One of my favorite places on my border expedition was the German Unity Sculpture Park in the Rhön Mountains. The park sits directly in the former border strip between East and West Germany and was created by the artist and engineer Jimmy Fell. I found the installations – among them “Expulsion”, the “Miracle of Leipzig”, the “Golden Bridge of Unity” – incredibly powerful (you can read my reflections from my visit here ). They reminded me that art can help us make meaning out of things in a way words sometimes can’t. From an article in last week’s Rhön-and Saalepost I learned that the sculpture park continues to hold meaning: Communities from both sides of the former border held a celebration there last week to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. Leading up to the celebration, Jimmy Fell had gotten local students together to hand-paint a statue of liberty and inscribe it with their own reflections on what freedom means to them.
You can read the entire article here auf deutsch.
