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Stephan Kleinschmidt in Athens
Stephan Kleinschmidt, Town Councillor (Slevisgsk Parti) and Chairman of Culture and Business, came to Athens for one day to meet Spyros Mercouris.
He joined Else Christensen Redzepovic in her attempt to link Sonderborg 2017 with the legacy of Melina Mercouri.
The visit started by getting a sense of Athens. The departure was from the doorsteps of the main door leading to Poiein kai Prattein, the Non Profit Organization with Anna Arvanitaki the President and Hatto Fischer the coordinator. It is located on Lycabettoustr. 23 no longer a street at that spot, but stairs leading up to Lycabettou hill.
Stephan Kleinschmidt, Anna Arvanitaki, Else Christensen Rezepovic
Stephan Kleinschmidt has qualities of a politician who knows what it means to work in two different cultural and political fields. As representative of the German minority in Denmark, he has this special task of having to deal with past memories of terrible fights between Germans and Danish people, while demanded as politician to know what future options Sonderborg has in reference to the development of the region. When he arrived in Athens, he had just assumed the chairmanship of the committee aiming to link culture and business. Sonderborg and the region face very specific challenges, among them the most outstanding challenge being the constant departure of 10 youths with only two returning eventually.
Else Christensen Redzepovic, Stephan Kleinschmidt, Anna Arvanitaki on Syntagma Square
At Syntagma Square many things happened during 2010 due to the multiple protests against the austerity measures. The public protest developed until the end of June 2011 when the assembly was wiped away. Instead aesthetical and health reasons were cited then to do away with the indignant protest against the austerity measures. The square looked then again like the photo depicts: with no traces whatsoever as to the recent political history in the making. By June 2011 no more tents, no more lively interactions between people were visible. Most telling was what the mayor of Athens said to justify the cleaning up operation, namely that tourists do not want to see dirty tents, but wish to see the ancient ruins and traces of the past. And yet Greeks would want visitors to understand what they are going through in the present. Hence such a policy designed for tourism does not make sense.
But traces of the past can be found everywhere. In the Metro station at Syntagma Square there are vitrines in which remnants of the past are shown. For when the metro was being build, there was discovered underneath Athinas, the street running just in front of the Greek Parliament, an entire village making pottery and ceramics. These things were found merely a few meters underneath the surface of the earth. It indicates how negligent they were in the recent past of cultural heritage when they build the road of it. On top of it, revamping Athens meant also tearing out later the street car which Tritsis wanted to rebuilt. His dream of a street car was realized when in preparation for the Olympic Games in 2004 a special streetcar line was constructed to link Syntagma to the coastal areas from Pireaeus to Vouglameni.
Sewage pipe
Hygiene in Ancient Greece - sewage pipe discovered when digging for Metro
From Syntagma, it is possible to walk through the Plaka towards the Acropolis. It means heading towards Monastiraki and from there past the Tower of the Winds which marked the entry to the Agora.
Tower of Winds
Ever since the unification of Archaeological Sites was completed, this landscape of how Athens must have looked like in Ancient Greece re-appared. It was a dream of both Melina Mercouri and Tritsis. They wanted to make visible and accessible again the landscape of Antiquity so that ancient buildings can be viewed from different angles, and this without any other disturbance to the eye. Underneath the Acropolis, on the other side of the Plaka, there is the Herodes Atticus, the amphi theatre which is still used for performances today.
Stephan Kleinschmidt
Herodes Atticus built 151 A.D.
What can be said in view of such blue seen through ancient ruins? Azure the temper, and the marble always cool in the sun as if no simmering or lingering doubt is possible when veins of the earth are made visible all at once! And what these arches shoulder for centuries! It is like a wonder to be uplifted by wonder itself. In them manifests itself an encompassing logic of belief in reason and endurance. It was the question of Bart Verschaffel when studying Piranesi who preferred the Roman culture and its vaults seen in prisons: was to be preferred as foundation of culture for Europe, the more robust Roman style or the aesthetic ideal of beauty linked with Ancient Greece? But who can make such a choice, or who wants ever to make such a decision?
The walk continued underneath the Acropolis towards the new Acropolis Museum. Here architecture in view of what had been achieved in the past underlines how difficult it is for the present to find the strength to express a vision for the future. It is a question whether thoughts formulated during one year of a European Capital of Culture can articulate something which will still be actual 2000 years from now? Too often not enough investment in culture is made by the ECoC cities, so that the substance of human beings is not being addressed. Yet human beings need to express themselves freely, and this without any inferiority complex because others have discovered already something. Unfortunately too often culture is used nowadays to merely showcase a particular national brand. It is done with the intention of bad PR to upgrade the image of the city. In reality, it creates a temporary illusion of being advanced enough to be competitive with the others. However, it is done in such an exclusive way that there is no longer any comparison, or for that matter a dialogue between cultures conceivable. It is only a culture putting itself on a pedestal. As the pantomime of Marcel Morceau demonstrates: he who wants to be admired by being up on that pedestal, so that everyone can look up when passing by in park where that monument stands, he shall end up being made of stone: no hard feelings, but also no feelings left to be expressed. The hardened soul has become nowadays a reflection of only discipline needed for work while ending up using only the other. And this is done without noticing how much shall be lost on the way to nowhere, if the future does not include the others.
The new Acropolis museum
Side view of the new Acropolis Museum
View of the Acropolis
After this little sight seeing tour through the Plaka and around the Acropolis, Stephan Kleinschmidt and the others went to the house of Spyros Mercouris to have a serious chat about the intentions of Sonderborg 2017.
Stephan Kleinschmidt and Spyros Mercouris
The discussion was a lesson in politics when having 'culture', or politismos in mind.
Sometimes there come moments in one's life which are n o t so easy to be forgotten, or as Klaus Heinrich, author of 'thinking and dust' in reference to Antigone put it, why is it that one can spend up North three months of vacation but once back that time shrinks together into three days, whereas three days in the South become in retrospect something like three centuries or even more. Is it because in the sun with the blue sky the infinity as measure of an elongation of thought does become something close to being eternal? Nothing is ephemeral once touched by light.
In memory of those days when still eating, talking and walking together while all along looking ahead...
Hatto Fischer
Athens 1.3.2013
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