Walk of Ideas
Walk of Ideas ( German idea corridor or walk of ideas ) was an artistic event series for the 2006 FIFA World Cup , under the motto "A walk through ideas from Germany" an art boulevard in Berlin 's Mitte district was formed. Between May and September 2006, six sculptures were supposed to represent German inventiveness.
The website “ Germany - Land of Ideas ” says: “The sculptures symbolize the wealth of ideas and inventive talent of composers and writers, scientists and researchers, engineers and inventors from Germany.” The artistically controversial works were displayed between March 10th and May 19, 2006, dismantling between September 29 and October 4, 2006.
Background and general data
The “sculpture boulevard” was a central component of the Germany - Land of Ideas initiative , which was launched under the patronage of Federal President Horst Köhler as a joint image and location initiative of the German federal government and German business, represented by the Federation of German Industries (BDI) To convey a positive image of Germany at home and abroad.
The corporate design of the campaign and the design of the sculptures were conceived and implemented by the Berlin design agency Scholz & Friends Identify . The agency has received several international awards for this campaign - e.g. B. with the coveted EVA Award 2006.
The sculptures stood in central squares in downtown Berlin such as Bebelplatz or Gendarmenmarkt . Small celebrations were held at the unveiling, at which politicians, members of the initiative or representatives of the companies involved gave opening speeches. The first unveiling took place on March 10, 2006 with the plastic The Modern Football Shoe in Spreebogenpark , and the conclusion was the handover of the plastic relativity theory on May 19, 2006 in the Lustgarten . In autumn 2006 the figures were dismantled again. A sculpture, Das Automobil , went on a trip to Munich - the use or recycling of the remaining works is unclear.
The total costs from planning to implementation were between 300,000 and 350,000 euros per figure. All sculptures were made from the modern plastic Neopor and coated with a glistening white special paint . Their production time was around two months each, the final assembly on the sites took up to three days.
On each object on the hiking trail through the German research landscape and cultural history, information boards in German and English gave detailed information about their symbolism.
Overview of all sculptures:
- The modern soccer shoe in Spreebogenpark (unveiling on March 10, 2006)
- Milestones in medicine at Friedrich-Ebert-Platz (March 27)
- The automobile at the Brandenburg Gate (April 6), moved to Schlossplatz at the end of May , and moved to the Federal Press Beach at the beginning of June .
- Modern letterpress at Bebelplatz (April 21)
- Masterpieces of Music on Gendarmenmarkt (May 5th)
- The theory of relativity at the Lustgarten (May 19)
No precise data is available about the artistic design of the objects. The information about the Germany - Land of Ideas initiative remains very general. The milestones in medicine were then, for example, “designed by young artists in coordination with Bayer AG”. The designs for the last three sculptures come from “young designers from the Scholz & Friends agency ”. For the object Das Automobil there is an indication that the design comes from Audi .
Six sculptures
The modern soccer shoe
On March 10, 2006, the initiators of the "sculpture boulevard" unveiled the first sculpture in the Spreebogenpark opposite the new main station . The modern soccer shoe , which was built by EDAG GmbH & Co. KGaA in Fulda , was a pair of soccer shoes that was developed by the Dassler family.
In 1953, Adi Dassler manufactured a screw- in stud shoe that was revolutionary in terms of sports equipment and had an exchangeable stud system made of plastic for the first time. The German national soccer team played with these shoes when they won the World Cup in 1954 in Bern, and they are said to have contributed significantly to the success. This gave the former Federal Minister of the Interior and member of the Initiative Advisory Council Otto Schily hope for the upcoming 2006 World Cup at the unveiling ceremony: "Maybe Adidas [has] a 'secret weapon' up its sleeve for this World Cup."
Each shoe was 14 meters long, 4.5 meters high and weighed around 20 tons. Since there was an unusually large amount of snow in Berlin for this time of year on March 10, 2006, the Spreebogenpark presented itself more as a snow and ski paradise than a green football field at the ceremonial unveiling.
Milestones in Medicine
The ceremonial inauguration for the plastic milestones in medicine took place on March 30, 2006 on Friedrich-Ebert-Platz , which is to the east of the Reichstag . It was shaped like a tablet and, with a diameter of ten meters, was clearly visible on the new promenade on the Spree opposite the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus with the parliamentary library . The 25-tonne plastic was anchored under the pavement with a 4.20 × 4.20 × 1.00 meter steel foundation.
