedly created a milestone in his artistic life. The task of expressing the significance of such an important and momentous historical event as the Reformation in a public work of art intended to endure for several generations and in an appropriate and inspiring, yet vivid and trenchant manner is both an honour and a burden. This publication testifies to the successful execution of this task and the far-reaching, positive effect of its resolution, which naturally also incorporates the entire Luther Garden, of which Heaven’s Cross is an integral part. With barely a moment’s hesitation, Thomas Schönauer and Andreas Kipar saw the challenge delivered to them by the heirs of Luther, the Lutheran World Federation, as a great opportunity to implement their ideas of how to design publicly relevant spaces and landscapes.
As a harmonious and singular entity that speaks for itself, the ensemble of the Luther Garden and Heaven’s Cross has succeeded so masterfully in terms of its task and intention that one may well ask why, beyond this accomplishment, Thomas Schönauer also saw an appeal or even a need to artistically return to the same subject matter in his epoxy resin painting. Equally pertinent is the question as to what fresh or interesting angles this renewed exploration of the tremendously complex field of Reformation-related themes can contribute.
Starting with these two questions I would like to approach the artist Thomas Schönauer and his Luther series.
First of all, Thomas Schönauer cannot be described as an artist who rests on his laurels when a task is completed or who defines his work through what he has already achieved. On the contrary, one of his core artistic methods is to seek the potential for new and future development in his work. So it would hardly sit well on Schönauer simply to look back at Heaven’s Cross. He is an artist of coming-into-being, not of having-become, to put it in metaphysical terms. And as I see it, this coming-into-being often occurs between two poles that in his work are represented by painting, on the one hand, and sculpture, on the other.
Sculpture is planned down to the last detail and its formative process controlled to one hundred percent, is constantly tailored closely to and constructed within a conceptual and material context, constituting a single, coherent entity in the eyes of the viewer. The essence of CT paintings, however, is based precisely on the principle that they cannot be fully thought through or completely grasped (Fig. 1). They have no concrete points of thematic reference but represent immeasurable openness, pure potentiality. This remarkable, intrinsic, autonomous orientation of the works is due not least of all to the technique, developed by Schönauer himself, of epoxy resin painting, in which he imbues paint as substance and as colour with an overwhelming life of its own. So it comes as no surprise that Schönauer, whose preoccupation with the Reformation was triggered by the Luther Garden project, was keen to further explore these ideas – also with regard to the above-mentioned aspects – in the broader context of his overall artistic practice.
Nevertheless, it is uncharacteristic for Schönauer to let himself to be guided in his painting by an outside and thematically so concrete subject. One might almost conclude that this contradicts the principles of his painting. Yet this consideration leads us to the third and perhaps even strongest reason for Schönauer to intensively address the Reformation theme a second time. For one of Schönauer’s fundamental principles is his quest for the new. There is very little that has such high value for Thomas Schönauer as innovation, and I believe he sees exactly this underlying theme of his entire artistic work echoed in the various aspects of the Reformation.
To equate art with innovation would probably be too much, but in Schönauer’s terms art without innovation is unthinkable . If we now consider the complex historical context we call the Reformation – Luther and his vision of forgiveness based simply on authentic faith; the artist Cranach; the situation of the Catholic Church at the time; Luther’s 95 Theses; book printing and the possibility of distributing content via leaflets at unprecedented speed; later, of course, the first translation of the Bible and the consequent direct access for the broad mass of believers; and the standardisation of the German language, to mention only a few elements – then it quickly becomes clear that the Reformation represents one of the most important and momentous innovative processes in our more recent history.
I am sure that Thomas Schönauer sees Luther, representative for the many protagonists of the Reformation, not least of all Cranach, first and foremost as a great innovator: it is from this perspective that he places the Reformation in relation to his painting.
Fig. 1: CT 15 / 2018, Luther series, epoxy resin and pigments on stainless steel, 40 x 40 cm
“Under what conditions do innovations occur? How do new ideas, views and utopias interact on the one hand with technical achievements on the other? How important are the communicative possibilities available to the person driving innovation? To what extent can an innovation process be controlled at all? When is a change so new and relevant that it can be considered innovation?”
In this sense the Reformation offers considerable food for thought, raises questions and suggests answers. Under what conditions do innovations occur? How do new ideas, views and utopias interact on the one hand with technical achievements on the other? How important are the communicative possibilities available to the person driving innovation? To what extent can an innovation process be controlled at all? When is a change so new and relevant that it can be considered innovation?
So in concrete terms, one can ask whether Luther’s vision could only have arisen in such a problematic environment as that of the Catholic Church in that period and whether his ideas would even have attracted attention had it not been for his energetic character. How long did the shift towards Reformation, also being advocated prior to Luther, need to mature before it could take effect, and what precisely was new about Luther’s ideas? Could the Reformation only gain a foothold in society thanks to the groundbreaking invention of printing and the concomitant communication by leaflet? Or, alternatively, was it the Reformation that generated the content without which the printing press would not have experienced such far-reaching use at that time? What role was played by the mass-production of high-quality paintings with Reformation tendencies in the Cranach workshop? To what extent could the process, once it had been set in motion, still be controlled? Which innovations were intended and which were unintentional?
