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lillil Kí^lIBi® s ß 1 ^ ~ iiiÉilii mmrné^imm PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Hojdyssek

First name: Gunter Other name/s: Rudolf

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: MFA

School: School of Art Faculty: SPI

Title: From Laughing At The World To Living In The World

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

Born in 1938 in Poland, 1 epxperienced wartime Berlin and post-war Stalinism. My first job, at sixteen, was with the East Berlin States Opera and the Bertold Brecht's Berliner Ensemble. The play writes Betrtold Brecht and Buechner had the strongest influence on me. Brecht's play 'Mutter Courage and her children' and Georg Buechner's 'Woyzech' encapsulated the harsh realities of post-war Europe, and confirmed my desire for social justice and reform.

Yet, the main influence on my work comes from my own life experience. My life in Australia has become a kind of exile-a deprivation of the origin of my culture and my cradle. After nearly forty years in Australia I feel a little displaced. Yet I left Europe voluntarily to escape from the very culture and history 1 now miss. I am experiencing a common dilemma of migration. 1 belong neither here nor there-a kind of dislocation. There exists a twilight zone in the in-between time-a discontinuity of my Berliner development.

Artists such as Kaethe Kollwitz, John Heartfieid, George Grosz, Otto Dix, and Max Beckman influenced my teenage years. Later, Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz. I work with found objects, such as toys crafted by human hand. I am giving them a new meaning, a new being. They are meditations on the conflict of war, where women and children are the primary victims of political fragmentation. My sculptures evoke memories of a childhood stolen. They take on a menacing character reminding the viewer of the effects war has on humanity.

But Art is the reflector and searcher; it is our way to enlightenment. Joseph Beuys introduced the concept of an expanded notion of art ("der erweiterte Kunstbegriff) to surpass the boundaries of modernism with in art, science, spirituality, humanism and economics. He drew attention to the potential of human creativity. Art, against all odds, is poetry to life

Declaration relating to disposition of project thesis/dissertation

I hereby grant to the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all property rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.

I also authorise University Microfilms to use the/350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissejlation^^^racts International (this is applicable to doctoral thesj^ only)./ ^^ X) / /L^l-Al. Date

The University recognis^ that there may be exceptional circumstances requiring restrictions on copying or conditions on use. Requests for restriction for a period of up to 2 years must be made in writing. Requests for a longer period of restriction may be considered in exceptional circumstances and require the approval of the Dean of Graduate Research.

OR OFFICE USE ONLY ~ Date of completion of requirements for Award: CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis.

I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's desigrj^and coiAeption or in style, pres^aiafion and linguistic expres^^i^is ^ckn9

Signed. FROM LAUGHING AT THE WORLD TO LIVING IN THE WORLD

Günter Hojdyssek

M.F.A. 2007

University of New South Wales College of Fine Art AHVHfin 800^ AVW 91 M 9,NIL

uw^w 2 6 MAY 2008 LIliHAHY For my daughter, Denise CONTENTS

THE POLITICS OF EXILE

IN TRANSIT: BERLIN REVISITED

INTERLUDE: WORKS

ART & LIFE or LIFE & ART

FIRST LESSONS

BERTOLT BRECHT

IDENTITY PAPERS

JOURNEY TO DECENTRE

SPACES OF DESIRE

BEUYS & CO

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY # f

/

1

Windmills for Viduct Project, 1995 THE POLITICS OF EXILE

The artist is a traveller and observer. Like a scientist he investigates and analyses the invisible to make it visible. That is the artist's function: it is a way of seeing. Yet there is a profound difference in the concept of location for the casual traveller, in contrast to the migrant. In migration memory leads to dislocation which leads to a sense of exile.

My intention is always to use memory and experience as a reference and as a guide to understanding the present and the past, which provides me with a window to the future.

My life in Australia has become a kind of exile - a deprivation of the origin of my culture and my cradle. After nearly forty years in Australia I feel a little displaced. Yet I left Europe voluntarily to escape from the very culture and history I now miss. I am experiencing a common dilemma of migration. I belong neither here nor there - a kind of dis-location. There exists a twilight zone in the in-between time - a discontinuity of my Berliner development.

I wonder about the art I am creating in Australia. Perhaps it is the compensation for time and development interrupted by migration. I ask myself whether the baggage I carried with me in leaving Berlin would have naturally dropped away had I stayed.

Myself at 8 - Drawing by Willi Hojdyssek. IN TRANSIT : BERLIN REVISITED

In 1945 Berliners faced the entire destruction of their city. To witness a destruction ofthat magnitude has a hugely damaging effect on the soul. Children are particularly vulnerable, for they have no understanding of the circumstances of the tragedy. The dimensions of such a tragedy marks the individual for their entire life. For a child such an experience is beyond comprehension. It is, in fact, a terrible abuse against the child's psyche. Such war experience for children will form their view of the world and change the pattern of their behaviour. What takes place in the mind of the child after such an experience is what Kafka speaks about in Metamorphosis {Die Verwandlung): a transformation of the human spirit. This can evoke in a child muteness, withdrawal or violence. Kafka's Metamorphosis explains the universal dilemma of our unchanging human condition.

I love Berlin, metaphorically that is. The field trip - back to Berlin - to the place which once was my home was a soul-searching time. Berlin is a seductive place, contagious. Berlin never lets go of you once you have lived there. Like in the Wages of Fear (the movie) you always hang on to your metro ticket. I had to go back to Berlin to find out where I belong now, in search of myself in an attempt to find a compromise. The problem is too complex for an easy solution. The solution I need is to acknowledge my existence as an artist regardless of location.

In an E-mail to Sydney I voice my first observation with a feeling of apprehension at Berlin's development. This is the only E-mail message I sent from Berlin:

I am on a constant shuttle - Kreutzberg - Prenzlauerburg to Rathaus Steglitz - spending time with family and friends. They all want a part of me. Berlin is a great and exciting city, but you need money! I have none! Streets are stacked with cafés and restaurants which are stacked with people. The number I have never seen before and they say Berlin is broke.

Regardless, the building craze has no limit. Gigantic projects go on inspired by the wings of desire I suppose. There is a 1920's nostalgia in the air, people sitting on a sweet honeypot but it smells a little decomposed, decadence and depression side by side. Art everywhere, but where is the political content? The spirit of Brecht, Erich Mühsam, Hanna Arndt, Hanna Höchst and Kurt Schwitters seems to have blown away with the dust when the wall came down. Also missing is political theatre like that of Erwin Picator and Brecht, and nothing remains of the left, of political dadaism like Johannes Bader and George Grosz etc. Pre-World War II landlords now return to the former East Berlin to reclaim what they think belongs to them. The housing market is in full swing. A great insecurity is nesting in. People look depressed and some waste time on grafitti-ing the city as soon as the building comes on the market and the tenants get their marching orders. Though Berlin is an anarchistic city and people do what they want, I miss just the slightest breeze of revolution. Potsdamer Platz stunning and confusing, a little USA. They intend an everlasting mark here. It reminds me of Metropolis and King Kong, a place, commercial without soul. I could not say 'Tch bin ein Berliner.''

I long for a little normality, for the sea of tranquillity. At least for the sound of the sea at Bondi Beach. Good old Sydney Town, where are you? I know downunder the trains never run on time. So what? At least we have time! We must guard it, ever! If we could just manage some integration, some reconciliation with people, the true citizens of Australia. If we could share a little from their great and exciting culture then we would have a beautiful and inspiring country. Without Yankee doodle dandy of course.

As yet I have not managed one art talk. Nobody's interested in art and politics. My artist friends from the former DDR are either dead or too shy to be involved in such a discussion. Except for Inge and Werner, my friends from old times at the State Opera Workshop and the Berliner Ensemble. They're never tired of providing me with books and articles relating to art and politics.

Yesterday I was privileged to join the press for the great opening at the National Gallery of the retrospective Exhibition of ''Kunst in der DDR'' (Art in the German Democratic Republic) I signed in as a representative of the College of Fine Arts Sydney (CoFA.) I obtained the great and rare catalogue for only 10 Euro. The follow up was a conference on the legitimacy of East Geman Art. It was a lucky day to be a part of this event. A dispute is going on whether or not the art of the DDR should be integrated into the mainstream of western art. I certainly think it should happen. It was a little sad for me to see many art works of friends now passed away or left the country. I met the editor of the catalogue, she is an intelligent woman from Leipzig. She mentioned that the Social Realists were not included in this exhibition because a discussion concerning the artists not willing to conform to Social Realism. This in itself is a political statement in the Brechtian"^ way.

