Testimonial

Resting, drained by the passage of the night, I peer down into the pit that forms the mason's courtyard. Freshly chiseled ornaments stand proudly next to the corroded precursors that served as models, testimony to the endless repair, the incessant renewal of the church. I do battle with my fatigue and, drawn on by the advancing light, I move along the wide path between museum buildings to an open square of red paving stones, black and white granite, and steel. On this, the morning of the first Advent Sunday, I lack the will to go home, wandering the empty inner city streets, enjoying the quiet of winter, the silent light of dawn. It is too early for the hoards of tourists pouring from the station, those in transit with an hour to kill, out for a quick look at the gothic cathedral so emphatically recommended by their travel guides. Too early for the visitors to museum and philharmonic. Too early for the Frühschoppen, the brunch time beer of the punters at the corner pubs. Too early for the skateboarders, roller-bladers, skaters and punks, the jugglers and the musicians.

Cautiously, I make my way along an imbedded rail that leads to a structure of six monumental abstracted steps, the corner piece of Dani Caravan's Ma'alot, the expansive memorial to long forgotten suffering, a history obscured by a sea of quotidian pleasure and pain. The visitors will search in vain for a description of this square, a key to the site lodged between the more innocent cultural representations of architecture, music, and graphic art. It is a wonder they sanctioned the project at all; an embarrassment for the church shepherds, reproach and accusation for the help not offered. An embarrassment for the innovators of arty Colonia.

I proceed along the rail, stepping slowly, carefully, testing my dulled wits as I move past a group of vagrants sleeping on cardboard and newspaper mattresses under the projecting museum roofs, wrapped in layers of clothing in sleeping bags, their heads covered by coats and pullovers. From among the mounds an old mongrel sits up and observes my progress.

A city of rails, a hub of commerce and tourism vying for the new status of art metropolis, sleeps. A quiet chill rises from the river. It will be a clear day. I pull my scarf tighter and button up my coat at the neck. Eventually I arrive at the sculpture at the north-west corner of the square. Six steps, alternately black and white, vertically elongated, extend up into the sky, the upper surfaces broken by slits that suggest embrasures. The sculpture symbolizes the watchtowers of the concentration camps. A few steps on and I stand at the top of the stairs leading down to the Rhine promenade, a spot favored by weekend strollers, burghers and tourists alike. As I watch a barge laden with white sand painfully battling the current southward, a solitary cyclist makes his way along the glistening concrete past the brown waters.

Turning toward the central piece I choose a path defined by the trajectory of a rail leading to the center. The rail cuts through a massive plate of six circles of the same black and white granite as the tower. With the red paved area sloping down to the piece in the center it vaguely represents an amphitheater, a sight that would imply celebration. Yet such festivity has little to do with the iconography of the site. The central plate is directly over the stage of the Philharmonic, the whole square being the roof of the auditorium. Since the stage and cellar floors of the hall are below the level of the Rhine, the whole construction floats in a gigantic tub. Below the monument wealthy citizens do their cultural duty by sitting out long classical music programs. Skateboarding youths who disturb matinee or afternoon concerts are sent away by student jobbers wearing Atlantic blue jackets and black wool trousers.

Search as you might, you will find no plaque explaining why the square is so contrived. But then again, it is doubtful whether the citizens of the city would be interested.

The theoretical intersection of the rails forming an arrow point to the opposite bank of the Rhine where Jews, Gypsies and other Rassenschänder, violators of race, were herded together in the Trade Fair halls in Deutz to be ordered, systematized for deportation to extermination camps, Auschwitz among them. Those fortunate enough to be allowed to remain in Cologne were used as forced labor clearing the streets of rubble.

Yes. An amphitheater suggests festivity, celebration, performance; in accordance with which I stand on the metal plate that is the center, spread my arms wide and turn, twirling faster, as fast as my exhaustion will permit. Bridge, administration buildings, chivalrous king, Hyatt roofs, gray horizon, trees, glass, brick, museum walls weave and distort in the flow. Laughter growing in my chest. The inconsequentiality of death, of my death and thus of my life, emerges clear and beautiful. Pristine simplicity. Innocence.

The halls of commerce, the trade fair celebrating the principles on which our society functions, functions historically as the site of anguish and pain. The fundamental fear of death crystallized and distilled within these halls appears all too clearly. The halls of incarceration were those of business, halls now enlarged to accommodate ever-greater celebrations necessary for an ever-expanding economy. Applause for the clowns.

Six circles, six steps. The number six, the Jewish numerary symbol for the Shoah. At the end of the rail a cast iron plate bears the nine, the forty-five; four and five and their sum. The arcane symbol for Adam, for humankind. There also appears the fifteen, of five and ten, the five representing the letter H and ten the letter J; the JH as the name of God, the allegory of creator of this world and the lord of the world to come. The present and the future united in the number fifteen. And fifteen - creation - minus nine - man - equals six - destruction. At the periphery the leafless trees; six acacias and nine maples.

So much more than a simple reminder to the Christians, close as it is to their symbol of the wealthy diocese of Cologne, the Cologne cathedral. Under its spires and buttresses, its saints, gargoyles, and prophets, lies a monument that should warn, provoke thought, revive the memory of the negligence and collaboration of this century, the burning synagogues and the destroyed shops of the Reichskristallnacht, and the murder of old, the slaying of the Jewish community in Cologne by Christian crusaders in 1096.

Circling so, my world disintegrates in the spin. I slow down, stumble, and fall across two circles. My surroundings continue to move, lurching wildly as I lie still on the icy plate, an insane ride at the fair. Flesh and bone for the living, granite for the dead. Markers. My head rests on the central steel plate and, with the slowing of the spin, I am able to focus on the straight line of the rail before my eyes. A wedge of steel traveling back in time. Or does it take us away, lead us somewhere?

Where do you want to go today?

"What's the problem, young man?"

A compassionate old woman, the deep lines of time scored into her bird face, stares down at me, the last thing I need. I smile at the thought of her having observed my act.

"What's wrong?" she repeats when I do not respond, the ludicrous smile frozen across her face. Time passes.

"Tell me something about these circles," I say, words thick and slow, struggling to my hands and knees, "and the tower over there."

From her pocket she draws a purse, takes out a ten mark note and, with trembling hands, folds it once and slips it into my coat pocket.

"Get yourself something to eat," she says, and slowly totters off towards the promenade steps, austerely bent, forced to stare at the ground.

---

Return to CONTENTS