|
The title “en circuit”, the subtitle der
alte Friedhof in Prag together with the
linguistically rudimentary character of the
shorthand messages:
„en circuit“
—the old cemetery in Prague—
—for you Renée, my sister,—
—do you remember?—
—central European culture!—
—Mitteleuropa!—
—gone and forgotten—
are contextual reflections on my part: how impressed and moved I was when I visited the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prag. Confronted with the sight of a vanished cultural world, I gazed at the old tombstones inscribed with Hebrew characters and jutting out at angles, half sunken into the earth. Suddenly my memory produced associated signals with the existence of a past culture: in the topography of the geographical ‘entente’ of the then Hapsburg monarchy with its fertile multiculturalism and many religions this vanished culture centrally anchored a specific “cross-over” character in a bygone Europe. As an heir to this same culture, I wanted to lend it expression.
|
