Europe, a common heritage. 1999. Marie-Louise von Plessen. Statement for the Sibiu Colloquy
It was with regret that I turned down my invitation to this colloquy; I would have preferred to be there in person to tell you about the similarities between the theme of the colloquy and my work as an exhibition organiser and historian.
I am unable to attend as I am travelling to the Baltic states to negotiate loans, meet artists and carry out research in order to gather material for a planned exhibition in Copenhagen.
The exhibition will feature a selection of contemporary artists from the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea – Russia, the Baltic states, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Finland – and will be linked to another comprehensive exhibition recounting the stormy relations between these countries, as witnessed by events involving the naval fortresses in the Baltic Sea, sites which reflect a thousand years of shared history, and cultural bridges in times of war and peace.
The exhibition, which is part of the festivities in Denmark and Sweden to mark the opening of the bridge and tunnel linking the cities of Malmö and Copenhagen, will be held at Charlottenborg Exhibition Hall in Copenhagen in autumn 2000.
As in other projects I have carried out over the past fifteen years, I am attempting to focus, intellectually and visually, on cultural routes that have been hidden, forgotten or quite simply abandoned as a result of changing attitudes and ideologies.
Through a choice of objects and written accounts, I am aiming to conjure up conflicting sites of historical significance, states of mind, and the historical, mythical, literary and artistic relationships that have shaped the region in spite of the oppositions and borders that have built up throughout its history.
I am trying to give a voice to objects from
museum storerooms and archives so that the public, even without any previous
training, may discover and hence appreciate networks reflecting a shared
identity that are often of topical interest.
That was also the thinking behind the first
historical exhibition at the new German History Museum in Berlin in 1990. I was in charge of the exhibition, which
dealt with a theme of major European significance: “Bismarck, Prussia, Germany
and Europe”. Biographical displays on
the man who unified the Germans depicted the statesman against the background
of the Austro-Hungarian, Italian, Polish and German national movements up to
1900. Connections were also made to
liberal and social movements of the time. Material was lent by 18 European countries to
make the end result truly authentic.
In the same vein, I played on “biographical” links when dealing with intercultural routes along the Elbe. The river, which runs through a considerable portion of the central and northern European basin, has developed its own cultural landscape, starting from its source in Bohemia. Along its banks, numerous sites of dynastic importance and trading centres have shaped mentalities through the ages; they include Melník, Theresienstadt (Terezín), the former Habsburg stronghold which became a Nazi concentration camp, Dresden, Magdeburg and Hamburg, leading to the mouth of the Elbe at Cuxhaven by the North Sea.
The interdisciplinary exhibition featured a
thousand objects from 200 different lenders and recounted the river’s history
in topographical order, following its course along its banks. For example, palaeontology was dealt with
alongside ancient history and art, archaeology alongside science, and trade
alongside industry and nuclear energy.
Visitors were able to explore the different topographical sections by
following a guiding thread along the virtual riverbed. This travelling exhibition was staged shortly
after the fall of the Berlin wall, in Dresden in 1992 and 1993, then in a
bilingual Czech/German version at the National Museum in Prague, and finally in
Hamburg.
“Marianne and Germania: a century of Franco-German passion, 1789-1889” (catalogue complet, archives Actes Sud) was the title of the second stage of an exhibition, held at the Musée du PetitPalais in Paris in winter 1997/98 under the cultural co-operation agreements between the cities of Paris and Berlin. It was a scaled-down version of an exhibition I had earlier staged at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin.
The Berlin exhibition, a central event in the city’s autumn cultural festival, dealt with relations between France and Germany, focusing on the highs and lows of cultural relations between the two neighbouring countries in the nineteenth century. It was a time of national movements, rich in exchange between the two mentalities and their symbols and mutual encouragement, providing inspiration for intellectuals in a wide range of fields, both artistic and scientific, and enhancing their knowledge of the good and bad qualities of their respective neighbours across the Rhine. The intellectual history of France and Germany was recounted in rooms devoted to specific themes, with a variety of source material from the period – works of art, archive documents and first-hand accounts – the guiding thread being the imagery of the respective national symbols, Marianne and Germania.
In the large entrance hall in Berlin, the virtual sisters were depicted back to back in the form of giant sculptures, united in pursuing the French Revolution ideal of a nation state yet perpetually at odds because of the incompatible destinies of the countries they represented. The public and the international press, even beyond Europe, were captivated by this narrative concept, which was essentially intellectual yet aimed to highlight the mutual disappointments arising from images of enemies and friends oscillating between love and hate, attraction and repulsion, prejudice and misunderstanding, against the turbulent political background of these decades, without, however, addressing the atrocities of the twentieth century.
Looking forward to a united Europe in the
twenty-first century, Paris and Berlin attempted to relive and examine the
minefield of the nineteenth century, the sieges and the quarrels and shouting
matches between Marianne and Germania.
My latest exhibition, which is running until early October, deals with the myth of Weimar. Although this former dynastic seat in Thuringia has declined in terms of population and economic power, it is a prime example of a “place of remembrance”, having shaped an intellectual, literary and artistic network that inspired the world of books, thought, architecture and theatre, and was selected as European cultural capital for 1999.
In Weimar, I have devised a journey through time (as opposed to a museum visit) : a historical and cultural route entirely in the public sphere, in the form of a labyrinth between the Goethe House and the Buchenwald memorial near the station.
The 23 thematic sites along the way bring the individual face to face with the collective past. Explorers of the past may thus learn to accept the discontinuities and sudden transitions from one period to the next. They are assisted by a variety of material entirely in facsimile: quotations, texts, illustrations or first-hand audio-visual documents, at a range of sites in different urban environments, which may be visited every day for six months and have neither doors nor attendants. Walking through Weimar, visitors may discover and experience the fantasy and atmosphere of an unfamiliar here and now, imaginary situations and real people. There is no stage management, as visitors are invited to develop their own self-perceptions through time and space.
This journey through time is a
radical means of deconstructing the public sphere and encouraging inner
perception. It involves the use of
memory, street museums, and an intangible “cabinet of curiosities” with no
walls or glass cases: a kind of encyclopaedia that individuals may enhance and
extend to other places and times as they wish.
Journeys through time may therefore be undertaken in many places that have been forgotten over time and abandoned by the collective historical memory.
This
would require a major Europe-wide project, which could be launched by means of
cultural routes.
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