It should not be difficult to transfer these questions to art. To then derive more general assumptions from the history of the Reformation that can also be applied to art should be revealing or at least interesting.
What role is played by the personality of an artist? Is art of particularly importance thrown up during historically momentous times? To what extent do artistic innovations build on one another? Can good art be planned and how conscious of the quality of his art does an artist need to be? Are there at all great individual achievements in art or is everything not part of a defining context? How do techniques and content interact? Does art have to be socially accessible?
As a source of inspiration for new trains of thought, the mixture of facts, assumptions, attributions and interpretations concerning the historical event of the Reformation must be highly productive for Thomas Schönauer.
Conversely, there is hope that the contrary perspective, namely from Schönauer’s art towards the Reformation, might also provide insight or inspiration.
If we now turn to the CT paintings of the Luther series, the first thing that strikes us is the clear colouring and the reduced compositional style that run through the ten works. Gold, a pigment with which Schönauer usually only uses to set accents, is applied in broad areas and, depending on the work, is interspersed by a colour taken from the palette adopted canonically by Cranach and his contemporaries. The gold stands for the pomp and excessive structures of the Catholic Church in that era and the coloured elements represent the forces of the Reformation.
This simple, abstract pictorial concept is obviously not intended as a commentary or a statement on the Reformation – for the fact that the structure of the Catholic Church was broken by the Reformation is a simple fact. Rather, it does two things: on the one hand, it clearly places the works in the context of the Reformation; on the other, within this context it leaves sufficient space for the work itself. In this way, the work is only superficially the mediator of a message, of content. The essential, immanent qualities of the work speak autonomously through and for themselves.
Only in this way can an independent impulse emerge that emanates from art. For what is truly interesting happens, as ever with CT Paintings, when one abandons a superficial reading and goes into detail.
Suddenly it is not a green that breaks through the gold, but several hues of green and shades of colour that on the margin of the gold combine with it in manifold structures. Revealed is a world full of (maybe just ostensible) interactions, connections and interlacements, too complex and rich in forms and colours, too varied and delicate for one to become aware of them all. Everything seems to be in motion, nothing is rigid. The seemingly clear composition with its thematic correspondences loses itself in blurring, allusion and ambiguity, thereby opening up new horizons of possibility. The work draws its strength from this openness and over-complexity. Its energy flows out from between the dark interstices, its potential lies in what is unpredictable, while its innovation results from what cannot be controlled. All of this is about transferring this energy-charged state of openness to the viewer.
The works are not seeking to offer a concrete thematic commentary. They want to alter the viewer’s way of seeing, his or her mindset. It is less about what the viewer sees in the Reformation than about how he or she looks at it. In being shaped by innovation from an artistic – not sociological, historicist or any other scientific – perspective, Thomas Schönauer’s works revolve self-reflectively around the phenomenon of innovation, thereby casting new light on the innovative process within the Reformation. They sharpen and sensitise the eye to seemingly insignificant detail, to entanglements of antagonistic elements invisible from afar, to the permeability of ostensibly clearly marked boundaries and to causes buried in darkness. They open up the mind to the unexpected, to the barely explicable and to all that is hard to comprehend. In the best case, Schönauer’s art also to some degree revitalises the viewer.
Considering the Reformation from this perspective enables us perhaps to develop a more open and deeper understanding of the partly contradictory, frequently opaque entanglements and correlations of social inequality, and the abuse of power by high officials. Compounding this, were Luther’s positive, almost utopian ideas combined with his – from a present-day perspective – altogether unacceptable views, the pamphlet as the first mass medium, the sudden access to the text of the Bible through its translation, Cranach’s high-quality mass production of powerful paintings, the division of the church that no one had foreseen, and a host of other factors. Among these aspects, what constituted a necessary, an ample or a merely marginal condition is impossible to say with any certainty.
Against the background and in the mood of the Luther series, however, appreciation of even the smallest aspect within the entirety of the Reformation – beyond strict norms, clear facts and unequivocal explanations – anyway strikes to me as being the most appropriate and the most refreshing approach.
“Revealed is a world full of (maybe just ostensible) interactions, connections and interlacements, too complex and rich in forms and colours, too varied and delicate for one to become aware of them all.”
Description of a place in Wittenberg
When Thomas told me that he was designing a cross for Wittenberg, I was a little surprised, because over the millennia a cross has become an immutable sign, one that immediately produced a clear and unambiguous image in me. Scenes came to my mind from my childhood, of churches where the Crucifixion of Jesus was depicted in different ways. Impressions that I had gathered on later trips, among others to probably the most impressive of them all, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, also went through my mind. The image in my imagination, however, always remained the same.
Thomas was designing a cross? Well, a cross not just anywhere. No, it was to be in Wittenberg. At a special point in time in a special place, in a garden – the Luther Garden – designed by the internationally renowned landscape architect Andreas Kipar, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Nevertheless, my idea of this cross that Thomas was going to design was characterised by a simple image of two intersecting lines. Thomas told me more about his idea, his cross, his “Heaven’s Cross”.
