Wülperode
Denn wer den Tod im heil’gen Kampfe fand, ruht auch in fremder Erde im Vaterland.
„heiligen Kampfe“? im Zweiten Weltkrieg? The citation is a popular one from Albert Methfessel. I stood there and read and reread, and without really wanting to, but needing to, I looked around to see who might be watching me. It’s seldom that I get this feeling, but it happens. Look at the helmet, read the citation, read the „zwei“. It feels pretty creepy. There’s so much to learn, to understand what’s going on with a people’s soul.
This sculpture is in a farmer’s fields. It is a little hard to explain where it is: in English there is the expression „in the middle of nowhere“, but to the farmer the fields aren’t „nowhere“, so this expression is not accurate. The artwork is kilometers away from anything other than field. I like it very much. You can kind of see the remains of the rainbow disappearing in the clouds to the left. It was that kind of morning.
To explain: the track I walked along was the Kolonnenweg, the military road used by the DDR’s Volksarmee to patrol the borders of paradise, keeping the workers safe from the west. A few tens of meters before the sculpture the track turned, because the sculpture is placed on the border between Sachsen-Anhalt and Niedersachsen. Thirty-one years ago there was no road here. There was fence, there were towers, guards.
The sculpture’s title is Begegnung I – „Encounter“. Begegnung II, the key to the keyhole rip between the populaces, is clearly visible half a kilometer across the field, on the edge of some woods. I kept glancing at it as I walked, and thought of walking over there. Maybe I should have gone over and taken a look. I probably should have. The text of the sign, the art, the people, the knowledge behind this are all so very interesting. There is much to learn.
South of Abbenrode
I really don’t know what to make of this, and wish I did.
Stapelburg
This seems very real. There is one beside the trail outside Wittingen where the paint seemed like it could be original also, but because it is near an entrance to the Kolonnenweg and at a Denkmal it’s possible it has been repainted. This one is next to the footpath in the middle of the woods south of Stapelburg. It seems very real.
