Anselm (Anselm – Das Rauschen der Zeit)

The Women of Antiquity

Octavia, Poppaea, Julia Maesa...

We may be the nameless and forgotten ones,

but we don't forget a thing.

Uriel...

Gabriel and...

Raphael.

And there is Michael.

Ladybird fly home,

your father is at war,

your mother is in Pomerania,

Pomerania has all burnt down,

so sleep, baby, sleep.

BAD CHILDREN'S CELL

For P.C. and M.H.

Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger.

Templum,

that means: language

the House of Being.

I spilled the night out of a pot,

it wasn’t night in there enough

for Paul Celan

'Wolf's-bean' by Paul Celan

You flowers of Germany,

oh, my heart becomes crystal incorruptible,

in which light tests itself.

Lock the door. There are roses in the house.

There are seven roses in the house.

In the Ukraine,

where they murdered my father and mother:

what flowers were there?

What flower, Mother,

hurt you there with its name?

You, Mother, who said 'wolf’s-bean',

not 'lupine'.

Mother, whose hand did I clasp

as I went with your words to Germany?

Mother, murderers live there.

Mother, they're silent.

Mother, they’re writing poems.

Mother,

no one silences the murderers!

How difficult it must have been for Paul Celan,

a Jewish poet, to have to write in the German language!

After all, both mother and father fell victim to the Holocaust.

Death-Fugue

Black milk of dawn we drink you evenings

we drink you at noon and on mornings we drink you at night

we drink and we drink

we dig a grave in the winds

where one lies at ease

A man lives in the house

who plays with the snakes who writes

who writes when it darkens to Germany

your golden hair Margarete

he writes it and steps in front of his house

and the stars glisten

and he whistles his dogs to come

he whistles his Jews to appear lets a grave be dug in the earth

He shouts stab deeper into the earth you there

you others play on for the dance

he grabs the gun in his belt

he draws it his eyes are blue

stab deeper your spades there you others play on for the dance

Black milk of dawn we drink you at night

we drink you at noon and on mornings, we drink you evenings

we drink you and drink

a man lives in the house

your golden hair Margarete

your ashen hair Shulamit he plays with the snakes

He calls out play death more sweetly

death is a master from Germany

he calls scrape those fiddles more darkly

then as smoke you’ll rise in the air

then you’ll have a grave in the clouds there one lies at ease

Black milk of dawn we drink you at night

we drink you at noon death is a master from Germany

we drink you evenings and mornings we drink and we drink

death is a master from Deutschland

his eye is blue

he strikes you with lead bullets

his aim is true

a man lives in the house

your golden hair Margarete

he sets his dogs on us

he gifts us a grave in the air

he plays with the snakes and he dreams

death is a master from Germany

your golden hair Margarete

your ashen hair Shulamit

This is the Martin Heidegger book.

Here you see

the brain of Martin Heidegger

in my attic in Hornbach,

and these are all poisonous mushrooms

which then cause a cancer

to grow in the brain.

Now there is already a slight darkening,

and here you see

how the cancer is spreading.

It becomes bigger,

almost taking over half the brain.

And now the cancer is all over.

Heidegger, I could have even met in person,

when I was studying in Freiburg.

He taught there at the same time.

Paul Celan met with him once,

in the mid-60s,

in his remote cabin in the Black Forest.

What did he expect from the visit

with the German thinker?

Some explanation of his Nazi past?

Into the guest book, Celan wrote:

In the cabin book,

with a view of the fountain star

and a hope in the heart for a word to come

25 July 1967.

But such a word never came.

Nothing but silence from the great philosopher.

Nothing about his errors.

The whole of society was silent then,

all failed to grasp the unimaginable.

I myself lived among people

who had all been around

and didn't want to talk about it.

Now we try this one.

Let's take off the fern, the big one at least.

This one we bring to the front.

Ludwig, across like that.

Wiesław, alcohol...

Ok, good.

Careful.

At the bottom!

SKY...PAINTING...EARTH

Dear Josef Beuys,

Thank you for your quick reply to my letter.

I’m glad you agreed to look at my paintings.

I’ll soon be on my way

from the Odenwald

to you in Düsseldorf...

Joseph Beuys, at the Düsseldorf Academy,

had many subsequently successful students.

As early as 1972, he wanted to save the forest with them.

Here, with the young Anselm Kiefer,

whom he quickly made a master student.

Mr. Kiefer, you live deep in the Odenwald,

far from the hectic pace of everyday life.

Is this a better way to work, a kind of retreat?

I live here because I need the landscape for my work.

I work with the landscape.

Of course, it’s also beneficial that it’s peaceful here,

and that I have few disruptions.

I can occupy a big house

which would be more difficult in the city.

At the Biennale Anselm Kiefer is representing

the artistic position of the FRG.

This choice is a big misunderstanding.

The museum director maybe thought

he had found another ‘Neue Wilde’,

as the German neo-expressionists are called.

But with his history slander, that isn't what Anselm Kiefer is.

At most he is a new reactionary.

‘Ways of World Wisdom’ is written on a giant woodcut.

And what are these ways called?

Kiefer’s German nationalist answer: 'The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest'.

Grabbe is surely not suspected

to be a German nationalist or a chauvinist.

Yes, but the subject was so strongly

utilised by the Nazis... - Yes, totally abused.

But that’s just why, because I was born in 1945,

I have the chance to take up this subject again.

There's no use in suppressing it, just because the Nazis abused it.

POPPY AND MEMORY

This is beautiful, Ludwig! It’s getting there!

BED MEMORY

Herr Kiefer, a little lower?

Lower, so it doesn’t splash so much.

But I want it to splash, at first.

America has a new superstar: Anselm Kiefer.

The start of his retrospective in Chicago

was celebrated as the art event of the year.

An international Kiefer symposium