The Cistercians founded this gothic abbey in Chorin/Brandenburg in 1258.
After centuries of power and influence, secularization in the 16th century led to a long decay, until it was partially restored under Karl Friedrich Schinkel in the 19th century.
At the same time of the year, the Pacific woods already burst with wildflowers.
Here we see the Trillium ovatum, whose white flowers slowly turn pink while they age.
The threefold symmetry sees the occasional exception with the appearance of a quadrillium, which has fourfold symmetry, like the four leaf clover. With astonishment I saw here a specimen with two-fold symmetry of leaves, petals, stamen and sepals. Duollium?
Our human sense of time is deeply flawed — linear, homocentric, short.
The majestic redwoods of the Pacific Northwest capture our centuries in moments of their existence – past, present and future become one.
Each year a circle, circle after circle, in perpetuity.
Time here has become space that is occupied by fragile instances of hope.
Burnt, scarred, fractured, hollowed, and yet still alive, stubbornly providing support for what is more important.
We humans have managed to reproduce the size of these trees in our cities. However, what we have missed is to also capture the organic beauty of every little detail, each sliver of bark.
We still haven’t acquired the patience and the determination to allow something to happen.
Let’s not forget that trees will remember us when we are all gone.
Any mention of a Winterreise evokes Franz Schubert’s song cycle from 1827 based on the poems by Wilhelm Müller.
Anselm Kiefer’s tight installation with the same title at the Diversity United exhibition in Berlin displays a wintry landscape on a stage in a narrow optical perspective.
Actors appear as labels on wooden tags: Names like Joseph von Eichendorff, Madame de Staël, Ulrike Meinhoff, Hermann Hesse and many others make it clear that the scope is larger than German Romanticism from the 19th century.
The extension happens in space, towards France, and in time towards our century.
The choice of objects include mushrooms from a fairy tale forest as well as war relics: A discrepancy between imagination and reality that has only been partially processed by the actors-writers on stage.
Schubert’s and Kiefer’s Winterreise both warn us about illusions. Why do we never listen?
Below is a stereo pair for creating a 3D illusion for those of us capable of cross-eyed viewing.
The Dorotheenstadt Cemetery is permanent home of more eminent German writers than any other cemetery I know. It is located in in Berlin-Mitte and belongs to the former eastern part of the city.
There are very famous ones like Bertold Brecht with Helene Weigel above or Anna Seghers with Johann-Lorenz Schmidt below.
The style of the tombstones varies enormously – permitting individualism that the living did not necessarily enjoy.
While looking for a proper quote from one of all these writers that have come here together, I came across this little sonnet by Wolfgang Hilbig:
Blätter und Schatten
Nicht neu kann sein was du beginnst – denn immer nimmst du was dir längst gegeben und gibst es hin: wie in der Liebe da es mir gebricht an jeder Kenntnis: rot wie die Buchen Laub verstreun maßlos am Wegrand wo ich schon sehr frühe ging … und kannte nicht den Weg und kenn ihn jetzt noch nicht und kenne nicht das Kind des Schatten mir vorausläuft und weiß nichts von der Sonne die ihr rotes Gold dem Blattwerk einbrennt. Und weiß nicht mehr den Herbst der ernst in meinem Rücken ging und dem ich Schatten war: stets neu entworfner Schatten ungezählter Herbste.
Leaves and Shadows
New cannot be what you begin – because you always take what you’ve already been given and give it away: like in love where I lack all knowledge: red as when the beeches scatter leaves along the trail where I walked so early … and did not know the way and still don’t know and don’t know the child whose shadow runs ahead and know nothing about the sun that burns its red gold into the foliage. And don’t know the autumn anymore that once walked solemnly in my back and to which I was its shadow: Always newly drafted shadow of countless autumns.
Having become a shadow doesn’t mean to be forgotten.
The words still reach for us, like the hands in George Tabori’s tomb stone below.
Berlin has no Pate Hollow trail, but it offers many lakes that can be walked around, and that are, alas, similar in the type and amount of gratification they offer.
The Krumme Lanke is one of them, and a part of a chain of lakes in the Grunewald, connected by streams.
The lake itself is elongated and curved, as the name suggests.
In the summer, the water level rises considerably when hundreds of brave locals immerse. I don’t know.
I prefer the dark winter hours when the scraggly trees start to talk to each other.