Michael Morgner: Reliquie Mensch
Chemnitz
People are at the centre of Michael Morgner's works. Stylised into striking ciphers, his human images unfold a power between rebellion and sinking in, the fateful being thrown into the world and the urge to escape from it. The Chemnitz version of the steel sculpture, which Morgner has realised in several versions, is based on a rectangular, rust-red corroded steel plate resting on a low concrete plinth. Lines, webs and bundles were cut out with a laser and erected vertically as a silhouette. Rust and rainwater collect in the negative form of the base plate and reflect the sky above the sculpture depending on the incidence of light, weather and time of day. Morgner's human figure appears here as a figure of fear, simultaneously straightening and bending, travelling along the lines, paths and twists and turns that life draws.
Born in Einsiedel near Chemnitz in 1942, the draughtsman, printmaker, painter, steel sculptor and performance artist moved to Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz) as a freelance artist in 1966 after studying at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, where he still lives and works today. Together with Dagmar Ranft-Schinke, Carlfriedrich Claus, Thomas Ranft and Gregor-Torsten Kozik (born as Schade), Morgner founded the artist group "Clara Mosch" in 1977, which was joined by a producer gallery. According to Morgner, the group tried to make "some kind of art that didn't look like the GDR". With their exhibitions, happenings and land art actions, the "Moschists" were targeted by the GDR state security, which put an end to the group's activities in 1982.
Since the mid-1980s, Morgner has focussed on the technique of etching and has varied archetypal human figures and symbols, which the artist also translated into steel sculptures from 1995 onwards. As counter-designs to the colourful consumer society, they quote eternally valid archetypes of human life, suffering and death.
(Text: Ulrike Pennewitz / Alexander Ochs)
Michael Morgner
Reliquie Mensch, 1996/97
In Chemnitz
Material: Steel
Size: 350 x 100 x 400 cm
Address:
Friedensplatz
Brückenstraße 2
09111 Chemnitz
to the location on Google Maps
Chemnitz - the locomotive of Saxon industry
Friedensplatz, the location of the sculpture Reliquie Mensch by Michael Morgner (*1942), tells a lot about the last 200 years of the city's history. the new Technical Town Hall was opened here in 2017 and the square was recreated in 2018. Decades after the fall of communism in 1989/90, it was once a wasteland. The area, located near the train station, was rich in historical wounds, as this is where most of the destruction occurred after the bombing raid on 6 February 1945. These architectural wounds are slowly healing.
A lot has been built in the neighbourhood in recent years and empty spaces have increasingly disappeared. Monuments such as the Chemnitz railway station (1872) and the Schocken department stores' (1930), now the State Museum of Archaeologyhave just as much space as the buildings of socialist realism or more recent times. The profound transformation of the urban topography in the centre began in the 19th century Industrialisation at a breathtaking pace.
The age of machines
Textile goods and textile machine construction, machine tools and locomotives in particular led to an extraordinary increase in production. Favourable conditions were created by joining the German Customs Union in 1834, the development of hard coal in the Lugau-Oelsnitz and Zwickau coalfields for steam engine drives and the construction of the Saxon railway from 1850.
in 1826, Carl Gottlieb Haubold began building spinning machines. His Sächsische Maschinenbau-Compagnie (1836) is regarded as the nucleus of industrial engineering in Chemnitz. The city acted as a magnet for inventors and entrepreneurs. The locksmith Johann Zimmermann, who moved here from Hungary in the 1830s, founded the first machine tool factory. Louis Schönherr, a design engineer from Plauen, succeeded in 1840 with his inventions in the factory production of the mechanical cloth loom.
Technical education and mobility
From 1836 onwards, many skilled workers were needed, who were trained at the Königliche Gewerbeschule, now the Technical Universitywere trained. Its main building is located to the east of Schillerplatz on the Straße der Nationen. in 1848, Richard Hartmann, an immigrant from Alsace, manufactures the first locomotive and becomes the main supplier to the Royal Saxon Railway. By the end of the 1920s, almost 4,700 units had been delivered worldwide. The Chemnitz railway stationa few minutes' walk east of Schillerplatz, was opened in 1852. Today's historicist-style station building dates back to 1872.
Factories, prosperity and culture
To the north, Schillerplatz is bordered by the Chemnitzer Aktienspinnerei Chemnitz stock spinning mill built in 1858. It was once considered the most modern and largest factory in Saxony: architecturally, because it was built entirely of stone and iron; industrially, because it had enormous production capacity. A core part of the building was renovated in 2020 and is now home to the University library and archive.
Between 1870 and 1914, Chemnitz was one of the largest industrial metropolises in Germany, growing from 100,000 to 320,000 inhabitants. In terms of population and tax revenue, it was considered the wealthiest German city. The growing prosperity created a cultural milieu in the city: newspapers and a library, associations for history, science, art and literature, a singing academy and secondary schools, civic lecture, exhibition and collection activities. An example of this is the theatre square, which adjoins Schillerplatz to the south: with the Central-Theater (1906-1909), since 1925 Opera houseflanked by the Petrikirche (1885-88) and the König-Albert-Museum (1898-1908), today the Municipal art collections.
City of modernity
These developments continued into the 1930s and beyond Schillerplatz and its surroundings in other neighbourhoods, establishing Chemnitz's reputation as a "city of modernism":
- from 1855: production of bicycles, milling machines, typewriters and calculating machines in the Wanderer factories
- 1860-1930: Neo-Romanesque, Neo-Renaissance and Art Nouveau in the Gründerzeit neighbourhood of Kaßberg
- 1903: Henry van de Velde builds the Villa Eschefor a textile entrepreneur
- from 1905: Expressionist avant-garde art by Karl-Schmidt-Rottluff, Edvard Munch and Otto Dix in the art collections
- 1927: Architect Erich Basarke designs an industrial complex for Schubert&Salzer, today's Wirkbau
- 1930: Architect Erich Mendelsohn builds the Schocken department stores', now the State Museum of Archaeology
- 1930: Architect Fred Otto designs the new Sparkasse building, now the Gunzenhauser Museum of 20th Century Art.
