Texts to some Artwork
,,Go Back To Fehmarn!“
„Did I get you at last, canaille!“ bawled the drunken SS general Reinhard Heydrich and fired a bullet into his bathroom mirror. Finally, he was finished off on the 27th of May 1942 in Prague, when an assassin’s bomb shattered his staff car and lacerated his spleen. Now he was dead, the „man with the iron heart“, as Hitler called him, or „split face“, as nicknamed by his Allied enemies. Not even his fellow SS comrades were particularly sorry to see him go. „The sow has kicked the bucket at last!“ was the spontaneous comment of Sepp Dietrich, commander of Hitler’s infamous bodyguard unit, the Leibstandarte, when he heard the news of Heydrich’s death, and even Heydrich’s superior, SS chief Heinrich Himmler, reacted more reserved than concerned.
He, the organizer of the mass murder of the European Jews, an exceptionally gifted violinist, one of the best fencers and equestrian sportsmen of Nazi Germany, and an affectionate father of four children. How does all this fit together? He, who once enabled a Polish-Jewish fencer to leave for America by providing money and documents, he, too intelligent to believe in the myth of the „inferior Jewish race“, yet was one of the biggest mass murderer in history?
When dying in this Prague hospital, his last words he didn’t address to Nazi Germany nor to Hitler but to his wife Lisa, born von Osten. Well aware about his unpopularity that made him as well as his arrogant wife even among the SS outsiders, it was for him, testified by his last words, „Geh zurück nach Fehmarn!“ („Go back to Fehmarn!“) an important concern to know his wife as well as his children in safety on the Baltic Sea island of Fehmarn, the homeland of Lina Heydrich …Materials
Two life-size busts of Heydrich (reinforced gypsum, made by H.v. Schneidemühl), installed on top of a plexiglass sheeted box, filled with the „equipment“ of an inclined „armchair culprit“: a military saddle – an SS general’s leather coat – an opera glass – a silver cigarette case – a typewriter – a service telephone – a silver champagne container – an SS officer cap – a P-38 pistol/holster – an SS officer dagger – a violin+bow – two fencing foils – a riding whip – a fencing sabre – a pair of officer boots – a fencing mask – Hegel`s „Wissenschaft und Logik“ (Science and Logic) – Schubert`s Sonantionen, Opus 137 for violin …
,,A Gordonary African Booty Chest“
After a siege of several months, an army of 50,000 Muslims, fanatical warriors for the glory of Islam and followers of the Mahdi, their religious as well as military leader, stormed Khartoum, the capital of the Egyptian province of Sudan, then under the control of the British Empire. Among the thousands of people killed on that day was also Charles George Gordon, governor-general of Sudan. His head, first presented to the victorious Mahdi in a golden chest, was later positioned hanging between two trees somewhere in Khartoum. The rivets of the superior iron weapons of the British of the 19th century, the rivet-like tattoo scars, as to be found on the female faces of some of the South Sudanese tribes, equally united in the face of a man whose serious goal it was to end slavery in this part of the world – and who received death instead.
Materials:
A wooden, gold-plated, fully-engraved African chest plus a larger-than-life-size bust of General Gordon, made by H.v. Schneidemühl of reinforced gypsum.
,, Trajectory“
On March 3, 1945, a Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter was shot down over Brunswick-Waggum during an aerial fight with American bombers. Its pilot, Hauptmann Heinz Gutmann, died in the crash. Examinations of the armour glass window that was found among the crash remnants resulted in the conclusion that the jet, attacking from a banked position, obviously flew straight into the defensive fire of the upper gun turret of a B-17. By doing so, the belly of the cockpit of the Me 262 was hit by several bullets of which at least two must have pierced the pilot – and then the steel frame of the armour glass window. Two more bullets hit the 9cm thick laminated glass of the armour window.
Materials
- Original armour glass window of the above Me 262
- Four brass sticks, demonstrating the trajectories of the above described deadly projectiles plus an underbelly panel of a WW2 military aircraft
,,Magnitude“
On the 2nd of June 1942, a second offensive, named „Störfang“, was launched by the Germans to take the fortified city and stronghold of Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula. For more than one month, the garrison of Sevastopol, suffering from food and ammunition shortage, withstood the merciless air attacks and artillery bombardments of the Germans who fired resp. dropped around 50,000 tons of ammunition. Only on the 4th of July, after having lost tens of thousands of soldiers, the survivors capitulated.
Among the involved weapons were several giant, track-bound mortars, nicknamed Karl and Thor, which fired two-ton heavy shells, caliber 60 cm(!). Russian officers, sitting in bunkers relatively far away from the sites of the impacts of these shells, later talked about „indescribable, earthquake-like shock vibrations of the subsoil“.
Materials
An approximately 200 kilograms heavy, 130 cm long splinter of a „Thor“ shell,
dug out a couple of years ago at the site of the former fortress of Sevastopol. The splinter has been welded onto its platform head first.
