NOAH'S
VISION
Preparing for Auschwitz
Israel>Germany>Krakau
GERMANY - Stuttgart
see also Germany
- Esslingen
re-read ten years after I saw my sister for the last time - Oct. 2003-2013
 |
I said, that there were two aspects
of Germany, which were "home" for me in my youth:
One was the beauty of churches and the music in them.
Before we parted from Barbara and Uli and the town where I
studied Organ and Church Music,
my sister remembered, that it was the evening of the weekly
concert in the Stiftskirche in Stuttgart.
We made it just in time.
What concert?
The "Magnificat" by Felix Mendelssohn, a Jew...
Mariam, a Jewish woman, is happy about
being pregnant with Jesus, a Jew
[ New Testament, Lukas 1, 46-55 ~~~~Sinfonie Nr. 2, = Symphonie-Kantate
Lobgesang, op. 52 (1839-40).]
This church in the center of town, with
its old organ, was bombarded
and completely destroyed - like all its surroundings.
After it had been poorly rebuilt, we often went there for
free church music.
Ten years ago they tore the unsafe structure done and discovered
traces of a much earlier church.
Now in the new, glorious building old and new are integrated
in the most fascinating way:
And "especially for Noah's
Vision"  :
Under the vaulted ceiling, I see S
A I L S of g l a s s.
My sister said, there was quite a controversy about this element.
For the first time I became aware of the fact,
that any traditional church has forever been structured as
a SHIP,
SCHIFF in German, NAVE in English (same
Latin root as in "navigation")
Sometimes there is only one Schiff,
but more often there are lower lateral naves, even double
naves, to both sides of the main nave.
Am I not concerned with the element of water,
representing feelings?
Didn't we work on the RedSeaPartner-SHIP,
literally?
Wasn't I first inspired with "Noah's Ark" in early
summer , and only later with "Noah's Shore"?
How could I not see a sign and a prophecy in this church in
my home-town?
And what a coincidence between my first visit to Germany since
5 years,
and a German-Jewish composer's music about the pregnancy of
a Jewish woman with the Son of God?
Outside - on the market-place,
where I used to buy
cheap vetables - in the morning between trams to school -and
to carry them there and back home
a water well !
A woman thrones on it, holding her arms to the sky~~~ like
I do, yearning for the word to come true:
"ERNTE", which means "HARVEST" - A
Time to Harvest my life
|
 |
And again - with Noah's Ark
and Noah's Shore in my
mind - I examined the similarities:
A spiral staircase of glass
- just like I imagine it on the tetrahedron-shape of Noah's
Ark.
And as to the organ - I read about the idea, how the money
is recruited:
There are some 22000 pipes to be adopted and paid:
Let's say a trumpet pipe in C-minor costs 250 EURO,
but other pipes cost up to 5000 EURO.
It's how I want to recruit the money for Noah's Shore
- let people adopt a double tetrahedron
tent,
or even just the bamboo-poles of the interior tent.
It is the same idea, with which that brave German artist
in Koeln, Gunter Demnig,
"sells" his "Stolpersteine",
his "Stumbling Stones".
You are invited to adopt and pay for a stone,
in which the name of a holocaust victim is engraved.
The stone is then integrated into the sidewalk,
close to the house, where the murdered person, or the murdered
family once lived.
One last word about the organ itself - which is far from being
completed - and my own yearning:
One day I might be able to play myself on a pipe-organ again,
or at least on my electronic church-organ [see
for instance in 1985],
which - after I was no longer allowed to park and live in
my bus anywhere -
I gave away to the Catholic Church of Jericho.
This happened shortly before the
second, still ongoing, Intifada.
I had asked for the priviledge to play there, whenever I would
come to Jericho.
But since then it has been impossible for Israeli Jews to
go to Jericho...
|
After 38 hours with my sister I took the speedy train to Frankfurt.
Without the associations to the word "train", which would
soon be conjured up in Poland...
At a stop in Heidelberg I enjoyed watching the warm interaction between
what seemed to be a German father and two Chinese daughters.
It was In Heidelberg - during my attempt to graduate as a student
of theology - where my illegitimate Jewish
child was born in January 1963....
And again I am flying
this time from Frankfurt in Germany to Warshau in Poland,
delighting in the wonder of this direction of flight
- in the year 2003:
to the next step of
preparation: Polish Krakov
|