*A NOTE ON BRECHT

The pressure of circumstances has brought political themes back to the attention of art and culture, not least because even the well- heeled majority of audiences feel their effects. Unemployment, war, terrorism, and capitalism ... political themes are back. What was a bygone age - the age of Piscator, Brecht and Peter Weiss are more and more relevant today. After Postmodernism (i.e. everything stands on fragmentary, unstable ground following the collapse of ultimate certainties, and there are no enemies, no opponents, no "other", any criticism or political counterclaim is just a variable of one and the same system. Or is it?

Brecht has exerted an unflagging pull, not only on my generation, but on those rudely awakened by the grim realities of global scenario that desperately needs to break with the routine perceptions, hypnosis by TV, ads and doctored news reporting. Today in Germany, from Falk Richter to neo-documentarians such as Hans Werner Kroesinger, and from Patrick von Blume to Volker Lösch's production of The Weavers set in Dresden - you could put it like this: there is once again a market for political theatre.

Unfortunately I won't travel to Schloss Neuhardenberg for the main debate regarding art from the DDR. A three night stay at the castle, very expensive, I don't have the money. However, I am bringing plenty of books and articles back to Australia regarding the debate about East German art. Here in Berlin money means access to meet interesting people. I also went to the Bethanian. There I met Suzy Treiste and Richard Grayson from Adelaide. We discovered we had mutual friends in Adelaide and Sydney.

One thing I would like to say is that you will find the best contemporary art in Berlin's state galleries. The Hamburger Bahnhof with its wonderful collection of Anselm Kiefer and Joseph Beuys was simply inspiring. I had to spend an entire day there.

Bonita, when I roam around Kreutzberg I think of you and Marina Marini, remember your exile in Berlin. I miss you all at CoFA, I miss a little of that Barossa Merlot. All I want for now is to do the work and ideas that circle around in my head.

Greetings to all of you. Berlin is hot, 37 degrees all day every day! So I say from Berlin with love! PS. Keep my space for me at CoFA, Günter

Walking around Berlin brings back memories for me. The time of war and after. I visit Pankow and Niederschönhausen my childhood suburb. It is incredible, on a lot of the buildings you can still see the bullet marks from house to house streetfighting when the Soviet army entered the city.

Daniil Kraminov, the well-known Soviet War Correspondent in his writing 'The Spring of 1945" commented:

''The road to Berlin was a long and hard one. There was fierce fighting for 1,418 days and nights along a front varying in length from 3,000 to 6,200 kilometres, as well as behind the lines in enemy occupied territories. The Soviet people paid a high price for victory. Every minute of the war they lost nine lives, 587 lives every hour and 14,000 lives every day, adding up to the staggering total of 20 million dead. Two out of every five persons killed during the Second World War were Soviet citizens. The USSR suffered tremendous material damage - to the value of 485,000 million US dollars/'^

1945: The end of war in Berlin was marked by an inhuman sacrifice of men and material. To the last Hitler's propaganda machine still prophesied that Germany would win the war. The propaganda was that women, children and men should fight to the last because the Russians would annihilate all Germans. Russia made a tremendous sacrifice of manpower to bring Hitler and his army to their knees. To encircle Berlin 200,000 Russian soldiers lost their lives in one week of fighting, and when the Russian army entered Berlin it took three days of house to house fighting and the lives of another 21,000 Russians. It was a moment of great sadness and uncertainty, but at the same time a great relief that the war was finally over. The great 1000 year Reich shrunk to the size of Berlin and there it crumbled into dust. Hitler's adventure was from the beginning an adventure of betrayal.

It is ironic that Hitler perished in Berlin, the city he strongly disliked. The Berlin population could hardly be called Aryan. Berliners were a mixture of French, Russian, Polish, Hungarian etc. Berlin had the largest Jewish community in the world. The Jewish community of Berlin made an important contribution in art and politics. Rosa Luxembourg came from Poland to join Karl Liebknecht and there together established the Communist Party. The Spartacus movement started in Berlin. Berlin was a centre for revolutionary ideas. The plots against Hitler also originated in Berlin. The priest, Dietrich Bonhofer, an outspoken opponent of the Nazis, lost his life as did Erich Mühsam, the Jewish writer and activist, a friend of George Gros.

LISTEN!

Now, listen! Surely, if the stars are lit there's somebody who longs for them, somebody who wants them to shine a bit, somebody who calls it, that wee speck

^ Daniil Kraminov: Notes from a Soviet War Correspondent. The Spring of 1945. Novosti Press Agency Publishing house Moscow 1985. Taken from the back cover. of spittle, a gem? And overridden by blizzards of midday dust, tears into God, afraid that it's too late, and sobbing, kisses the sinewy hand outthrust, swears that he can't, simply can't bear a starless fate: There must be a star, there must! ... Then goes about anxious, though tranquil seeming, whispering to somebody, ''You're better? Not afraid? All right?" Now listen, it must be for somebody stars are set gleaming, somebody who longs for one star at least over the rooftops to come alight? V. Mayakovsky (1914f

2 V. Mayakovsky: Selected Verse Volume 1. P. 52. Raduga Publishers 1985, Working drawing for'Potennkin; 2004 INTERLUDE : WORKS

In my own work '"Achtung" I illustrate the transition that takes place in the child's mind through experience of war. The rocking horse, a cheerful colouful toy, has been stripped of everything. It is no rocking horse any longer but has become a menacing creature, a child sheltering behind armour, protective yet offensive, angry and aggressive, hiding the still remaining softness of its stolen childhood.

This work, "^Achtung", is an installation that will include a wagon carrying a sarcophagus. The sarcophagus has been chiselled out of one large block of tree trunk. The inside has the form of a young child. The sarcophagus is resting on a wooden wagon which is separated from the horse. The horse, symbolically, has broken away from the harness and stands free at the top of the stairs.

In my work ^"Wunderkind" a 60 year old rusty toy peddle car has been scraped down to the bare metal. The car, menacing and defiant in appearance, is completely enclosed like a tank with no windows and with only a monotone motor running. It stands on a plinth decorated with a jigsaw puzzle in steel blue colour.

""Wunderkind dreaming" is a metal toy truck resting on a steel plinth. In front of the plinth is a small child's table covered by a steel tablecloth. On the table is resting a small tin box, half-open, filled with shavings from coloured pencils, and a toy ladder pointing to the sky and leading nowhere. On the back of the truck a group of coloured pencils of different sizes sit on a small bench. The steel plinth is dominating the scene. The truck, representing the child, is immobile, the wheels removed and placed on the plinth. The bed of the truck waves like a sheet in the wind. The child is immobilised and trapped, yet its poetry is seen in the coloured pencils and the pencil shavings. The bleakness of its life has not silenced the child's spirit.

The revolt of the cruiser "Potemkin'' in 1905 was one of the object lessons of the revolutionary struggle, in which the broad masses of workers and peasants and particularly the sailors and soldiers, learned the lesson of revolutionary struggle and the concrete tactics of armed revolt. The Bolsheviks generalised these concrete lessons and drew the necessary conclusions with regard to the further preparations of the overthrow oftsarism.

The victory of the workers and peasants in October 1917, was not only due to the favourable international and internal political circumstances, but chiefly to the fact that they were led by our communist party, with Comrade Lenin at its head, which had gathered tremendous experience in the struggle against the monarchist government during the 1905 revolution, in the year of reaction and retreat, and especially during the time of the conciliatory bourgeois government of Keren sky:

In his history of the battleship Potemkin Vladimir Yakubov wrote:

It seemed that the ship would be forgotten like its other sisters, but a young movie director named Sergei Eisenstein decided to make the movie about an event in the youth of the ship that would make him and the ship famous. Unfortunately tha ship was gone and couldn't play itself, but her still existing counterparts from the fleet, Dvenadtsat Apostolov and Tri Svyatitelya were used as substitutes. The movie "Bronenosets Potemkin"" was made in 1925 and the rest is history."^

In nny work '"Potemkin", a charming playful creation inspired by a found object, a bathtub, converted to a ship's hull. Three portholes on each side. The keel, wooden ribs covered with steel sheeting. The deck planked out and on it a large wooden chimney. Steel wires drifting out like a gentle smoke and on it floating walnut-shell boats. Seemingly peaceful, but in truth it is the metamorphosis of revolution in drydock!

Potemkin. Giinter Hojdyssek. 2006

^ The Revolt of the Battleship Potemkin by Anfansy Matushenko.