„Romeo on Juliet„
In October 1944, with the war almost lost and almost over, Heinkel, the producer of the infamous „Blitz“ bomber He 111, nevertheless submitted the designs for two small, mainly wooden and easy-to-produce interceptors to the Air Ministry in Berlin. Being an aesthete and a lover of Shakespeare, it was an honour for Ernst Heinkel to name his very last WW2 aircraft designs after the two tragic heroes of one of the greatest theater plays of all time.
More than 70 years later, another aesthete and lover of Shakespeare, the artist and craftsman designer Hermann von Schneidemühl, took the courage to breathe life into the two almost unknown Heinkel designs by producing them in their full size … but not without adding his very own idea of what kind of „romantic“ relationship Romeo and Juliet really had…
,,Kurdesh“
In May 1274 BC, more than 40,000 men and 6,000 chariots, the tanks of antiquity, clashed near the city of Kadesh, today’s Lebanese-Syrian border. Tens of thousands died.
In July 1943 AC, more than 400,000 men and 6,000 tanks, the chariots of our days, clashed near the city of Kursk, Central Russia. Hundreds of thousands died… when will you (we) ever learn…
,,Ushijima and Cho“
On the 22nd of June 1945, the 3-month battle for Okinawa was over. 110,000 Japanese and 12,000 American soldiers were dead. Realizing that they could hold out no longer, generals Ushijima and Cho, commanding officers of the wiped-out garrison of Okinawa, made ready for death. Strengthened by an opulent farewell meal (rice, salmon, canned meat, potatoes, fish rissole, bean curd soup, cabbage, vegetables, pineapple, tea, Scotch whisky, Sake), they were ready for „Seppuku“, the ritual suicide of the Samurai.
The rest of the story is told by a Japanese prisoner of war who witnessed the final ceremony:
At four o’clock, the hour of Hara Kiri: Ushijima, dressed in a full field uniform and Cho, wearing a white Kimono, appeared. Cho, chief of staff, said when leaving the cave, „Well, General Ushijima, as our way may be dark, I, Cho, will lead the way with some light.“ The commanding general answered, „Please do so, and I, Ushijima, will take my fan with me since it will be very warm there.“
There was a simultaneous shout and the flash of a sword, than another repeated shout and a second flash of a sword, and both generals had nobly accomplished their last duty.
Materials:
Framed portraits of Ushijima and Cho – an antique letter case – a mother-of-pearl fan – a Japanese Knight’s Cross – a candle – some jewellery – an antique candle container -a gold-plated Sake bowl – a miniature Katana sword – and a wooden 18th-century Shinto fertility penis.
,,Kinetics“
On April 15, 2007, a Tornado jet of the German Federal Luftwaffe, Squadron Immelmann, crashed at a speed of 800 km/h when hitting a mountain in the Lauterbrunnen valley in the Swiss Alps. While the second officer survived the crash by bailing out, the pilot died on the spot. The heroes of antiquity have long been dead, the heroes of Hitler are banned and entombed, and the military heroes of the present are replaced by so-called influencers. So, what is left for a young Luftwaffe pilot yearning for fame (whose squadron carries the name of a German WWI ace) other than identifying with (virtual) heroes such as Tom Cruise in „Top Gun“… as a member of the Swiss government later called the whole case. A (prohibited) double looping amidst 3000-meter-high mountains and than, seconds later, this attempt to penetrate a 100-million-tons rock with his jet: isn’t that a passage of a hero?
Materials:
—The smashed original 27mm rotating cannon BK 27 of the above mentioned jet—
—Main components of a Tornado „terrain finding radar system“ in mint condition (acquisition costs for BK-27 plus radar system = approx. 400,000 USD)—
—A mint condition Tornado crash recorder plus four aluminum plates—
Plate 1: Smoke column of the crashed jet. Photo taken by a ski tourist
Plate 2: Ripped-off wing in the snow. Photo taken by the rescue team
Plate 3: Mathematical formula of the released kinetic energy of this crash
Plate 4: Hermann von Schneidemühl’s artistic interpretation of the above formula
,,Art Is Hope„
1947: In search for motives, three art students stroll through the ruins of the New Reichs
Chancellery. Build in the record time of less than one year, this monumental complex of
buildings was also erected to give evidence of the power and splendour of the Third Reich
for the next thousand years to come: well, eleven years after its completion, this huge
structure that had cost the tax payer around half a billion in today`s money was gone…
just as it had never been more than a Fata Morgana respectively one of the megalomaniac
ideas of Adolf Hitler and his architect Albert Speer…
The left photo was taken in the so-called “Mosaiksaal” (mosaic hall), a spaciality,
originally sheeted in red marble, having the unbelievable measurements of
46 x 19 x 13 meters. In the right photo, the three students are standing in the remains
of the “Runder Saal” (round hall), originally sheeted in more grey sorts of marble.
It was this hall that functioned as a connecting room between the “Mosaiksaal” and
the “Marmor Galerie”, a kind of glittering passage-way that exceeded with its length of
150 meters the famous “mirror hall” of Versaille castle by far.
While two students are staring fearfully into a giant hole, symbol of a violent downfall
of a violent system, the third student is looking into the “Mosaiksaal” next door,
then already stripped of its cold marble splendour…