Adorno monument
The Adorno Memorial in Frankfurt am Main is dedicated to the Frankfurt sociologist , philosopher , music critic and composer Theodor W. Adorno . It was the Russian-born installation artist Vadim Zakharov designed and in 2003 in the district of Bockenheim and Westend-South near the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University at Campus Bockenheim on the Theodor W. Adorno-Platz , the current Tilly Edinger -Platz built . The memorial was inaugurated on October 10, 2003 on the occasion of Adorno's 100th birthday. It replaced the hussar memorial standing in the same place , for which a new location was found in the Bockenheimer Senckenberganlage. In April 2016 the Adorno memorial was relocated to the Westend campus , Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz .
Origin and construction
Zakharov, who lives in Cologne, was able to prevail against five other designs with his design for the monument. He decided on a narrative installation in the center of the newly designed square, named after Adorno in 1995, which shows a representation of Adorno's workplace under safety glass. In this way, Adorno's private creative workplace is reproduced in public space. However, the furniture does not resemble the preserved originals. Jury member Udo Kittelmann, director of the Frankfurt Museum for Modern Art (MMK), considers the memorial “intelligent and sensitive enough to arouse curiosity about Adorno”.
The Adorno memorial consists of a cube made of five panes of glass each weighing 350 kg, each 2.50 meters long, with a total of 31 m² of glass, reinforced by an inconspicuous supporting frame made of steel struts; the cube contains a parquet floor , a desk and a desk chair. The desk lamp on the table switches on automatically at dusk and off again at dawn and is intended to symbolize Adorno's nocturnal work. A metronome on the table top ticks continuously and stands for his compositional activity. An edition of Adorno's work Negative Dialectics is representative of his philosophical work, a handwritten annotated with typewriter-written manuscript and a music sheet stand for his work priorities. The surroundings of the glass cube are paved with white marble and black granite slabs over a width of about two meters , on which quotations from Adorno's work Minima Moralia and his aesthetic theory are carved. The lines of the quotations, which change direction several times at right angles , form a labyrinth .
The municipal building department commissioned the Frankfurt architectural office Index Architekten with the planning of the monument and the design of the square ; Several specialist companies were involved in the implementation of the planning. The aim was to achieve the most atmospheric implementation of the artistic theme while observing the safety regulations in public space and the structural and physical requirements. Constructively, the monument is rated like a building. The glass cube is accessible through an underground maintenance tunnel with an entrance a few meters outside the property. The outer entrance is closed with a round sewer cover, the exit hatch in the floor of the cube is covered by a square cover set inconspicuously into the parquet under the desk. The cube itself is completely sealed and is neither heated nor ventilated. The air humidity is to be kept at a constant value by a dehumidification system housed in the maintenance tunnel. The tunnel is also home to the technology for controlling the other electrical equipment - desk lamp and metronome. The cost of the monument amounted to around 220,000 euros and was financed entirely from the budget of the city of Frankfurt.
Criticism of the design, damage to the monument
On the occasion of Adorno's 100th birthday, however, there was also criticism of the city. Stefan Müller-Doohm, author of a biography of Adorno, urged against the news agency dpa , the City of Frankfurt owe the 1934 by the Nazis Adorno expelled from Frankfurt a center with a library and a film and sound archives; According to Müller-Doohm, this is a cultural duty of the city and the federal government. Criticism was also expressed of the monument itself. Those who do not know Adorno will not find out from this monument either, because the ensemble is not authentic, neither shows him nor describes his work.
Since the inauguration, the glass cube in Bockenheim has been exposed to vandalism several times and has been repeatedly damaged. After the cube panes, damaged by cracks in the glass, had been replaced, the exhibited ensemble was temporarily placed behind bars by construction fences. After some of the repairs, artists, writers and students were on night watch, for example under the motto A Night With Adorno . The city of Frankfurt provided a tent roof under which arias from the opera Der Barbier von Sevilla , performances by the cellist and Adorno student Frank Wolff , the band Pathos Legal and the Frankfurt writer Matthias Altenburg were performed. Later, between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., the Frankfurt Office for Road Construction and Development was forbidden by signposts to enter the inner area around the monument, which was delimited by hedges .
In order to move the memorial to the University's Westend campus, the memorial was repaired. There are no longer access restrictions as in Bockenheim, and the property (as of June 2018) was no longer a target of vandalism.
Old foundation after dismantling on Tilly-Edinger-Platz in Bockenheim
The "new" Adornoplatz on the Westend campus
New foundation plate and maintenance access on the Westend campus
The new location next to the lecture hall center
In perfection
literature
- City of Frankfurt am Main, Office for Science and Art (Ed.): Adornoplatz Frankfurt am Main . Memorial and documentation of the creation of the Adorno monument; with numerous photos of its construction and inauguration. Frankfurt 2004, ISBN 3-88270-690-2
- Regine Hess: “That's the desk that Adorno worked on!” - the Frankfurt Theodor W. Adorno monument by Vadim Zakharov . In: Critical Reports , Edition 4/2006, pp. 73–83.
- Lyudmila Belkin: Asymmetry of Understanding. Post-Soviet art migration and a German city . In: Malte-Christian Gruber, Stefan Häußler (eds.): Norms of Empathy , pp. 193-208. Trafo Verlag, Berlin 2012.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Adorno's desk is moving. In: currentes.uni-frankfurt.de. March 1, 2016, accessed March 16, 2016 .
- ↑ A square, a monument, a center? , Der Spiegel, September 11, 2003
- ↑ a b c memorial Adornoplatz Frankfurt am Main , p. 13 f.
- ↑ Adorno monument inaugurated in Frankfurt , DW, Die Welt, September 11, 2003
- ^ Wilhelm Genazino : Fleeting Dead . Essay. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . February 27, 2009 ( fr.de [accessed March 26, 2018]).
- ^ Thoughts on the Adorno monument in Frankfurt , Harald Fricke, TAZ, October 11, 2003
- ↑ Night watch for Adorno , Uwe Wittstock, Die Welt, July 14, 2005
Coordinates: 50 ° 7 ′ 41.3 ″ N , 8 ° 40 ′ 2.3 ″ E