Vladimir Yakubov: http://www.plp.org/misc/potemkin.html •lijBSSlii Art and Power ART 8L life or LIFE & ART

I think all the experiences in life beconne a part of your make up. That is, everything is connected and if you are creatively active it will manifest itself in creation.

The war was over. As children we were running around the streets without fear of bombing. I was jumping hopscotch and in front of me a man stood holding wooden cases in both hands, smiling at me. I looked at him and he laughed. I couldn't work out who he was, but there was some vague memory of familiarity. Some of the older kids called out to me "It's your brother Bill, Günter." Then I recognised him and ran towards him and he put the cases down and picked me up. We walked inside the house and everybody was happy that he was home again, safe and alive. My brother got his job back as a toolmaker because skilled people were needed at this time. Life drifted back to normality.

News came from the Red Cross that our father had been killed and buried 120 kilometers east of Berlin in a small village called Zehlendorf. He was one of three soldiers shot and buried on the spot in nameless graves. This was very bad news for the family. My mother wanted our father to be reburied near our place in a small forest cemetery. It was my brother Bill who volunteered to go to disinter him, identify him and bring his body home. The first body he dug up turned out to be our father. On the right side of his face he noticed five bullet holes. The left side of his face was missing. A woman who worked in the field witnessed the shootings. The three men were working to bring down a large radio antenna. They must have decided to take the opportunity to flee. They ran into a wheatfield adjacent to a forest but were shot down before they reached the forest. The Russian guards casually walked over and finished the three men off with a spurt from a machine gun. The guards went through their pockets and tossed everything onto their bodies. After the guards had left the woman walked over to the bodies, kneeled down to say a prayer then collected their documents and handed them to the authorities in the village. The authorities notified the Red Cross who in time notified us.

My other brother Andy and I waited at the goods train station at Wilhelmsruh with a large hand wagon for Bill and the coffin to arrive. When the train arrived a railway worker helped us load the coffin onto the wagon. We pulled the wagon the two kilometers to a small chapel in that forest cemetery and left it there. My mother arranged for the funeral. We buried our father in that little forest cemetery, it was a good thing my mother and I went every day to look after the 9 grave. Eventually it gave my mother peace of mind. We accepted the facts of life and looked towards the future. It was important to rebuild our lives. It must have been in the late autumn when this happened because I remember it was very cool when we reburied our father.

dream and a Berlin childhood

in a bright lit dream lil

as a black and white photograph carried by his father the son waits 2 years for any message. feet thud dangle the stone bridge father never turns the corner and mother appears in the massive space with thousands of others in the railway station 2 days late from the Berlin countryside in war 80lbs of potatoes on her back hanging outside the train bags all along slit by bayonets.

frozen solid the child's balloon of dreams slides on ice crystals of despair hope escapes he tries always to hold it in a black and white photograph Louise Crisp, 1988 ^

Most artists have a set of obsessions that are the organising principle for their knowledge and their practice. My experience - the frozen black and white photograph in Louise Crisp's poem - remains the key

^ Louise Crisp and Natalie Wild: In the half-light. Friendly Street Poets Publisher 1988. P.13. moment that supplies the drive, a drive that deepens over the years, rather than shifts. The success of an artist using personal material like this in the public process of exhibiting art. The material is a visual short-hand for self-expression, but becomes valuable through this social realisation. U iixpol Phei^ s/oL ^if ¿(.-hmf.

Working drawing for'George Grosz', 1991 Gorlitzer-Bahnoff, from the window of 17 Weiner Strasse

Berlin girl firiting with American GI, drawn from memory, 1949, the artist, age 11 FIRST LESSONS

The first art school in Berlin opened up In 1946 at Berlin Welssensee. My brother Bill wanted to enrol because he always wanted to be an artist. My mother told him that she couldn't support him, but he said that he would look after himself. He applied and was accepted. He enrolled In the faculty of Sculpture and Painting under Heinrich Drake. Bill decided to move out, and found an affordable room nearby. This became his live in studio. As he lived not far from us, I would go to visit and share his studio space. I was about eight years old and very interested in drawing and painting. I loved going to his studio. He built himself two large easels. There were canvases everywhere and drawings on the wall, and I loved the smell of oilpaint and the linseed. Bill gave me my first art lessons. I had a little wooden table in the corner near the window with my paper and paints. He would arrange things for me to paint, like perhaps a sunflower in a glass or a still life of books and cups. At one stage we argued about the way I painted the stem of the flower. He looked at it and said ''You don't look properly. The stem is not straight, if you look at it you'll see it is interrupted." But I took out the flower and said that the stem is straight. But he put it back into the glass and explained to me that the water acts as a magnifying glass and when you look at it you will see where the water ends the stem is narrower. This was my first lesson in observing. He painted his environment in the spirit of Käthe Kollwitz, refugees drifting through Berlin having to camp in the streets, mothers with children and their sparse belongings. Bill did not finish art school. Somehow he wanted to get out of Berlin, so he went to Cologne. In Cologne he was lucky to find a job as a graphic artist with a newly opened modern health museum. He became a very accomplished graphic artist with wonderful references from the Health Department. He specialised in anatomical graphic art and medical book illustration, and he was involved in the design of an educational biological atlas for the high school curriculum. For me it was a sad loss, his departure, because he had become my surrogate father, but as life went on we always kept in contact by writing to each other. He kept me supplied with art materials. I kept up my art practice.

At the age of fourteen I joined the boxing club. I was a little bit wild, like most kids in the street who grew up without a father. Our street was famous in Berlin for violence. It was a little exaggerated but it is true that gangs formed here and to walk past the next housing block was like passing another country. A friend persuaded me to come to the boxing club for a look. The trainer, Karl Pylor, a gentle old professional, took care of us kids. I liked the club and my life became calmer, but I needed permission from my mother, but she would not sign the form. Her reason was that she did not want a son with cauliflower ears and a pushed in nose. But I continued to go secretly promising that I would come up with my mother's consent and signature. After three months I had my first public fight which was a little traumatic. I did not win the fight, but it was a baptism of fire. Of course my mother finally found out. My sports teacher at school came to my aid and convinced my mother to let me stay in the club. Boxing was an important element in the development of my self-confidence. It gave me a focus and I became a more mature person. As an amateur boxer it was strictly unethical to have street fights and of course this was to my benefit. I became very good at boxing. To be a good boxer you need to be intelligent. I learned about the psychology of the mind through boxing. I studied the facial and body language of the opponent and learned to react to his intentions. For me boxing was a game, like a dance, a creative improvisation. I did not see the point of being brutal and hurting my opponent. I was being groomed for the 1960 Olympics in Rome, at the height of my boxing career, when I decided to drop out. I had difficulties with the competitiveness in sport. At the same time, boxing gave me a focus. As a child I was diagnosed with severe dyslexia. Boxing is like undoing knots: you step into the ring, and begin to dance around. The arms are just like knitting needles. You are alone in the ring and have to learn to draw from your inner resources. It is a challenging sport, challenging just like life.

' Championship match 1955. Myself and Deland.

BERTOLT BRECHT

Brecht loved boxing. As a young man he had a go at it himself. The sport of boxing was extremely important to Brecht, "l/l/e should go to the theatre like we go to a sporting event. '' 13 One audience dresses down, eats hotdogs, drinks beer, shouts, wanders around. The other dresses up and sits as immobilely as if stuffed. Why? Because, Brecht deduced, the theatre was 'sacerdotal' - priestly, churchy and inherently bourgeois. He was all for the rough and tumble of the boxing stadium: healthier and more proletarian.

In his 1977 memoirs, the former world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling tells of his initial reception into what he called "that Berlin society of the twenties/' which "did not consist of the important or influential people; not the rich of powerful. Rather it was the people about whom everyone was talking: artists and showgirls, actors, journalist and authors, bicycle riders and intellectuals ... They were people for whom there were no outsiders, since all in their own way were themselves outsiders. They were the society; and this society was now clamoring for me. " And clamor theydid. The year was 1928, and the newly crownedEuropean light heavyweight champion has just won his title with a sensational one round knock-out of the Italian Michele Bonaglia. The actor Fritz Kortner wa to call that victory over Mussolini's favorite protégé a "triumph of the democratic principle over fascist Italy,'' which compares ironically with the reverse political allegorisation of this same Max Schmeling, who exactly one decade later was himself to be destroyed in one round in Madison Square Garden at the hands of that "symbol of freedom and equal rights of all men and races against the Nazi threat," the incomparable Joe Louis. But the second Louis Schmeling fight of 1938 takes us away temporally and geopolitically, from our concern of the moment, if not away from our central point: that boxing is and always has been more than just boxing.^ ("Max Schmeling on the Canvas: Boxing as an Icon of Weimar Culture" David Bathrick.)