I enter the garden and find myself on a narrow path between young trees of different species. Looking more closely, I notice small plaques at the foot of each tree, telling me about a “partner tree” planted in another location. The garden begins to exert its own special effect on me. I read more and more names and Latin designations on the little plaques. Above all, however, I become interested in the places where the “partner” of the sapling standing in front of me is growing. I imagine what it might look like and what it might be like there and that perhaps someone is thinking about my tree here right now and wondering what is there. A kind of invisible connection opens up. Stories, set in strange, for me, imaginary places, unfold in my head. Slowly, pulled by a gentle, invisible force, I walk on and make my way into the centre of the garden. A metal sculpture gleaming in the sunlight rises up in front of me. Only slowly do I grasp its form. Two elements, lying one above the other with a gap between them, float on slender metal steles. They are shaped like the wings of an airplane. I dive under them, explore the object and recognise the shape. It is a cross. A cross that is lying flat, but floating in the air.
One cross? No, there are two crosses which, connected by the steles, rest on a third metal cross, on which I am standing, as if on a foundation or base. I stand under the cross and look up involuntarily into the sky, towards the sun. Just as all living things strive towards the light. Heaven’s Cross. The image of a cross in my imagination, an envisaged two-dimensional cross, mostly made of wood, is lent a real, third and at the same time new dimension by Thomas Schönauer’s Heaven’s Cross. Transformed from a symbol, via the form of a sculpture, to architecture. It rises and, as it were like a building, becomes something we can enter and walk through. Heaven’s Cross forms a roof; it offers protection. I stand on the cross, between the crosses, in the cross.
“The image of a cross in my imagination, an envisaged two-dimensional cross, mostly made of wood, is lent a real, third and at the same time new dimension by Thomas Schönauer’s Heaven’s Cross.”
“It is the power of the design created jointly by Thomas and Andreas. It unfolds its effect like instruments in an orchestra, which only when playing together in concert create the harmonious sound that lends this place a particular melody of spirituality, which conjures within me a much larger, invisible, but impressive image. The genius loci.”
With his interpretation of the classic cross, Thomas has not only altered my learned way of seeing, but has also brought this traditional Christian symbol, which in its general form is not questioned, into the “now”. Through his choice of material and the design he has lent it, he has modernised and updated the cross in his own unique artistic manner. The choice to build the cross out of stainless steel should not be seen as exclusively pragmatic. Untreated, in other words pure stainless steel not only defies weathering, but also resists, as it were, the frictional forces of different, permanently competing creeds that develop in the context of a dynamic modern society.
Heaven's Cross and the Luther Garden are more than just a public space between two churches where, 500 years ago, Martin Luther put forward his Theses and began to reform and modernise Christianity and thus society. It is a place. But what constitutes a place, and more specifically this place? What makes it special? In my work as a photographer, places interest me to a particular degree. They tell stories. I discover them by looking for vantage points, and by changing a vantage point I make visible and change the relationships of one thing to another. In so doing, I build up or break down tensions, create perspectives, consciously adopt them, observe them and analyse them. Sometimes I even listen to the place, too. In the Luther Garden, however, I do not simply want to walk on and between the paths around Heaven’s Cross, and look for images of visual relationships between the trees and the people moving along the paths and under Heaven’s Cross. I want to start searching for the source that makes this place so special and full of energy. For this I have to seek another, very particular vantage point.
I have to go up. Very high, 70, 90 metres... higher! I want to adopt a special, unusual perspective in order to see and grasp this place. I ascend with the camera, metre by metre. Very close, directly over the centre of Heaven’s Cross, my first pictures show me reflections of the highly polished stainless steel, which follow the incident autumn light of the morning sun. Slowly I see more. The various rows of trees and paths converge upon a square, at whose centre stands Heaven’s Cross. Together they form an order, a structure, which reminds me of the gravitational lines of a magnetic field. The wind picks up a little. The sun shines with varying strength through the fast moving clouds in the Wittenberg sky. I notice something strange. Directly at the foot of Heaven’s Cross, in the rhythm of the rays of sunlight penetrating through the clouds, a shape forms: a fourth, virtual cross becomes visible. It is the shadow cast by the Heaven’s Cross standing in the fine sandy soil. Sometimes in a contrasting deep black, in other places delicate grey and soft. Obeying the irregular fluctuation in the sunlight, it seems to pulsate, visible and invisible at the same time. There are now many images I have seen that explain this place to me in the warm autumn light on this day in Wittenberg. But there is something else that makes this place so special. It is the power of the design created jointly by Thomas and Andreas. It unfolds its effect like instruments in an orchestra, which only when playing together in concert create the harmonious sound that lends this place a particular melody of spirituality, which conjures within me a much larger, invisible, but impressive image. The genius loci.
Artists’ talk:
Theoretical aspects of a “new school of thought” on the sculptural design of urban and landscape spaces.
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Dittmar Machule puts eleven questions to Andreas Kipar and Thomas Schönauer.
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“Every site has its own vibrations, which have to be recognised, elaborated and potentiated in the project.”
Question 1
A characteristic feature of your cooperation is the symbiotic interaction of your two different disciplines. How did this interdisciplinary cooperation come about?
