Bilingual History
Field Trip, July 27 Odyssey Project
The Presentation
We met Mr. Koenig at the Freie Kunstakademie Nürtingen. It was a hot day, therefore he held his presentation about his work Odyssey inside. He had prepared a power point and started his presentation with the story of his life.
He told us that when he began making sculptures his art was regarded as non-English. Therefore he asked himself where his style came from and did some research about his ancestry. He found out that his Polish uncle had been a sculptor as well. Koenig travelled to Eastern Europe and developed the idea to sculpture three meter long figures that where inspired by spirits of his ancestors. Koenig takes the sculptures as a reason to deal with the history of people. He created a crowd of sculptures and started carrying them to important historical places to get in touch with the history of the Second World War and its victims. Since then he is travelling around in the world in order to remember the stories and the people behind them.
In our opinion this project is a very nice way to remember our history and to get closer to it. The name Odyssey itself as a metaphor for the life stories of the people, is a very good choice because Koenig doesn’t want to remember the names of the persons but their stories. The sculptures do not only represent a specific person but also all people sharing their fate. Koenig’s presentation was very interesting and gave a good inspiration how to deal with our history.
Schlagplatz
After the presentation in the ’Freie Kunsthaus’ we went to the backyard of the house where Robert Koenig creates his sculptures. On the so called ‘Schlagplatz’ there was a trunk, which he plans to use for the next sculpture.
On a table next to it he stored a monochrome picture of the 12-year-old boy Anton Köhler who inspired him to the Nürtingen sculpture. With the picture Koenig tries to catch the spirit of Anton. The impression he gets from a person, is based on the information he collects out of documents, witnesses, and photos. Anton Köhler was born in Nürtingen in 1932 as child of a Sinti-family. After his parents were murdered, he was sent to a catholic orphanage. Due to that there is only very little information about him. Later, he was deported to Ausschwitz-Birkenau with his siblings and was murdered there. Anton is the second sculpture made in Nürtingen. One will stay in Nürtingen as a memorial. The other one will join Odyssey.
On the Schlagplatz, Koenig also tried to answer our questions, he did his best and showed us, although it was very hot, that the Odyssey project is his life. We want to thank him for these impressions and wish him good luck and success for the future.
Nürtingen and National Socialism
Ninth grade History taught us a lot about National Socialism. Even though we
mainly talked about the common examples, we also learned something about our hometown, Nürtingen. The destruction of the Neckarbrücke was one of the key events that stayed in our memory. But also housing shortage was one aspect that we could still remember-
We were also able to gather information through talking to our relatives. But there was one thing that really stood out: knowledge gaps of our own local history. Robert Koeni`s figures remind us of our history – and they lead us into reminiscence. The artist demonstrated in his presentation that examples like Anton from Nürtingen take places for the fate of millions of victims.
Koenig didn’t tell us much about the situation in Nürtingen. But when you walk through Nürtingen these days and you know more about the Odyssey Project, the victims are not forgotten any longer.