Brecht once said: ''What is entertaining is not knowing who will win and who will lose." Brecht was something of a boxing connoisseur and some have even described him as a "frustrated boxer". Boxing represented the elemental human drama, and so was inherently engrossing to the audience. For Brecht, the stage is a boxing ring and it is the goalof the dramatist through the actors to achieve tha knock-out. In a short piece he wrote about boxing "Die Todfeinde des Sports" (The archenemies of Sport), Brecht complained that the elaborate point system in boxing was ruining the sport.

(the more boxing is removed from the K(nockout), the less it is a true sport. A boxer who can't knock down his opponent has not really beaten him.)

And certainly Brecht always sought to land a punch with his words, as he expressed in one of his last poems 'Vnd ich dachte immer'' - ''And I always thought

Und ich dachte immer, die allereinfachsten Worte Müssen genügen. Wenn ich sage, was ist

^ David Bathrick: Max Schmeling on the Canvas: Boxing as an Icon of Weimar Culture, www.jstor.org Muß jeden das Herz zerfleischt sein. Daß du untergehst, wenn du dich nicht wehhrst. Das wirst du doch ein sehn.

And I always thought that the simplest words Must be enough. That when I say how things are Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds. That youII go down if you don't stand up. Surely you see that.

I didn't like to be under the burden of expectation. I was basically free-spirited. I never saw sport as a professional career. For me it was a leisure activity which was not taken too seriously. At the same time it was a challenge against myself. A testing, like life.

MOUNTED ON THE FAIRGROUND'S MAGIC HORSES

Mounted on the fairground's magic horses As among the children I pranced by - Bucking hard, we raised our blissful faces To the marvellous clear evening sky - All the passers-by just stood there laughing And I heard them say, exactly like my mother: Oh, he's so different, he's so different Oh he's so different from us.

Seated with the cream of society As I outline my unusual views They keep staring, till I'm sweating slightly - They don't sweat, it's one of their taboos - And I see them sitting there and laughing And I hear them say, exactly like my mother: Oh he's so different, he's so different Oh he's so different from us.

Up to heaven as one day I'm flying (And they'll let me in, you'll see they will) I shall hear the blessed spirits crying: He is here, our cup of bliss to fill! Then they'll stare at me and burst out laughing And I'll hear them say, exactly like my mother: Oh he's so different, he's so different Oh he's so very different from us. Bertolt Brecht^

My first real job came at the age of sixteen. My brother Andy worked for the ministry of culture as a driver. He spoke to the Minister of Culture, his boss, about my artistic talents to see if there could be a position available somewhere for me. She suggested that there was

^ The Berliner Ensemble at the Nimrod Theatre presented by Ekkehard Schall: From Laughing at the World to Living in The World 1979. (from the programme notes.) a position at the State Opera Workshop in the city, a kind of handyman position that could be upgraded to an apprenticeship. She made an appointment for me to come and see her. I went to see her the day after at her office. I was so nervous I had to walk around the building a couple of times before I saw the secretary. She was a very interesting and intelligent woman, a writer. An idealistic communist who had lived in exile amongst other artists, she had come back with her husband to help build a democratic socialist country. She liked me, and convinced me to take up that job. She said, ''You will like this job. The theatre world is a fascinating place, never boring, and you will meet interesting people.'' She could see that I was very shy and lacking in confidence. We parted with a promise that she would let my brother Andy know when I could start.

I started at the State Opera Workshop in 1954. My experiences at the theatre workshop not only gave me skills but also provided an inspiration which has centrally influenced my development as an artist. Georg Büchner and Bertolt Brecht were, and still are my strongest influences in art. There is a juxtaposition between these two playwrights in political experiences.

I remember the first day. I was very nervous and worried. It was such a large place, easy to get lost, and so many people not taking much notice of me. I was put into the carpentry department first as a handyman and billy boy. I had to go and get breakfast for them all at the shops. When I started, the master carpenter/ modelmaker took me on a tour of the workshop and showed me the various ways of working. He took me first to the painting department - a huge hall on the top of the building, divided between opera and theatre. They stretched out the huge canvas sheets and stitched them together for backdrops for the stage. They had huge trestles like shooting stands so that you could climb up to view the painting from the top to check proportion. They worked with large brushes, like brooms. I was fascinated by the largeness and the scale. We then went up to the stage design department and he introduced me to the staff there. Then we took the lift down to the upholstery department and tailor room. Everywhere I met people and as it is customary in Germany you had to shake hands with everyone. Then we walked down to the blacksmith, welding and metal-cutting rooms on the ground floor and adjacent to that a huge plaster room where they did all the casting and laminating for the stage. There they had sculptors who worked in clay to create plaster casts. I was slightly overwhelmed by all the introductions and already tired though I hadn't yet done any work. But it all looked very exciting. So my first day was basically just getting familiar with the building and with the people. Here I met Heinz Jaeschke who introduced me to my duties. Heinz was a very •• SCHWEYK IM ZWEITEN WELTKRIEG

Uberali gibt es Sdiweyks, Millionen von Schweyks. Und ob- gleich sie keine Helden sind, so kann man sicfi dodi auf sie verlassen: dies ist die Lehre. Die Weisheit des Volkes läßt sich trotz der Finsternis nicht AM BERTOLT-BRECHT-PLATZ täuschen, läßt sich nidit trüben. Aber mon darf selbtsver- ständlidi die historische Rolle des Schweyk nicht in zu pe- dantischer Form überspitzen. Was Schweyk tut, reidtt natür- lich nicht aus; ein bewußter, direkter, »kräftiger* Widerstand ist notwendig, und es hot ihn auch gegeben. Hanns Eisler

"You find Schweyk's everywhere, millions of Schweyk's. Though there are no heroes, you can rely on them. That is a fact. You can't decieve the wisdom of people, regardless of the darkness of life. The historical role of Schweyk should not be overvalued in a pedantic way. Schweyk's action is natrually not enough; a conscious, strong resistance is important, which has always existed." Hanns Eisler -- /\vi>.rhi'n (»iitiiiii> M.irchrn luid Nooiloo/auht-r -

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hti l'uLsiiviiiir (liiit h du- mniHTÌtTlr Malin niit I t iiiii. IVot^ki. Bia luriii hai Hilli-t »'r\s In. • — '-"'1 l..t,;-:'\\\ , ( «M \.V\ t »ii lihii>i> ! (ir.i-i ¡i!i.- t> M-i i;t> Jt.Shr !>,. Hi, r> .!si)h. i , : ;; j( H , Ii rl : iViijii H.auäi,-! Mjiw ¡•ii- i i.; K | iU % HH ; i VH>1 i- ii Wj > i !; u iä Si . > t v-I H; ä \i. I «lij! ^!s¡^ii üiiil Ì ¡!«l. k.-H!,.!- .--pi. . nice young man who grew up in the Brecht family where his mother was the housekeeper. Heinz turned out to be my best friend for a long time. He took me around, introduced me to the people I had to get lunch for and briefed me on the procedure. I didn't do any work at all that day, just hung around with Heinz and watched what was happening in this very intriguing place. This was my first day and I felt a little lost and very shy, but Heinz said don't worry, most of the guys here are OK people and you will eventually fit in.

I settled in well at the theatre workshop. It was a very busy place. We worked on sets for the Brecht Theatre, The Berliner Ensemble and the State Opera. I was mostly in the theatre section and at that time we worked on The Life of Galileo. This was a very interesting and exciting job, but lots of work. We made a huge wall relief of Romulus and Remus. The plaster room at the Berliner Ensemble had no space to make it so it had to be made at the Opera workshop. I learned the process of cast-making which was a new experience for me.

A Note on Brecht's '"Epic" Theatre

Brecht believed that epic theatre enables the audience to see things differently to how they had originally perceived them. Therefore by seeing the 'truth' they can begin to change things in the real world. Furthermore, he believed that by showing the suffering of those on stage, audiences could avoid it. The suffering he portrays is political. Brecht's ideology is consistent with Marxism in that all human evil is a result of unjust social institutions.

Brecht encourages his audience to think rather than becoming over concerned with the plot. Brecht invites his audience to identify with the issues faced by the characters and not the characters themselves. The play is a form of debate rather than illusion. Brecht's concept of alienation involved the idea of'making strange'.