The decisive developmental steps of creation and life are often determined by coincidences... although others claim that there are no coincidences. In any case, a mutual friend, admirer and partner – the landscape contractor Werner Küsters – who had known Andreas Kipar for years and knew me because of a sculpture I had installed on his new company premises, instinctively sensed that the worlds of Kipar and Schönauer complemented each other. A meeting was held at Küsters’ place and it quickly became clear to both of us that a test project would clarify the potency of a collaboration. The project was not long in coming: Andreas invited me to Milan and we worked briefly but intensively together on the presentation at the 2013 International Garden Show in Hamburg, which all in all turned out to be a great success!
Question 2
What form does the cooperation take? To what extent does your work benefit from the interaction of your different spheres of activity, and how are they intertwined?
One very important prerequisite unites our individual approaches: studying and understanding plans and initial situations is one thing; cognitively and emotionally experiencing and sensing the genius loci is a completely different dimension and an essential requirement for both of us. Every site has its own vibrations, which have to be recognised, elaborated and potentiated in the project. In addition, the mindful landscape architect always condenses from the larger context to the reduced space and then reviews all his conclusions once again on a large scale. The space-conscious sculptor, meanwhile, expands from the concentrated form into the larger spatial context, in order to then devote himself to a further examination on the condensed scale. If these differing approaches are united to produce a conscious framework for joint activity, as is the case with us, then the results are plain to see.
Question 3
With your collaboration, you have developed a new starting point for sculptural (landscape) design that you refer to as “acupuncture of the landscape”. What do you mean by this, and what are the specific characteristics of your jointly conceived approach?
Well, basically we see every site in its spatial context – we regard every urban landscape, every natural landscape as a large sculptural structure that exists as an open system in its own right. Within this system, nature and culture both produce values that determine our everyday lives. We explore the relationship or tension between topographical peculiarities, for example high and low-lying areas, but also the relative emptiness and abundance of space. These interventions are like the needles placed by an acupuncturist to generate/activate specific fields of energy.
It is in this respect that we talk about our actions and work as acupuncture of the landscape. Consciously placed bypasses in public space heighten people’s awareness and attentiveness in everyday life. Functional, often infrastructurally determined spatial structures become productive landscapes in which the “old” rules of Vitruvian architecture (utilitas, firmitas, venustas) unite with the new vital need for nature, i.e. green space, to create an experienceable WHOLE.
Question 4
You have already implemented numerous projects. To what extent do these projects reflect your new approach?
We have indeed developed numerous projects, but unfortunately not all of them have been realised, in spite of our considerable efforts. That’s how it is in the lives of creative freelancers – clients all too often regard and judge us as service providers. We say this because, in our opinion, the decision-making hierarchies in project development should be the other way round. So first of all, the master planning of the entire space by the landscape architects in cooperation with the artists, then the development and allocation of the architecture, with the active involvement of the former. If this hierarchy could be established, then many urban and landscape developments would look completely different and people would be less ill, i.e. healthier!
Now to the examples: the Luther Garden in Wittenberg is certainly a prototypical example. Spatial rhythm, relations between empty and abundant space, topography that anticipates the change in tree growth, and the symbolic effect of a growing, constantly transforming, living monument in the urban fabric together create a special site within a space that is defined by its landscape. Here, too, an aesthetically and ethically oriented, productive landscape develops that radiates throughout the world.
The commission for Khodynka Park in Moscow, the former central military airport in the heart of the Russian capital, was won by our team in an international competition. The stark contrast between human scale and the XXL dimensions of the site was the inspiration for our design. The key factors initially were the overall rhythm, the intonation of a basic melody, the elaboration of local climatic and topographical conditions, and the conscious exploration of a new form of nature in dialogue with artistic exaggeration. Only then were the various built structures functionally defined and spatially positioned. Unfortunately, the realisation of this project was interrupted by the Syrian war, and too much money was removed from the funding pot.
Another prime example is the master plan for the “European Green Capital Essen – 2017”. In cooperation with large sections of the population – or their representatives in administrative bodies or local associations – we scanned the city and defined the so-called touchpoints, almost 80 in total. Touchpoints can be compared to the chakra system in the human organism, i.e. they are places that are inhabited and animated by people for whom they have a particular importance. Then we laid out and determined the main energy fields – the acupuncture points – which gained the approval of all those involved. Some things could be realised in the year of the “Green Capital”, but the project is planned to continue until 2030, and our most recent meetings with the chief administrative officials in Essen offer grounds to hope that much of our master plan will become reality.
Question 5
People often talk about the concept of “art in public space”. Although this term associates separate paths of your two disciplines, what do you see as the task and function of your joint concept with regard to the sculptural design of urban and landscape spaces?
In answering the last question, we made it clear that, in our view, the approach to new urban development areas should be turned on its head. The generation of added value, also in a financial sense, is achieved with a coherent master plan that carefully coordinates and authoritatively defines the allocation of developed and undeveloped space, its topography, etc. Added value does not arise in the medium and long term from maximum development within the smallest possible space; in fact, quite the opposite is true. And one cannot say that a balanced approach to open space planning, which may include art, contributes to gentrification. No, it creates liveable residential areas and spaces that do not make people ill and also prevent the formation of ghettos.
