Information in brief Rehabilitation project / flag project part 3

“And the world throws waves” / flag Karin Kontny in cooperation with Max Eicke Opening on Saturday, September 18, 2021, 5 p.m. (presentation of the flag for around 5 weeks)

Location: Bergcafé terrace, Am Kirchberg 14, 72119 Ammerbuch-Reusten www.sueddeutscher-kunstverein.de www.bergcafe

On-site opening times correspond to those of the café (Friday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.). The flag can be seen from above or below the café regardless of this and in the appropriate wind conditions.

A question in the wind:

The Süddeutsche Kunstverein is showing the work of the Tübingen author Karin Kontny in the third part of its flag project in the Bergcafé Reusten.

Her interjection blowing in the wind pays homage to the beauty of the place, which is known as the Arcadia in the Ammertal.

And in the anniversary year of “1700 years of Jewish life in Germany”, one question at the same time points to breaks in history.

Tübingen / Reusten / Hildesheim (kok). Flags can express identity. You can communicate belonging. But also represent a symbol for isolation or for the exclusion of others. Abused by populists, they are a dangerous substance that flutters in the wind and “shows the flag”.

With its so-called “social rehabilitation project”, the Süddeutsche Kunstverein started a flag project outside of its own exhibition rooms in the Bergcafé (Ammerbuch-Reusten) on the Kirchberg in mid-May, which does not want to know anything about such national affiliation or heraldry. Instead, over the course of the year, five artists hoisted an interjection of diversity on the flagpole on the terrace of the café.

From Saturday, September 18, 2021 (opening at 5 p.m.), the Tübingen author Karin Kontny, whose texts are collected by the German Literature Archive as part of "Literature on the Net" as an example of selected, more recent German-language literature, will join the group as a third party present with their flag.

In cooperation with the Berlin photographer Max Eicke, the author does not only deal with the beauty of Reusten, which has already been praised by the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”. Rather, in the anniversary year “1700 years of Jewish life in Germany”, it also points to breaks in the “Arcadia” of the Ammer Valley and in (German) history.

The Kirchberg as the center of the Muschelkalksattels, which arched up here around five million years ago, was a literary expedition area for the author last year during the lockdown and her literary recidency in the hotel "Weißes Rössel", which belongs to the Süddeutscher Kunstverein. Here she gradually came across various stories from the history of the place with its almost 1000 inhabitants. And woven them into a text collage from the past and the present. “My excavation equipment was questions”, says Karin Kontny, who unearthed various fragments in this way: “In Reusten, where the world throws picturesque waves due to a geological peculiarity, not only the first signs of human life from the Stone and Bronze Ages have been found been. This also exemplified the different attitudes people adopted towards National Socialism. ”For example, limestone gravel was mined in one of the town's quarries - the quarry belonged to the Haifingen-Tailfingen concentration camp, a branch of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace. The Nazis used this to build a military airfield. 601 Jewish prisoners worked here as of the winter of 1944. From then on, the residents of Reusten were confronted with their fate, either taking an interest in it or suppressing it.

Like the people in many other villages and cities at the time. “Who looked away? Who understood what was happening? Who reached out to other people and offered help? ”These were the questions that Kontny asked herself in the course of her work.

On their flag, these are not only reflected in the text line "And the world / throws waves / Ask yourself / Why", but also in the image of the hand tattooed with a question mark below the root. For author Karin Kontny, this hand plays a major role, because handprints are not only found in the earliest cave paintings and have always played a central role in the representation of people in painting and sculpture.

"Hands characterize the sitter almost like the face," says Karin Kontny.

Your flag, which will be hoisted on the flagpole of the mountain café for around five weeks, formulates a democratic interjection and throws the question of how each individual shows himself / herself and how he / she wants to take responsibility. This is of great importance not only in the anniversary year “1700 years of Jewish life in Germany”. The educational service of the Süddeutschen Kunstverein offers the project's flags for their (private) flagpole.

The flags also move to Hildesheim after the exhibition in Reusten / Tübingen. The city of Hildesheim and the state of Lower Saxony support the project.

On the initiative of Karin Kontny, her flag will also be hoisted in Alsace from spring 2022. And on a path that leads to Natzweiler-Struthof - that is, to the concentration camp whose subcamp was Hailfingen-Tailfingen.

Images: 1) With her flag, the author Karin Kontny lets a question flutter in the wind as part of the flag project of the Süddeutscher Kunstverein - and formulates a democratic interjection under the sign of responsibility. © Idea and text: Karin Kontny; Photo: Max Eicke (copyright information is mandatory when using the image material)