Goethe Scenes

From Verbose to Verbena

Mortar, concrete and stone often outlive the political spirit that was meant to breathe life and function into its showcase edifices: Before the panorama of the Hohenzollern church burial site, meagre greenery cuts its way through the dissipated shell of Real Socialism. While at ground level, the political executive was still debating the future of the “Ballast of the Republic,” overhead, rank growth had already subjugated the former seat of the GDR parliament. The remaining greenery was all that survived the levelling of “Erich’s lamp shop”: Today the tenacious plant can be found in the Skulptur_Park Mitte. Loss of identity and Neue Freiheit are also the themes of other works of art in the exhibition curated by the Goethe-Institut Milan, Niemand ist mehr dort, wo er hinwollte (no one is where they wanted to be). Twenty years after the fall of the wall, it shows artists’ examinations of the end of the Cold War and the traces it left behind in nature and urban planning.