The sculptural design of landscape spaces, on the other hand, is subject to completely different conditions. In most cases, it is a matter of integrating existing elements, should there be any, as far as possible into the new plan, or of examining them as a genius loci and then deciding how to deal with them. When we are creating new landscape spaces, for example on former industrial wastelands, we first of all think on a large scale and take up references to landscape or even urban structures. Only then can the scale become smaller and more detailed. Parco Nord Milano in Milan is a prototypical example of this. If we want to take people with their fundamental aesthetic, biological and metaphysical needs seriously again, we have to place them at the centre of our consideration of life in the public realm. Public space is art in everyday life. This requires joined-up thinking in what is known as “phase zero” – not yet goal- and purpose-oriented, but instead stock- and demand-oriented. Many grievances can be remedied by small, unpretentious interventions; others require structural changes. Initiating this process of understanding, orientation and exchange between politics, administration and citizens requires new formats in day-to-day planning. Quality of life and comfort must not be reduced to the absolute minimum. The perfection of technology must not exclude art. On the contrary!
Question 6
What are the differences in approach to the design of urban and rural spaces?
Urban spaces are concerned with the density and complexity of everyday processes. Mobility is a hot topic at the moment. This is where spatial concepts are particularly important. The Mediterranean model of the city – combining diversity, continuity, attractiveness, vastness and nature – is experiencing a widespread renaissance. Here, art stands at the beginning, in the middle and at the end.
In rural areas, it has more to do with identification. Sites await rediscovery, intelligent networking and vital infrastructures. “The future is in the countryside” by Rem Koolhaas is a future-oriented wish that we should already be giving serious consideration.
Question 7
What responsibility do you see here for yourself personally, and also for your joint work in the sculptural design of public spaces?
Well, first of all we are both human beings. And we have a high level of awareness and responsibility in our social, political and cultural constructs. This is perhaps – or most likely – why we became creative planners and venture to plan public spaces, among other things, because we are aware of our social responsibility. For this reason, it is important for us not to obey what turns out to be the false dictate of a developer/investor, but to change the project for the better or to abandon it. We don’t want to be guilty of furthering a development we know to be wrong, so we refuse to do it. It is about understanding local conditions, adapting to developments and freeing them from the often unconscious banalities of everyday planning. Providing food for thought in the sense of a counterpoint to normality. Our primary task is to raise awareness, cultivate relationships and set processes in motion. Within this framework, individual projects then emerge that come together and crystallise in a manner similar to a living organism.
Question 8
Contemporary urban and landscape environments, and thus the people of today, are subject to major changes. What social and political significance do you see in your work with regard to the design of public spaces in cities?
We live in transformation landscapes and – 100 years after the Bauhaus – seek new holistic approaches that are no longer defined by addition, but by subtraction. Following the industrial city and the car city, it is time to think about the human city, in which nature and culture form a new unity.
Question 9
What do you think of the frequently voiced accusation that the sculptural design of landscape and urban spaces merely serves as a means of gentrification and an individualised substitute for public welfare?
As our previous answers indicate, we take a completely different view of this – unless the planning concept turns out to be merely an alibi, in other words, it is simply bad planning. In most cases, this happens when landscape designers and artists are called in at the last moment and are asked to “make” something out of the remaining areas. This often leads to the ornamentation of open spaces and the well-known excrescences of “Kunst am Bau”. But we are far removed from that.
Question 10
How do you, as a landscape architect and an artist, manage to live up to this responsibility and create a space or environment for a democratic public?
The most important qualities are an awareness of the complex social, political and cultural interconnections and a strong personal stance! Our thinking is more on a meta level than it is focused on landscape planning and sculptural design – that happens much later. Due to a variety of circumstances, social conditions and realities are in a state of rapid change that first of all has to be understood. There are no linear, standard answers; we start by trying to ask the right questions, i.e. we try to grasp the essence of the issues. That forms the basis of our work: being able to see the big picture, to pose specific questions at very different levels, and then to work out equally specific approaches and structures that will provide solutions.
Listening, paying attention, taking part in discussions, providing suggestions and giving lived experience a comprehensible form are elements of our everyday working practice. In the informal planning processes, everyone wants to be taken seriously; our task is to synthesise, to define issues – the solutions are then often immediately obvious.
Question 11
Last but not least, I would like to ask: what place do the Luther Garden and Heaven’s Cross occupy in this context?
Undoubtedly a very special one! Andreas began planning the Luther Garden a few years before we got to know each other – taking into account all the factors we addressed in our previous answers. The highly complex interconnections between historical, religious, urban planning, memorial construction, topographical and other elements inspired him to create a large garden that contained subtle references to religious ornamentation and was arranged around a “central square”; it remained empty, the intention being to create something on this site to mark the anniversary. Then came the sculptor, who sensed and understood all these cognitive processes as energetic vibrations, and set to work on the basis of knowledge rather than creative power. This was then added in during the next stages to produce the piece we now see, which gives little indication that it developed from two completely separate processes.
This is a good example of patience, comprehension of complex relationships in hierarchical structures, perseverance and creativity with regard to a project, and step-by-step realisation of a garden as a memorial to the Reformation with global appeal. On one site, a place has been created where nature and culture meet; over the coming decades, a productive landscape of remembrance will establish itself here, on a par with existing architectural monuments.
It is hard to imagine that the overall result stems from two completely separate temporal processes.