Examples of Brecht's alienation. The Life of Galileo: A long speech by the protagonist, followed by the anti- climactic remark "Now I must eat." The Caucasion Chalk Circle: When Grusche ponders whether or not to rescue the abandonned baby, her thoughts are voiced by a chorus whilst she acts in silence. (Distancing.)®

He aimed to take emotion out of the production and persuaded the

® Berthold Brecht: Stüche (Leben des Galilei) Aufbau-Verlag. Berlin und Weimar 1968 P.316 - p. 444 Caucasian Chalk Circle. audience to distance thennselves from the make-believe. He encouraged the actors to disassociate themselves from their roles. All of this would make the political truth easier to comprehend.

To further push the alienation effect, Brecht liked to show all the 'behind the scenes action.' The directors and crew took down all the curtains that would normally hide parts of the stage. Stage hands and actors could be seen milling around on the stage, and for extra effect, the backstage door on the stage was opened before the play, during intermission and afterwards, showing the cast pass by on the nearby street.

The wardrobe displayed its own meaning. White make-up was applied all over the actor's face with black circles around the eyes. The actors painted black boots on their feet instead of wearing shoes. All of this was meant to represent the characters as being dirty and, in his/her own way, corrupt. In some cases parts of the costume were shed in order to represent the character's evolution throughout the play. For example, when the audience first met the prostitute Jane, she was wearing a long black skirt, a low-cut black top, and covering her shoulders was a bright red shawl. By the end of the play, her skirt is extremely short and her shawl is removed. Jane transformed from a very independent prostitute to an easy slave of the business under the Baboon's command.

We worked on the floor on a large wooden frame (about 5x8 metres). We first sculpted the relief in clay in one piece, then divided it up with metal sheets into six sections. It was now ready to pour the plaster for the cast. When the plaster had set and could be lifted, we lifted the sections of cast by pulleys onto trestles. Then we sealed the inside of the plaster cast with shellac. When this had dried we laminated it with paper to a depth of about a centimetre. After this it went up to the carpentry department where the section were assembled. After the carpentry department it went upstairs to the painters for the final treatment - the entire relief was then painted to resemble a bronze sculpture. It was an exciting experience to see a prop being born and completed and then to see the entire stage design realised on stage. We also worked on a large wall that portrayed the city of Florence. For that we had very large plywood sheets that had to be laminated with thin copper sheeting. These large panels were then hammered with round headed hammers. East Germany did not have copper sheeting at that time so they had to buy copper sheets from West Germany at a cost of 21,000 West German Marks that came to the sum of 84,000 East German Marks. This was an indication of the budget allowed for culture in East Berlin. At the dress rehearsal the workers of the theatre and their families had free admission to the plays and the opera which was a wonderful 18 experience.

Myself on an exchange visit to the Liepzig State Opera Workshop 1956.

When I was in East Berlin in 1983 I went to the Berliner Ensennble and checked seating prices for performances. The dearest ticket was 6 East German Marks and the cheapest ticket (standing in the back) was 60 pfennig. A beer at that time in the pub was about 1.20 Marks.

My job was also a message boy. I was the youngest one in the workshop and often sent off with a note or a small prop either to the Berliner Ensemble or the Opera House. I loved these little outings. Sometimes the director didn't have time to check the item or to receive the message, so he would tell me to just sit in the auditorium and watch for a while until he had time to see me. These were interesting moments to watch the actors and directors rehearsals and witnessing the play coming to shape. Sometimes I would be half a day away. Brecht at that time was already very ill and sometimes he just sat there and instructed his director's assistant. There was a lot of humour sometimes. At one stage the round dance in The Caucasian Chalk Circle - Brecht was very precise and interrupted to have it repeated until it was perfect. But the actors became a little bit sick of the repetition. They continued on dancing when Brecht asked them to stop. It went on for quite a time until Brecht burst out laughing and said "OK, I get the message."

We worked on the sets of Mother Courage and her Children, Arturo Ui and The Caucasian Chalk Circle and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for which John Heartfield created the photo montages for the backdrop on very large panels. Our job was to paste these onto the large panels and they had to be perfectly aligned. John Heartfield would come into the workshop every day to see how the work was progressing. Heartfield was a short man looking a bit like Peter Lorre. He always wore a long dark trenchcoat and a hat. He would come in and stare for a while motionless at the work we had done. He was very fussy. If he saw that it wasn't right he would burst out ''You idiots, can you never do anything right!" He would really get wild and grab his hat and throw it onto the ground and trample on it. We all stood around. It was very funny, but nobody was game enough to laugh. After a while Heartfield would cool down, pick up his hat, shake off the dust and put it back on again and march out.

The finished work by Heartfield looked amazing on stage, a very strong anti-fascist representation of the Third Reich.

Büchner was born on the 17th October 1813 and died on the 19th February 1837. He was a genius, ahead of his time in his writing and thinking. He only wrote three plays: Danton's Death, Lenz and Woyzeck. Because of Büchner's political activity he was persecuted and chased all over the country. They had wanted posters out in every city of Germany. Büchner stood for freedom of speech and social justice. Finally he had to leave Germany for Switzerland where he lived in exile and where he died at the age of 24.

Brecht and Büchner had a similar life experience. Brecht had to flee Germany through Denmark, Finland and then to the Soviet Union. He stayed only briefly in Moscow and made for the United States. Friends asked him ''Bertie, why didn't you stay in Moscow?" He mischievously smiled and said, "The sugar wasn't sweet enough." The United States became his place of exile. He was there with his wife Helene Weigel, who was a very accomplished stage actress, yet she only achieved one role in the Hollywood film ""The Seventh Cross" by Anna Segers, where she co-starred with Spencer Tracy. It was a struggle for them in America and after the war the McCarthy witchhunt started and people were under investigation for UnAmerican activities. Brecht was investigated and asked if he had ever belonged to the Communist Party. He denied this, but they left the day after for Switzerland. The offer came from East Germany to open up the Berliner Ensemble at Schifbauerdamm. It was the time of the Cold War, the division of east and west became more and more entrenched, yet people were still free to move from west to east and east to west. Brecht took up the offer and opened up the Berliner Ensemble.

1956, Brecht died. The funeral was in August and it was a bleak unusually wet and cool day. They buried him at the Dorotheen Cemetery of the old French community. That's where all the famous people are buried: Heinrich Mann, Eisler and Heiner Müller, the activist Dietrich Bonhofer, Anna Segers, Paul Dessau, John Heartfield and Wieland Herzfelde and family. After Brecht's death Helene Weigel was appointed to the directorship of the Berliner Ensemble.

Entrance to the Dorotheen Cemetery in East Berlin. Brecht's and Helene Weigel's graves are to the right. Berliner Ensemble, from the Museum island across the River Spree, 1996 IDENTITY PAPERS

In 1958 I went on a trip to Western Europe - West Germany, Belgium, France and Italy, Austria and back to West Germany. I was away about seven months and finally decided to return to East Berlin. It was an illegal trip and the East German authorities requested some explanation. The first thing they did was to confiscate my ID card, then six Stasi officers one by one interrogated me, each for an hour. After that they gave me a temporary ID card which I had to take to the police station every ten days for a renewal stamp. After six months I got my original ID card back. The Berliner Ensemble workshop offered me a permanent job at their small plaster casting workshop under the condition that I would stay put and not wander off every year. It would have been a very good job. I knew the staff there well and I could have learned more in the way of sculpture, but I could not wholeheartedly promise never to leave again on travel adventures. In the meantime I worked freelance in graphic art and sometimes as a model for some of my friends.

In 1959 I decided to leave East Berlin for West Germany. I remember well, I had very little to carry, a small rucksack with a book by Metterling the Danish philosopher on termites. I had another philosophy book, I think by Kant, notebooks, a half frame 35mm camera, a sleeping bag and some spare underpants. I went to Friedrichstrasse to the Press café which was frequented day and night by writers, actors and artists and Stasi agents. There I met some friends to say goodbye. Some of them tried to persuade me not to leave. They told me that I was making a mistake and that not all of us can leave. Some of us must stay here because we need good- minded people in the DDR. But my friend Hans, an actor, just said, ''Let him go. He just wants to see the world. Er ist einer der auszieht um das fürschten zu lernen!" (He is one that needs to step out into the world to learn about fear.) They all laughed and we shook hands and said goodbye. I also needed to leave East Germany to avoid conscription. I took the S-bahn to the airport and flew out to Hanover. From Hanover I hitched to Munich, found a job and planned my trip overland to Australia.