Chemnitz - Karl-Marx-Stadt and back: two new beginnings
Today, Schillerplatz is no longer a full-sized park, but is divided into two parts. Its northern area is home to the Bus station. It was created in the 1960s when the GDR decided to rebuild the city centre, 90 percent of which had been destroyed in 1945 during the Second World War, with socialist architecture.
Chemnitz had already been called Karl-Marx-Stadt since 1953 and was to be transformed into a socialist metropolis, as the prefabricated buildings from the 1970s/80s to the west of the square show. The Straße der Nationen, which is tangent to Schillerplatz to the east, leads right into the centre with its modern GDR buildings. The monumental 40-tonne bronze Marx head by Lew Kerbel (1971) is also part of this transformation.
With German reunification in 1990, the city began to reinvent itself. The city was renamed Chemnitz in a referendum. For three decades, a lot of building has been going on, gaps left by the destruction of the war have been closed and architectural monuments have been restored. Around the Red Tower from the 12th cent. a new city centre has grown up around the 12th century Red Tower, which attempts to form a link between the Old Town Hall (1496-98) and the New Town Hall (1907-11) as well as the socialist buildings Hotel Congress and Town hall from the years 1969-74.
In 2023, in anticipation of the Capital of Culture year, the city council decided to upgrade the landscape architecture of Schillerplatz, which is close to the city centre. Osmar Osten's sculpture as part of the Purple Path, which symbolically connects Chemnitz with the region as Capital of Culture, is an important step in this direction. The rich historical tree population is to be preserved and the network of paths renewed.
Roots of the city in the 12th century: Benedictine monastery and Red Tower
Visitors to Chemnitz today only notice in a few places that the city's history goes back several centuries further than the boom years of industrialisation and modernity. A document from the Hohenstaufen Emperor Conrad III from 1143 attests to the granting of market privileges to a Benedictine monastery. This was located in a place called "Chemnitz" (Latin "locus Kameniz dictus"). The monastery was founded by its predecessor, Emperor Lothar III.
The earliest parts of the monastery church (now the castle church) date back to the 1160s. With the imperial market rights, a settlement was established in the vicinity of the monastery, traces of which have been found by archaeologists and dated to around 1200. An old interest register, which records the taxes paid by the settlement to the monastery, confirms the findings. From the 1250s, there is documentary evidence of the parish church of St Jakobi, which stands next to the Old Town Hall (15th century) on the market square. The foundations of the Red Tower in the centre of Chemnitz, part of the city fortifications, also date from this period.
This outlines the early cornerstones of the imperial city of Chemnitz in the Middle Ages. The town must have quickly established itself economically. From the 14th century onwards, we know for certain of extensive linen weaving and a bleaching privilege (1357). This meant that the regional value chains became dependent on the Chemnitz textile market for many centuries.
The flow of money to Chemnitz aroused covetousness, making the city a pawn in the hands of various interests. Emperors, monastic abbots and the Margraves of Meissen vied for influence for two centuries. It was only with the emergence of Saxon sovereignty that the town came under the permanent influence of the Wettin dynasty in 1423, but retained its freedoms and privileges.
Worth seeing about this early history of the town is the Castle Hill Museum.
Early capitalism and the new faith: the textile industry, the mining industry and the Reformation
Bleachers and cloth merchants made big business in Chemnitz. Textiles remained the dominant industry for centuries, establishing early industrial manufactories as early as the 18th century. With the mining boom in the Westerzgebirge, money was also invested in the mining industry. We know of investments in mines in nearby Geyer, of a Saiger smelter (1471), which smelted copper and silver from ore rock, and of a copper hammer (around 1470) in the city of Chemnitz.
The citizens of Chemnitz developed a high level of self-confidence and attempted to emancipate themselves from the monastery in the second half of the 15th century, both in economic and religious terms. Wealthy citizens founded a Franciscan monastery in the city area, cultivated new forms of piety and refurbished the city churches. The tax policy, lifestyle and understanding of service of the Benedictines on the mountain above the town were criticised. All of these were the first harbingers of what we call the Reformation in historical retrospect.
Late Gothic church building, summer residence and art collection
Abbots Heinrich von Schleinitz (1484-1522) and Hilarius von Rehburg (1522-40) attempted to counteract these developments. The Romanesque church was lavishly rebuilt into a three-aisled hall church with late Gothic elements (choir consecration in 1499), apparently in order to set a new example of a new beginning: tall, slender pillars support a decorative ribbed vault.
The furnishings with sacred art are also worth seeing: St Catherine's altar (1499, on permanent loan from Großenhain), north portal with figures by Master HW (1525), four painted panels from a former altar by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1518/20) and the famous oak flagellation column by Master HW (1515).
the Reformation was introduced in 1539/40 and the Benedictine monastery was dissolved. Duke Henry the Pious rebuilt the area into a residential castle in 1548/49, hence the current name of the area: Schloßberg. Today it is home to the Schloßberg Museum. The reconstructed monastery rooms (cloister, refectory, chapter house and parlatory) house an important collection of sacred art with works by the master HW, Hans von Cöln, as well as the extraordinary Holy Sepulchre and Meissen-Saxon panel painting.