“This is a good example of patience, comprehension of complex relationships in hierarchical structures, perseverance and creativity with regard to a project, and step-by-step realisation of a garden as a memorial to the Reformation with global appeal.”
Short biographies of the authors
Norbert Denecke
Norbert Denecke was born in 1958 and grew up in Brunswick. He studied theology in Bielefeld, Hamburg, Rome and Göttingen, with an emphasis on church history, systematic theology and ecumenism. After completing his ministerial training in Cremlingen, with the bishop of the regional church in Brunswick, and in Florence with a focus on ecumenism, Denecke worked as a parish priest in Goslar-Oker and Milan, and also served as vice dean of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Italy. Since 2004 he has headed the Lutheran World Federation as managing director of the German National Committee.
Erika Zender
Erika Zender is a global consultant in the field of managing medium-sized family businesses, as well as national and international marketing. Until 2016, Zender was managing director and shareholder of the oldest aluminium foundry in Germany, Aluminium Rheinfelden GmbH. Since March 2018 she has been managing director of LAND Germany GmbH.
Alexander Otto
Alexander Otto was born in Hamburg in July 1967. After completing his high school education in Oxford, he studied at Harvard University and Harvard Business School, before joining ECE – a company owned by the Otto family – in 1994. Since 2000 he has been chairman of the management board of ECE. Under his leadership, ECE became the European market leader for inner-city shopping centres. Alexander Otto is the initiator and chairman of the board of trustees of the “Lebendige Stadt” Foundation, which works towards revitalising European inner cities.
Dittmar Machule
Dittmar Machule was born in 1940 and studied architecture at the Technische Universität Berlin. He then worked as an assistant professor at the Institut für Stadt- und Regionalplanung (Institute of Urban and Regional Planning). In 1977, he received his doctorate (Dr-Ing) with a thesis on “Planned Outdoor Spaces”. From 1982 on he held a professorship for “Urban Planning, History of Urban Planning and Urban Image Management” at the Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg (Hamburg University of Technology), and in 2007 he was appointed emeritus professor. This was followed by numerous teaching appointments (urban development planning, history of urban development), research (including excavation management of the Bronze Age city ruin Tall Munba¯qa [Ekalte], Syria, from 1978 to 2010), planning practice (urban development with public participation) and membership of various institutions (among others, he was a board member of the “Lebendige Stadt” Foundation, Hamburg, from 2006 to 2017).
Barbara Schildt-Specker
Barbara Schildt-Specker is a trained haute couture dressmaker. She studied history, art history and Romance languages and literature at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Düsseldorf and completed her studies with a doctorate (Dr phil). Since 2008, Schildt-Specker has been a lecturer in the Department of History at the Universität Duisburg-Essen. She lives in Düsseldorf and works as a freelance author in the fields of history, art and textiles.
Georg Kulenkampff
Georg Kulenkampff was born in 1951. After gaining a degree in economics, he held a number of managerial posts in well-known companies. Among others, he was a member of the management boards of Veba AG, Metro AG and Deutsche Annington. Kulenkampff has been self-employed since 2010 and is active in an honorary capacity in various fields .
David Behning
David Behning was born in Minden in 1983. He studied philosophy and psychology in Bielefeld and Atlanta (USA) with a focus on aesthetics, philosophy of mind and German idealism. Having worked in various curatorial posts and managed an art gallery in Düsseldorf, he established himself as an art dealer, and in 2016 he founded the gallery Engelage & Lieder in Düsseldorf-Flingern.
Ralph Richter
Ralph Richter is a photographer and film designer based in Düsseldorf. Specialising in architecture and people photography as well as corporate communication, Richter has been working digitally since the 1990s and started using 3D CGI design at an early stage of his career. Building on his years of experience in all areas of classical photography, he began to incorporate computer-generated visualisations into his work. Since 2010 Ralph Richter has also worked as a film designer on the development and implementation of image campaigns and art projects.
Selected projects:
Documentation of the new Commerzbank building in Frankfurt am Main, commissioned by the architects Foster & Partner
Book project on the new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, in collaboration with Frank Gehry and Edition Menges
Documentation of the conversion of the Reichstag building into the German Bundestag, commissioned by the Federal Republic of Germany
Worldwide image campaigns for the automotive industry, as well as for banks and technology companies
Consultant for visual development in various international companies
Solo exhibitions in Moscow, New York, Munich, Düsseldorf
Thomas Schönauer
Thomas Schönauer, born in 1953, is a Düsseldorf-based artist who has gained international recognition for his large-scale sculpture projects in public and private spheres. Over the course of his career he has created various groups of works (“Skyfalls” and “Atompops”) in which he explores the relationship between space and mass in new ways. For several years now, Schönauer has been working with the basic form of the lens – the volume-creating ideal form that combines the disc and the sphere – in his “Invader” and “Cultivator” series. For a group of works known as the “CT Paintings”, he even developed an entirely new artistic technique. Unique anywhere in the world, this painting technique involves mixing epoxy resins with colour pigments and pouring them over stainless steel plates. The elaboration and conception of Heaven’s Cross can be regarded as the climax of Schönauer’s artistic oeuvre to date.
His work is characterised by the fact that it re-examines, implements and communicates fundamental art-theoretical, sociological and philosophical questions of extensive scope with the aid of innovative, often interdisciplinary techniques and concepts.