I intended to hitchhike to Australia, but that didn't happen. I reached India where I got stuck because of the monsoon, so I returned overland again to Germany. This became the epic journey of my life. I left India with six dollars in my pocket. When I arrived in Germany at my sister's place in Munich a letter was waiting for me from the government that I had to join the army. Naturally I did not want to join the army in either East or West Germany. I wrote a letter requesting exemption for religious reasons - bullshit of course. I did not wait for the answer, but left for Sweden. In Stockholm I lived in a tent in the snow which was not too bad. The only job I could get was as a male nude model which was reasonably well paid. I worked for a number of art schools. One was the famous private art school Konstscholan Idun Lovén in Stockholm. Idun Lovén finally invited me to stay at the art school because she thought it would be too cold living in the tent.

Christmas 1962 I made a quick decision to go home to Berlin to spend Christmas with my mother. I had no problem going in and out of East Germany. I had no place to live in West Berlin - I was virtually homeless. I had little money and I slept in the subway. Td get a ticket and drive around and sleep in the train. Eventually, by chance, I ran into my friend Werner Kilz. He escaped from East Berlin through the sewers with only one large bag containing the manuscript of his book. Slaughterhouse and the Problem of Political Division. Werner invited me to come to his home and live there until I got on my feet. This period was a period of great confusion for me. I felt as if I lived in exile. The wall was up and Berlin was divided permanently. Werner Kilz and Günter Grass did their Masters in Fine Art at the Art College at Hardenberg Strasse West Berlin. They shared a studio space there. Grass did his MA in Sculpture and Kilz in Painting. I went to see them daily. Then Kilz told me that our friend Waldemar Grzimek was also back in West Berlin and he took up his professorship in Sculpture in West Berlin. Before the Wall, Grzimek had the professorship in East and in West Berlin. The East German Government gave him the option to stay in East Berlin or to return to West Berlin. He opted to go back to the West. He came one day and took me out to dinner and told me that I should study art at the Hardenberger Strasse Art College. He would find a study space for me. But I could not come to terms with the superficial and materialistic West Berlin way of life and the political fragmentation with the new situation of the Wall.

I found a job at the airport and a place to live. 1963 Werner and I and another friend applied for immigration to Australia. The following year the approval came by post for assisted passage to Australia. Personally I had the need to get out of Germany. I wanted to get as far away from the situation as possible, and therefore opted for Australia. LE TOUIÍ DU MONDE DE SES TROIS JEUNES GARÇONS PASSAIT PAR TEHERAN... Nous venons de rRcfvoir à Ils mn joitil lâ capitale ira- nos bureaux la visite de trois nienne. Jeunes globearottcrs. 11 s'asH BnuIftTsger a iaiî des (Hucirs de Charles Boulanger, de Ver- comnicrdak-s. En plu.? du viers Uiklgiqueli. du toiidoni- français il possède cour:im en Roy llîll «.t de Hoj Gitn- ment Tespgnol. i'aniîlaU tt r ter, un énilgrant de lierlin allemand. Est- II5 ont à peine vingt ans. Koui avons demandé au.x f."e;it dans une auberjjc de trois gîotw-irotters .si ieur.s pa- jeunesse, à Munich où ils pa^- rents 'avalent été d'accord a, .salent leurs varainceis., qu'ils vec ce (»ripie, ont décide d'entreprendre le Pour OUister. la quosuon ne tour du monde. .se j»osaiî pa.s pui-sque sonp^- Pour leur jiri^nnére etaix-, rc M. .ta m^r« ont été tiié> iors qui devait tes conduire à de ia dernière guerre, Sulan- travail: il n'y a poir.t >r.s plcuif,'., p<.nirruiit, en di- '.trC'uir- < í va\sí.ait. r,)iite qu:etud<^. v;«ner h- i.u 1 li»- i-',).* le p oi, arocfse pi'n pu;< iranclur. du .^ud au '•st « 1. i >cq et - un cha- Ayant entendu eu-- la v¡e sé:- I.oin dcu.\ d,' tenter iii'ird, It',.; (irus Aineriqiii--; ;»- étiiit difficile aux Inde.s, l.- t-i^ur du ïîioi.di' i.-n tjtj.i:r»- v;ii¡; di' revi>ir l^'ur ¡x.-ir,' de n¡i'£(U [K,ujr tr.ìver'H'r le Pakis- tr;« a déi'Sdé tie re,sií r quelqii • jours: il;. depart. tán rtid, ! A a c re, avec tcmjjs en Iran., d'y tr.ivaülrr deux, tnil-.-. ¡.u-ut etre qu-î;.-:- 5'a-i priur ioni;î.e;:!|is pui-^^^ue ' '' er a ri->'«' sq V i!g reu-r - et d'econon¡:.ser un«,- s.,.tnni«,-, ans Militi iís y p:irv>eni1:-w;;! Houl.i.-i^or e;. Gunter on*, rié- S!t., i' - r.' , ^.eri^ di.. qu¡ l;:ur }nrinettru de travi-r- l.l'U!' prodiiun !!;":rier.i:r' idé qu'iN r<-p,4rtiraienL tnert,. üiin 1 1 1 i're n n , nnuí ni .•xT rinrie san.-, trou de dUii- icra I .pahan, Clnra.:. ¡ef>..ki.. tôt tour •ul^r'^s-inaohr au'V'a pa5 c. ¡M- If mu'de a- düíw CUlîé.e, ta:;, : ítuie .-t iíith,:.ípi„.ii; I,' .scroti". u'f-tnnií{/ lU iK' «Oï^t Vj.,»s liu VS.IÍ ont la e,.nv.rî;!:>ri que da: naü.i. defcu-.vejnrnt celte t<>is ijou- i i.ver « n |xirt,>» HiU. deeui'-ra par la av c X

Interview with French speaking newspaper in Tehran, iran

Termite Hill, Central Queensland, Australia, 1964 JOURNEY TO DECENTRE

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My first official West German passport and nny visa for entry to Australia

I arrived in Australia in Fremantle 10th April 1964. This was an elating and exciting encounter. I could not stay in Perth. The ship went on to Melbourne where we were processed for migration. The customs officers were suspicious of me when they looked at my bag which was not larger than a small overnight bag. In it I had a couple of books - one on Australia - my diaries from my trip to India and back and then to Sweden, a movie camera and a toothbrush. The customs officers were amazed, but finally believed me and allowed me to disembark. We all went to a migrant camp at Boonagilla Immigration Camp near Albury-Wodonga. There we got processed and accommodation was allocated. After a week I found a job as a storeman. I stayed a month, then I hitchhiked to Brisbane.

I joined a French company - Compagnie Générale Géophysique. They operated in Central Australia and the Northern Territory in mineral exploration. Their tracks are still called the French Line. My first flight in Australia was on a DC3 Ansett Anna, leaving Eaglefarm in Brisbane at 6 am, arriving in Bedourie, Central Queensland 6 pm. This, on its own, was a great adventure. I stayed with this kind of job sporadically for three and a half years. It was my most exciting and interesting adventure. I remember an incident when I worked alone taking soil samples standing in the morning on the top of these gigantic red sandhills overlooking huge valleys, turquoise in colour. It looked ancient, prehistoric to me. I expected a dinosaur to stroll by any minute, but it was also silent and spiritual and for the first time I felt like a trespasser. I loved the bush, yet it was completely alien to me in comparison to the green landscape of Europe, but the age and wisdom of this old continent crept under my skin.

This job involved often work for one person travelling to a marked countryside and taking soil samples. I liked to work on my own very much. It gave me space to seep into the landscape. Coming back to 24 camp at night time after dinner I often took the Landrover and drove a couple of miles towards the dingo fence. I slept on top of the Landrover and spent the night under a clear sky watching the Russian Sputnik carving a line across the sky. Every night a dingo came to check me out, but he never came close enough. I became attuned to the nature around me. In Berlin I made up my mind to break up camp completely, but now in the bush I felt something more profound had to symbolise my change.

One day I took all my diaries and notebooks, sketchpads and a couple of books with me to the dingo fence. I piled them onto my usual fire place, poured a gallon of petrol over it and put a match to it. Those items had lived in my backpack all the way to Istanbul, to Teheran, Isfahan, Persepolis, through the desert of Baluchistan to Karachi, all the way to India, then back to Europe, and even through the winter and snows of Stockholm. Now in Australia in the centre of Queensland I parted with them. Ritualistic and a little bit dramatic. I felt like someone who had walked for a long time and rid himself of his heavy backpack. I felt good. I finished my half bottle of Red Label and in the morning I was a new person.

