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Claudia Roth: "Amazing and blind to history"
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IMAGO/Chris Emil Janssen / IMAGO/Chris Emil Janssen
Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens) defends the idea of dealing artistically with the dome inscription of the Berlin Humboldt Forum.
The lettering is considered controversial.
About a year ago, the Humboldt Forum presented ideas for contrasting the slogan with other statements at night using light-emitting diodes.
The topic has now been taken up again in a question from the Union faction in the Bundestag.
"It is astonishing and historically blind to think that this inscription for his palace, which Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV himself compiled from two quotes from the Bible, is simply an apolitical sign of religiosity," Roth said.
From the point of view of many historians, the inscription is clearly a political message that underpins the Prussian king's claim to power, which is derived solely from God.
One of the tasks of the director of the Humboldt Forum is to deal with the location of the Humboldt Forum, the Berlin Palace.
The cultural policy spokeswoman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Christiane Schenderlein, criticized: "The Bible text on the dome of the Berlin City Palace must remain visible." There is already agreement to contextualize the text on a plaque.
From the point of view of the Union, this is already a compromise that is completely sufficient.
»We vehemently reject a superimposition of the Bible text declared as an ›art installation‹.« It is to be feared that the cross on the dome will be called into question in the next step.
The Humboldt Forum - a large exhibition center in the city center - is located in the partially reconstructed Berlin Palace.
The dome is decorated with a cross and an inscription in gold.
It says: “There is salvation in no other way, no other name given to men, except in the name of Jesus, to the glory of God the Father.
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, which are in heaven and on earth and under the earth.”
A spokesman for the Humboldt Forum Foundation said that contemporary artistic interventions are an important way for the Humboldt Forum to deal with the much-discussed aspects of the building and its architecture.
As a community of all those involved in the Humboldt Forum, they wanted to implement the idea put forward by the »Lighthouse Berlin« initiative of temporarily overlaying the reconstructed inscription with neon writing.
"We presented the project in the Humboldt Forum in December 2021 and discussed it publicly," said the spokesman.
“The implementation would mean that the reconstructed inscription would be visible during the day and other texts would be visible in the dark.
This creates the possibility of developing alternative texts that comment on and question the historical inscription.
This is an important first step in giving the debate a visible expression.
We are currently checking the technical feasibility and will inform you about the result as soon as it is available.«
sak/dpa