Works by Thomas Schönauer are represented in numerous public and private collections.
Exhibitions (selection):
2018
Secret Ingredients, Engelage & Lieder, Düsseldorf
Swiss Triennial Festival of Sculpture, Bad Ragaz, 1st prize winner
2017
INNER LOGIC, Engelage & Lieder, Düsseldorf
2015
Thomas Schönauer – Skulptur und Malerei, Städtische Galerie Schloss Neersen
Willich Raumfarbenspiel – Die Vereinigung der Gegensätze, GRS-Art House in cooperation with “Sans Titre”, Potsdam
The engineering Artist, Foyer VDI House, Düsseldorf
2013
Nuovo Labore, Galleria Plurima, Udine
Landscape–seascape–spacescape, Galerie Biesenbach, Cologne
2012
Swiss Triennial Festival of Sculpture, Bad Ragaz
micro-macro, Museum Burg Vischering, Coesfeld
2011
Thomas Schönauer, 125. Geburtstag von Mies van der Rohe, in collaboration with Sascha Berretz and W. Blaser, Galerie Freitag 18.30, Aachen
CT-Universe, Merck Finck & Co Bank, Düsseldorf
2010
540°, Niterói Contemporary Art Museum / Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art, Salvador do Bahia, FAAP, São Paulo Museum Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte
2009
Nuove Labore, Galleria Plurima, Udine Atompops, Highlights der Physik, Gürzenich, Cologne
Zeit ist Farbe, Galerie LandskronSchneidzik, Nuremberg
2008
2008+, Galerie Noack, Mönchengladbach
12 am Ring, Wiesbadener Kunstsommer, Wiesbaden
2007
Skyfall – vom Himmel gefallen, Villa Heusgen, Krefeld, Galerie Wende Art, Düsseldorf / Krefeld
2002
Matter, Energy and Space, in collaboration with Michael Burges, Galerie Lea Gredt, Luxembourg
Die Welt hinter den Dingen, Mercatorhalle, Duisburg
1992
Cacique, Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro
1991
Vishwa, Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl
A.T.W. Past-Present-Future, Museo de Artes Plasticas, Montevideo
A.T.W. Past-Present-Future, Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl
A.T.W. sounding room, Amsterdam / New York / Cape Town
1990
A.T.W. Past-Present-Future, PS1 Museum, New York
A.T.W. Past-Present-Future, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro
Bilder vom Neuen Deutschland, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
Vishwa, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen
1989
A.T.W. Past-Present-Future, Langage-Plus Museum, Québec
1986
Die Torte, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf
Andreas Kipar
Andreas Kipar, born in 1960, is the founder and creative director of the international landscape architecture studio LAND. Since 1990, together with his team, he has been developing renowned landscape architecture projects ranging from master planning to object planning.
Taking the qualities of each location and space as its starting point, LANDschaftsarchitektur confronts the current challenges in the field of tension between the cultural and the natural needs of society.
From 1980 to 1984 Kipar studied landscape architecture at the Universität GHS Essen and from 1989 to 1994 he studied architecture and urban development at the Politecnico di Milano, Milan. Since 2000 he has been a lecturer for landscape architecture at the Università di Genova. He has been a visiting professor at the universities in Rome, Naples and Cagliari, and currently teaches “Public Space Design” at the Politecnico di Milano, Milan.
In 2018 LAND received the MIPIM Award for the Porta Nuova Best Urban Regeneration Project and also the renowned German-Italian special award MERCURIO. Other awards include: Russian Award in Landscape Architecture 2015; International PLEA Award – Passive and Low Energy Architecture 2014; Medaglia d’Oro per L’Architettura Italiana 2012; Internationaler Trendpreis 2002; Bauen mit Grün award of the European Landscape Construction Association (ECLA); INU Lombardy Award 1990.
In 2006 Kipar received the Landscape Architecture Award in North Rhine-Westphalia for the city park Krefeld-Fischeln, and in 2008 and 2009 he won the Landscape Prize in the Sardinia region. In 2007 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.