In the Centre at the camp with Eagle a hand-reared wedgetail. SPACES OF DESIRE

In 1967 I returned to Germany for Christmas. I left Sydney on the Fairstar and floating out through the Heads I looked back and I thought I may never come back here again. I might go elsewhere, maybe Canada.

In 1968 in the European Spring (this was also the time of the Prague Spring) my fiancée Barbara Ramsay decided to join me in Europe. Barbara arrived by ship in Bremerhaven where I was waiting for her. We went to Berlin and stayed a week at my mother's place in East Berlin. We bought an old Volkswagen car and began our nine months journey through Europe and Turkey.

In 1970 on April 10 my daughter Denise was born in Munich. This was a change in our life, a wonderful change. Barbara was quite happy to live in Munich but I became restless and a bit homesick for Australia. I missed the bush and its wide spaces and I missed the light. In 1971 we decided to go back to Australia. We booked on the Galileo, leaving from Genoa, destination Adelaide.

My first job was four months gridding claims with a survey team out of Kalgoorlie. On my return to Adelaide I signed up with an electrical company as a TA in Gove on the Gulf of Carpentaria for six months. Returning to Adelaide I started work at the Festival Theatre as a builders labourer. This brought on a very important change in my life. Through the union - the BLF - I became involved in some of Australia's political problems and social issues. There are two important things that initiated me into this country: first of all, my years of experience in the outback and then my involvement in the union under Jack Mundy, Bob Pringle and Joe Owens.

Our union was one of the most progressive unions in the world. This union was obviously involved in better conditions for their workers and fair pay, holiday and sick pay and security on the job. Though we were classified as casual workers we fought hard for permanency on the job, which we unfortunately did not achieve. But most of all we believed that quality of life is not just limited to the financial reward, but rather to the environment and leisure time. We were involved in protecting the history of Australia, that is, buildings and parks that had a link with the past. We believed that it is important to keep some of the older parts of Australia, the older suburbs like the Rocks, Wooloomooloo, Victoria Street in the Cross and Challis Park. It is important to have these evidences of the past for a connection with the country you live In. But we also acknowledged the very important fact that Australia already had a history before white occupation 200 years ago, namely the indigenous people who have been living here for 60,000 years. Therefore we stood for Land Rights, for equal opportunity regardless of colour or race, we were sponsoring women working as builders labourers if they wished to do so. One of them, Pat Fiske, became an accomplished film maker. She made a well-known documentary on the Builders Labourers. Rocking the Foundation. We were involved in the Anti-Apartheid movement and in the Anti-Vietnam War movement. During that time I learned to connect with the country of my choice, Australia, by taking part in the shaping of human rights and the striving for social justice. This legitimised my presence in this country. I became a part of it. I could say it had become my home.

I liked working as a rigger. We were a colourful bunch, from opal diggers to poets and artists, all committed union members. The building site is not unlike the theatre. Brecht was always at my side.

From Berthold Brecht: Letters 1913 - 1956: From Brecht finds his place: Letter 127 To Erwin Piscator

Dear Piscator, I'm writing instead of talking to you, because it's about an interesting and really important point. I'm obliged to give you a refusal which has cost me more thought than the hardest work would have done. So far I've been working on that Ballade by [Upton] Sinclair, the one about the roses on the grave. I've begun translating it seven or eight times. The results are so dismal I wouldn't want you to see them. Naturally I've tried to find the reason {since there was no lack of interest) and to you it must be obvious that I did not put the blame on my incompetence. Even so I want to tell you the result of my meditations on my failure: the poem, I believe, is not a good one. It's pretty, it's touching, the theme is objectively sound, but believe me, there's not an ounce of revolutionary feeling in it, in fact it's very much like those wretched working-class songs that cry out for pity (whose?) Imagine a whole house full of grown men bathed in tears and singing the four-part plaint to the effect that everyone and everything, even the roses on their graves are persecuting them. The truth is that this is a historic genre painting, poetic in expression and embarrassing in effect. I'm going into it at such length because it typifiesd a certain weakness in Socialist literature; I can get along without [Gerhardt Hauptmann's] The Weavers and Henschel as well, which ain't doing so good either. I hope you won't start regarding me as one of those people who are always theoretically willing to do practical works but in practice say they can't be bothered with theories (even their own). Cordially yours. In Oldenburg all of a sudden, 1927.^

^ Berthold Brecht: Letters 1913 - 1956. Published by Routledge USA Chapman & Hall NY 2001. . / I t t I

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Jürgen Scheiferdecker Beuys macht licht (Beuys makes Light), 1978 from survey exhibition of East German Art, "Art in the DDR", 2003 Georg Baselitz Retrospective, Berlin, 1996 BEUYS 8L CO.

Germany was in denial of its own legacy and in the grip of crass consumerism. Beuys was the trailblazer of post-war artists as diverse as Anselm Kiefer, Gerhardt Richter, and Georg Baselitz: each in their way would remind the new affluent liberal German public of their uncomfortable past. Beuys' performances often entailed rambling lectures and the chalkboard at which he detailed his anthroposophical-cum-ecological meanderings would be preserved as a drawing.

Kiefer (b.l945) has always been a rhetorical, even stagy painter, master of the visual coup de théâtre and a brilliantly varied technician. Kiefer studied under Beuys where he was well exposed to the mythic role of the artist as shaman and healer of a traumatised past. He quickly outdid Beuys by staging what he called his ''occupations". In 1969, photographing himself in various charged sites of WWII in stormtrooper boots, giving the Nazi salute. Man in the forest (Moses and the burning bush) in a German forest, himself as the mythic prophet. Nuremburg reflects his mature style. Earth colours, straw, a compelling use of perspective , a scorched but now agricultural terrain. Bombastic? Fascistic? Or Postmodern? You decide.

Baselitz flipped his world head over heels. Born in 1938 Baselitz is the Nordic elder stateman of the three, the tamed and cultured ''wild man" of Schloss Derneburg.

Kiefer and Baselitz both return to the "forbidden" past of the traumatised German modernism. Baselitz found a way to reanimate the snuffed-out path to expressionism (closed off by the Nazi's Entartete Kunst exhibition in 1937) after seeing American abstract expressionism in 1958 (as part of MOMA's "New American Painting" travelling exhibition). He makes this expressionism strange, nonetheless, by painting his figures upside-down creating a curious hybrid of figuration and "pure" painting.

On my last week in Berlin I made my last pilgrimage to the Hamburger Bahnhof. I wanted to visit Anselm Kiefer and Beuys once more, the holy Joseph of Germany. Tm intrigued by Kiefer's work. Tons of lead. A very heavy affair, in spirit and mythology. You are humming to the sound of Wagner, even if you don't want to. The Hamburger Bahnhof, the main entrance, the hall is original. Once it was the railway station for trains to Hamburg and Scandinavia, now it looks like an aircraft hangar. The Angel of History, the B52 bomber, dried poppies seeping out of its pores. Anselm Kiefer's creation, it 28 stands there, right at the entrance, grounded, heavy and sinister. This is no Icarus, not stacked with feathers, and it will never fly. This lead will never reach the sun. And then there is the library, all in lead. The huge lead books, as if made for Siegfried. Monumental, Niebelungen, Wagner, a musical skyscraper of twenty three hours of Götterdämmerung. This is Keifer's collection. Anselm Kiefer, born in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Kiefer has persistently created scenes of destruction and regeneration, poignant but ambiguous.

Beuys came home from the war in 1946. I was then eight years old. There is a major shift in experience.

Kiefer had been asked time and time again where he stands, would he have been a Nazi as a soldier under Hitler. He said he could not answer this question, he does not know. Maybe it is an unfair question. Kiefer tries forever to answer questions to himself. His studio, a large warehouse, Wagner coming out of loudspeakers. An attempt to recreate the atmosphere of the Third Reich. He needs to understand why a civilised society followed and loved Adolf Hitler. "Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg?" "Ja, Ja, Ja!" Three times "Yes!"

But after the war was over, nobody loved Hitler. Kiefer suffers the same pain of confusion as most Germans born after the war. The war was Germany's biggest tragic event because it was a betrayal. Now a new situation has emerged - the Cold War - and this has invented new questions and new answers. In the Gallery of New South Wales hangs an impressive work by Kiefer. A kind of painting/installation. A propeller of a Stuka of lead with the words on it - "Liebe Glaube Hoffnung" (Love, Faith, Hope.) These words were engraved on the decorative side daggers which the SS officers carried on their belts. His work should be better called Götterdämmerung. It would be fitting the Wagnerian (Treue) faithfulness that plunged Germany and the world into disaster.

