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Posts from the ‘Germany’ category
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Erste Woche – ohne Kommentar
Astronomer Johannes Kepler: birth town Weil der Stadt
Above/featured: Johannes Kepler memorial at Marktplatz in Weil der Stadt. Photo, 21 Jul 2024 (P15).
I first heard the name “Kepler” way back in high school. I had no idea “Kepler” would embody a winding trail of education, knowledge, a “first life” (career), and a deep lifelong appreciation of science. Thankfully, what’s transformed has been a “second life” opened to another world with more questions, some of which have led to unexpected places. Perhaps, the cost is a solitary quest for answers, but ultimately, my motivation has always been clear: it’s because I need to know.
In the same way Kepler, like many others before and after, looked up at night and asked a simple question: “why do stars and planets appear and move as they do in the sky?”
To the here and now, my questions begin and land on our own planet.
For example, where was Kepler born? Where is this place? Are there any traces in those spaces?
But first, who was Kepler?
Berlin’s Hamburger Bhf: no trains, only transition
Above: Appearing in Raleway font is the additional line: This is not a train station.”
There is no meat or bread here.
There are also no trains here. No longer.
There is only art, and in this instance, there is a contemporary art piece that’s a historical nod.
The artwork “Transition” (2009–present) by Polish artist Robert Kuśmirowski is housed in the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, a museum of late-20th and 21st-century art in the German capital city of Berlin. Kuśmirowski’s piece refers to the building’s past and its present. “Transition” is a part of the ensemble “Unendliche Ausstellung” (Eternal Exhibition”) on permanent display throughout the Hamburger Bahnhof gallery-museum.
My Berlin: The Parliament of Trees
Above: “Parlament der Bäume gegen Krieg und Gewalt.”
In Berlin’s government district is a patch of ground – a garden, really, with tall trees and a place that’s easy to overlook. The official name is “Parlament der Bäume gegen Krieg und Gewalt” (Parliament of Trees Against War and Violence), begun by artist Ben Wagin in 1990.
Wagin (1930–2021) began planting trees on land where the former Berlin Wall used to run near the historic Reichstag government building, as authorities began dismantling the physical wall. What remains of Wagin’s experiment is a piece of ground that acts as both memorial to what the Wall represented and fractured, and an aspiration for both modern Germany and Europe.
Of the many trees in this space, 16 of them represent the 16 modern federal states of Germany. There are also slabs of granite on which are engraved the names of the victims of the Wall. The “back” wall is painted with murals and messages, and in between are little paths and flower beds. I think Wagin also wants to remind us that in many parts in Berlin and throughout Germany, the former Wall dividing the city and the two former nations, respectively, have been reclaimed by nature.
Fotoeins Fotografie 