Selected projects:
2019
International Horticultural Exhibition 2019, Beijing, PRC
Saint-Laurent Biodiversity Corridor, Montreal, Canada
2018
Emscher Freiheit, Essen, Germany
MIND Milan Innovation District, Milan, Italy
2017
Airolo Valley Renaturation, Canton Ticino, Switzerland
UNaLab demonstration project, Genoa, Italy
2016
Passante di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
2015–2020
Expo 2020 Dubai, United Arab Emirates
2015–2016
Energielandschaft Lohberg, Dinslaken, Germany
2014–2016
Die Welle, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2014–2015
Venice Green Tree, Porto Marghera, Venice, Italy
Landscape enhancement C.O.V.A., Viggiano, Italy
2014
Ca’ Corniani landscape enhancement, Caorle, Venice, Italy
Nagatino Family Park, Moscow, Russia
Stadio della Roma Tor di Valle, Rome, Italy
International Financial Centre, Moscow, Russia
3rd Generation Agglomeration Programme, Lugano Region, Switzerland
Khodynka Park, Moscow, Russia
2012
Unicredit Bank Austria, Vienna, Austria
Roma Arcipelago Verde, Rome, Italy
2007–2010
ThyssenKrupp Headquarters, Essen, Germany/
2006–2010
Diesel, Breganze, Italy
2006–2016
Porta Nuova, Milan, Italy
2006–2015
Parco Baronio, Ravenna, Italy
2006–2011
Krupp Park “Five Hills”, Essen, Germany
2005–2011
Adda Mallero Park, Sondrio, Italy
2005
Master Plan Green Rays, Milan, Italy
2000
Stadtpark Krefeld-Fischeln, Krefeld, Germany
1997
Portello Park – former Alfa Romeo factory, Milan, Italy
1994–2010
Bicocca, former Pirelli factory, Milan, Italy
Acknowledgements
Our special thanks go to:
The Lutheran World Federation, its former president Bishop Younan, and the German National Committee (DNK/LWB) represented by Norbert Denecke and Hans W. Kasch
The “Lebendige Stadt” Foundation, Hamburg, in particular Alexander Otto, Dr Andreas Mattner and Prof. Dittmar Machule
Lutherstadt Wittenberg, in particular the former Mayor Eckhardt Neumann, the current Mayor Torsten Zugehör and the city administration as a whole
Aluminium Rheinfelden GmbH, Rheinfelden, in particular Erika Zender
Metallbau Henschel, Barby, represented by Eckhard and Hendrik Henschel, and the entire team
Bernhard Bramlage Architects, Düsseldorf
The Trützschler company and its proprietors, the Trützschler and Schürenkrämer families, Mönchengladbach
Dr Andreas Kipar and the team at LAND Srl, Milan/Düsseldorf/Lugano
Thomas Schönauer and team, Düsseldorf
Günter Schildhauer, WET Wittenberger Edelstahl-Technik, Wittenberg
Fisch & Fleisch, Büro für visuelle Gestaltungskraft, Düsseldorf, here in particular Alexa Paetzel
Ralph Richter, Photography and Film, Düsseldorf
Das Druckhaus Beineke Dickmanns GmbH, Korschenbroich, represented by Petra Trempelmann
Galerie Engelage und Lieder, Düsseldorf, represented by Svea Herzog and David Behning
The authors: David Behning, Norbert Denecke, Andreas Kipar, Georg Kulenkampff, Dittmar Machule, Alexander Otto, Ralph Richter, Barbara Schildt-Specker, Thomas Schönauer, Erika Zender
Image credits:
Front slipcase and pp. 7–42, 85, 103, 137, 145, 178: Seen by Ralph Richter
Rear slipcase and pp. 46–69, 155: J. Raimann © Engelage & Lieder
p. 87 – Photo: Johannes Winkelmann, Wittenberg Marketing
p. 89 – Photo, above: DNK/LWB, F. Hübner; below: © LWB/D.-M. Grötzsch
p. 97 – Photo: Thomas Schönauer
p. 101 – Photo: Hendrik Henschel
p. 107 – Planting plan: LWB-Zentrum Wittenberg
p. 109 – Photo: LWB/Marko Schöneberg
p. 140 – Photo: © Domschatz Essen, Nicole Cronauge, Essen Diocese
p. 141, above – Photo: © Hohe Domkirche Köln, Dombauhütte Köln, Cologne / Photo: Matz und Schenk; below – Photo © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln, Cologne, rba_c018771
p. 143, above: Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin / Photo: Wolfgang Pfauder; below: © Estate of Martin Kippenberger, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne / Photo: Photo Hofer. IBK
p. 144 – Photo: Frank Wegbünder, Bad Bentheim
p. 174 – Photo: Thomas Lohnes, DNK/LWB
p. 175 – Photo: Denis Ignatov, Düsseldorf + ECE Projektmanagement GmbH
p. 176 – Photo: Roman Jupitz, Hamburg + private
p. 177 – Photo: Peter Wirtz, Dormagen + private
p. 180 – Photo: Stefan Lindauer
p. 182 – Photo: LAND Germany GmbH
Design:
Fisch & Fleisch – Büro für visuelle Gestaltungskraft, Düsseldorf, www.fischetfleisch.de
Printing:
Das Druckhaus Beineke Dickmanns GmbH, Korschenbroich, www.das-druckhaus.de
Publisher/Gallery:
Engelage & Lieder, Düsseldorf, www.engelage-lieder.com
Proofreading (German edition):
Anne Fries, Lektorat & Übersetzungen, Düsseldorf, www.anne-fries.de
Proofreading (English translation):
Matthew Partridge
Typesetting and colour reproduction:
lombardostarz, Berlin, www.lombardostarz.com
Editing:
Svea Herzog
Final artwork:
DIE QUALITANER Gesellschaft zur Produktion von Druckmedien mbH, Düsseldorf, www.qualitaner.de
ISBN: 978-3-00-060991-6
Edition: 500 (+ 50 limited artist copies)
This publication including its parts is protected by copyright. Any use outside the copyright law without the consent of the authors is prohibited.
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data can be found on the Internet at http://dnd.ddb.de
1st edition, 2018
© Engelage & Lieder, Düsseldorf
Heaven’s Cross in the Luther Garden, Wittenberg
Andreas Kipar and Thomas Schönauer
Volume of plates + volume of essays
“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
—
Martin Luther