The monument was intended to symbolize pioneering drug research by Felix Hoffmann , Robert Koch , Emil Adolf von Behring , Paul Ehrlich and Gerhard Domagk , for example . In 1897 the pharmacist and chemist Felix Hoffmann succeeded in preparing acetylsalicylic acid (ASS for short) in a chemically pure, stable and tolerable form. Two years later the product came onto the market under the name Aspirin ® and is now the active ingredient in many other pain relievers. In 1950, Aspirin ® entered the Guinness Book of Records as the best-selling pain reliever .
The giant tablet on the banks of the Spree should also be reminiscent of medical devices such as the X-ray machine or the cardiac catheter , which, like dialysis , are German developments. Last but not least, the tablet identified Germany as one of the world's leading pharmaceutical and medical technology locations .
The automobile
The automobile is 10.2 meters long, 3.25 meters high and 4.5 meters wide and weighs more than ten tons. The sculpture consists of a steel skeleton construction with 16 shell segments, 1000 square meters of fiberglass laminate and 120 cubic meters of neopor foam. Audi created the design. More than 100 people worked on the property from planning to construction and production. The unveiling ceremony on April 6, 2006 on the west side of the Brandenburg Gate met with a comparatively large response. In addition to the governing mayor Klaus Wowereit , 600 guests and 100 photographers, TV teams and other journalists took part in the festival. At the end of May 2006, the sculpture was moved to Schlossplatz to make way for the fan mile in front of the Brandenburg Gate.
A short time later she moved to the Kapelle-Ufer for a few days to receive the premiere guests for the opening of the MediaClub on the federal press beach. Then the sculpture found a place in the zoo , near the victory column . On August 25, 2006, the automobile went on an international tour with the first stop at Munich Airport between terminals one and two. In Munich it should stay until September 19, 2006. Das Automobil has been in Ingolstadt since July 2009 .
According to a press release from the “ Germany - Land of Ideas ” image campaign , the sculpture was unveiled by Martin Winterkorn in front of the “Oriental Plaza” business center in Beijing on November 18, 2006, on the eve of the “Auto China 2006” trade fair . There was the car to visit about four weeks. Around 250 invited guests, including Chinese public figures from sport, culture and society, were present at the unveiling and watched the “spectacular show” according to the press release. While a "normal" heavy transport with police escort was sufficient for the trips to Berlin and Munich, the largest transport aircraft - an Antonov An-124 - had to be chartered for the air trip to Beijing .
In the picture that Audi AG attached to the press release, the vehicle manufacturer's logo can be seen on the stylized radiator grille of the plastic. As part of the Walk of Ideas in Berlin, no logo was attached to the object. Nevertheless, Das Automobil can be recognized as the Audi TT 8J , which premiered shortly afterwards.
The names of important car designers such as August Horch , Carl Benz , Gottlieb Daimler , Ferdinand Porsche or Rudolf Diesel , the inventor of the diesel engine , are to be associated with the plastic.
The object is to build a bridge via the equally German invention, the motorcycle , to an innovative means of transport of the present, the maglev . In 1984, the first test operation for the track-bound traffic system on its own route took place in Berlin, which was used between 1989 and 1991 in passenger operations.
Modern letterpress
The installation of the sculpture The modern letterpress took place on April 21, 2006 on the Bebelplatz opposite the Humboldt University . The construction of this 12.20 meter high object on Unter den Linden took three days. A steel structure held 17 shell segments of different sizes together, with each segment arranged as a single book. Including the stabilizing weight, the tower weighed 35 tons.
The stacked 17 books bore the names of German poets and writers on their backs and rested on Goethe as the bottom book. They are reminiscent of Johannes Gutenberg , who invented modern letterpress printing in Mainz around 1450 and produced the first “bestseller” in history with the Gutenberg Bible . According to the current state of knowledge, 49 of the original 180 copies of the first edition still exist.
