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Heinrich von Kleist
Photo: Mary Evans / INTERFOTO
Then I went, withdrawn, through the arched gate, thinking back into the city.
Why, I thought, does the vault not sink, since it has
no
support?
It stands, I answered,
because all the stones want to collapse at once.
- Heinrich v.
Kleist, letter to Wilhelmine von Zenge, November 16, 1800
If Heinrich von Kleist had not become a poet, but, for example, an architect, then the world today might have been richer by a few remarkable vaults: barrel vaults or mirror vaults, hollow vaults or even Bohemian caps.
Since in the end it was enough for Kleist to merely think about statics, we owe him - after all - the most famous vaulted passage in literature.
So an evening stroll in the late autumn of 1800, an archway in Würzburg, a question: Why doesn't the vault sink in?
Why are the stones up there - apparently against gravity, against reason?
The question is big.
The vault is like life.
There are loads and thrusts, tensions and all kinds of forces - and the need to somehow cope with the pressure that is at work everywhere.
If it is possible to divert the forces, order is preserved.
If the pressure becomes too great, the grip is lost and everything is gone.
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