Masterpieces of music
The plastic masterpieces of music consisted of six individual notes , three eighth and three quarter notes . Each note was 8.10 meters high, 5.4 meters long and 2.1 meters wide and weighed - with the "flag" - 8.6 tons. According to the information on the “Land of Ideas” homepage, the notes were “by far the most complicated construction of all six design objects of the 'Walk of Ideas' for static and geometric reasons.” The individual parts, the note heads and the note stems were assembled and erected on the 5th May 2006 on the Gendarmenmarkt with a crane.
The scores should stand for Germany, the country of music - for composers like Bach , Beethoven , Brahms or Wagner , for pioneers like Stockhausen and for performers like Anne-Sophie Mutter . In addition to the seriousness of sacred music or the heavy symphonic force, his compositional work contains a multitude of cheerful elements. In the coffee cantata , for example, Bach sketched a humorous and ironic scene from the bourgeois life of the people of Leipzig .
theory of relativity
The last sculpture represents the most famous equation in physics. It is one of Albert Einstein's revolutionary works on relativity theory . In 1905 he founded the special theory of relativity with his work "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies" , which revolutionized the understanding of space and time . In 1915 he published the general theory of relativity , in which the curvature of space-time causes gravitation.
Today, Albert Einstein is considered by many to be the epitome of researcher and genius. He also used his fame outside of the scientific community in his work for international understanding and peace. In this context he saw himself as a pacifist , socialist and Zionist .
The object consisted of three segments, weighed ten tons, was twelve meters long and four meters high. The ceremonial handover to the Berliners took place on May 19, 2006 on Museum Island in the Lustgarten .
reception
Worldwide response
The international media took up the initiative and took up the motifs of the “Walk of Ideas”. CNN reported in detail on May 5, 2006 about the campaign approach. The conclusion of CNN reporter Chris Burns: "For a Germany that has been going through a long slump with high unemployment, the World Cup and this campaign is a much needed boost to self-confidence." The British daily The Times had on April 15, 2006 the “Land of Ideas” comments: “The Germans are turning away from their traditional pessimism and are getting euphoric about their own country. Pop songs are filled with national self-confidence. A new marketing campaign is selling Germany as a land of ideas. The Berlin cityscape overflows with shiny, metallic sculptures that represent Germany's greatest inventions: from oversized aspirin tablets to giant Adidas football boots. "
Product promotion
Some of the sculptures in the Walk of Ideas were recognizable corporate products and their artistic aesthetics were controversial. The Berliner Zeitung was annoyed by the flat product advertisement under the title " Ideenlose Land der Ideen" .
The taz wrote on 21 April 2006 under the heading corporations make Berlin the fairground :
“The interests of the group are hardly concealed. A few meters in front of the Brandenburg Gate is a plastic car that copies a current Audi model. In the government district there are cleats adorned with three stripes. A text plaque praises the inventiveness of Adolf Dassler, the Adidas founder. Behind the Reichstag is an oversized tablet with a stylized Bayer cross. The initiative's spokesperson, Steffi Würzig, admits that the products are 'very similar'. Left party leader Lederer becomes clearer: 'The cityscape is being degraded by a sculpture gallery of large corporations'. "
The German Schubert
In the case of sculptures such as book printing, the theory of relativity or the musical milestones, which apart from the constant references to the production from the BASF material Neopor ®, are not suspect in corporate advertising, incorrect texts caused confusion for a while. The information board and the website on the object Masterpieces of Music declared the Austrian Franz Schubert to be a German musician in a series of six composers named. The designers have since corrected the mistake.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Germany, Land of Ideas, Walk of Ideas ( Memento from January 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Land of Ideas , Newsletter, Edition 6, 2006, p. 1, Infoletter from FC Deutschland GmbH
- ↑ Land of Ideas , Newsletter, Edition 6, 2006, p. 2, Infoletter from FC Deutschland GmbH
- ↑ Dance around the silver and gold TT . Donaukurier, July 10, 2009
- ↑ Germany, Land of Ideas, Walk of Ideas, page Facts Auto ( Memento from October 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Germany, Land of Ideas, Walk of Ideas, page Facts Music ( Memento from October 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Article on CNN
- ↑ Article in the Times
- ↑ Ulrich Paul: Land of ideas without ideas. In: Berliner Zeitung . April 22, 2006, accessed June 19, 2015 .
- ^ Ulrich Schulte: Corporations make Berlin a fairground . In: taz , April 21, 2006