In contrast Joseph Beuys' experience grew from a different angle. Beuys was born 1921. The world then already lived in uncertainty. Germany lost the First World War. The world depression was on the horizon. Hitler plotted and in 1933 he took up power in Germany.

I walk up to the next floor where the fat mountains stand around. I have a last look at them, and think maybe the fat and felt story is untrue, maybe the fat mountains are a left over from the time of the blackmarket era which flourished after the war at the Potsdamer Platz, not far from here. Maybe he could not flog them off. It was a lot of dripping. But then I dismiss this notion. Then there is this field of stone pylons. Mysterious one-eyed poles, conical on one side. They look like Teutonic, fallen warriors. There is some felt and clay on them. Very organic. Tm moved by them. I take some photos. Interpretations of his life experience. I respect his art very much. His work has soul. They are organic creations with soul - timeless. These 150cm stone poles move me most from all the art of the Hamburger Bahnhof. This field of stones could be headstones from a war cemetery, an ancient human tragedy. A creative introspection, they remind me of the landscape of my childhood. The forest of Brandenburg on the edge of Berlin.

And then there is George Baselitz. Baselitz was born in Saxony 1938. He studied in Dresden at the College of Fine Art, the college that rejected me for not conforming. I had problems all my life for not conforming. I don't know if Baselitz conformed, I don't think so. Baselitz came from East Germany like me. He belonged to the group of friends, of passive resistance. He was a typical refusenik. He would not compromise his art. He left for the West like some of us, but soon he realised that the West practised conformity too. They wanted you to conform to their artistic standards. This was disappointing when you came from East Germany. Baselitz was a strong artist and he had trust in what he was doing in art. Baselitz did not measure up to the idealistic socialist realism that the DDR wanted so much their artists to practise. But most of the artists in the DDR were silent refuseniks, only speaking through the art. Baselitz finally left for the United States. Even there he never conformed but carried on with his vision of his created heroes. He was his own maker. His heroes undermined the stereotypes of bourgeois conformists, the shallow cover-up of the reality of life in East and West. He never sold out. He contradicted Joseph Beuys' self created postcard which read ''Es Gibt Leute, die sind nur in der DDR gut." (There are people only when they live in the DDR they are good.)

Jannis Kounellis says: 'The problem in the world is that we have exchanged morality for economy!"^®

Jannis Kounellis, Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Enzo Cucchi: Una Discosione/Ein Gespräch. Parkett-Verlag AG, Zürich, 1986. The question is often asked: Can art change the world? Clement Greenberg, the art critic, said that all the political art in the world did not stop one bomb from being dropped on Vietnam. And recently John Cary introducing his new book ''Is Art Necessary?" in the ABC radio interview by Romana Kovall, says art has absolutely no political function. He dismissed sculpture completely. Even painting, he says, has no point. Only music and writing is relevant. Yet he has just taken up the art of printmaking. But he was very funny and witty. Regardless of Cary's analysis about art, I say that art is necessary.

Art is the living culture of civilisations. It existed before writing and speech. It reveals our make-up. Without art we would not have evolved. Art is language. Beuys said "Sculpture is writing." I say art is the better side of our humanity; without it we would be even more barbaric. Art is the portrait of the world.

Paul Klee said, ''Art does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible." Artists also have a responsibility to respond to the events of the world. Art is a window from both sides - you look out and you look in. The artist interprets the way we are. It's been that way for thousands of years. It's timeless and universal. Through art we can come together, overcome barriers. Art is a way of seeing. It frees us from prejudice.

Lucy Lippard in "Gef the Message - a Decade of Art for Social Change" states (p.58)

What then is the relationship of art to politics? Of course the majority of the art world thinks there is no relationship. I can understand one's art not dealing with political subject matters so long as one is honest enough not to claim ''my art is my politics", but I can't understand the notion that artists should have no political opinions, no political responsibilities. Does that go for architects too and for writers and for coal miners and for ballet dancers and garbage collectore? Who should have political opinions? Only politicians? It's a hell of a thing if by being an artist - you can opt out of any responsibility in society. It places into the hands of those who are only comfortable with and can only profit from art, that maintains the status quo, Carl André states, "Life is the link between art and politics".

In the Objections exhibition (CoFA Gallery, 18th-21st October, 1993) the co-curator, Meredith Buhler, wrote this about my work:

Objection to, and disillusion with what he sees as the continual cycle of war and its effects, inform the work of Günter Hojdyssek. This sculpture-installation is created from objects and humble materials which have already been formed by human hands. They are "orphans" rescued from anonymity and reassembled to create a series of sculptures which have a double message. They are a meditation on the tragic ethnic tensions existing in Bosnia-Herzogovnia where women and children are primarily the victims of the political fragmentation. They 31 also relate to Bertolt Brecht's chronicle play of the Thirty Years War, Mother Courage and her Children. Mother Courage follows the armies across Central Europe selling provisions from her canteen wagon. One by one she loses her children to war, but refuses to part with her livelihood, the wagon. These sculptures evoke memories of childhood, in which the toy is often the means by which the child establishes first links with the world, but here they have a menacing content, reminding the viewer that war and its effects remains a contemporary and unchanging human tragedy.

Paralleling the development of the transition from image to object-art, the area of design has allowed the most common objects to receive new shapes which no longer result from a concern with functionalism. Today, commonplace objects are more and more rendered aesthetic, and although considerations of function have not been dismissed it is the metaphorical or conceptual aspect of the objects which is increasingly revealed.

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Mother Courage and her Children. Günter Hojdyssek. 1993. Waldemar Grzimek Denkmal Heinrich Heine (Zweite Fassung), 1954-56 Standort der Bronze; Weinbergsweg in Berlin-Mitte Weiner Strasse, near Marx Cafe From Wiener Strasse 17 (Werner Kilzer's residence); in direction of the Bethanien Art Centre CONCLUSION

The inspiration for my earliest art experience came from Käthe Kollwitz. The reason for that would be the visual way Kollwitz worked that mirrored my neighbourhood, the war and post-war situation in Berlin. Käthe Kollwitz worked in charcoal and pencil, and also in lithographs and etching. Those black and white graphic images attracted me strongly and of course also later came George Gros, Beckmann, Otto Dix and Heartfield. They all worked using different techniques but in their social content they were in unity. My deepest art inspiration started when I worked at the State Opera Workshop. I became interested in the plays by Berthold Brecht. Brecht gave me direction and my major inspiration in the creative arts. But then I was not that much aware of the influence. Later in life I became interested in people like Kiefer, Beuys and Baselitz, especially Baselitz. He too came from East Germany and was a rebel in that country. In the case of Kiefer: Kiefer is a stunning technician, but his ambiguity always troubled me. He masters his material very effectively, but I can't help sometimes comparing him to Leni Riefenstahl. She categorically denied that she had anything to do with the Nazis, or that she ever knew what went on behind the scenes. Her film of course of the 1936 Olympics is a masterpiece, yet to visualise such a theatrical performance, stage design and illuminations bordering on variety show spectacle of imperialism orchestrated by Hitler's Number One architect Albert Speer (who also denied knowing what was going on behind the scenes) is dishonest. Kiefer works in an artificial recreational atmosphere of the Third Reich with Wagner's music accompanying his work practice. He is obviously seeking to understand, yet I can never deny my suspicion that there might be more than the search for understanding, rather a deep fascination for Hitler's powerful theatrics, almost a nostalgia. Of course my suspicion could sound like an accusation, but I cannot quite understand that you have to spend a lifetime working in a climate of the Third Reich atmosphere in order to understand what happened in Germany during the war. That Kiefer, consciously or unconsciously, admires the pompous Third Reich kitschy theatre, that a German post-war artist needs to drench himself in a life-long recreation of the Third Reich with lead and Brunhilde and Wagner and das Rheingeld is a little beyond me. Maybe, if he had the courage, he would call his lead library "Das Blei vom Rhein." (The lead from the Rhein.) Maybe I'm somewhat presumptuous, but the fact is that all my uncles were imprisoned by the Nazis and two of my mother's brothers perished in Auschwitz.

Daniel Barenboim plays Wagner in Israel, and he is my idol, because apart from playing Wagner in German he is doing great things for 33 peace and coexistence in the world. I'm not a great admirer of Wagner. The writer i^artin von Amerongen wrote a critique about Wagner in his little booklet ''Der Ring - Tristan und Isolde - Parsifal.

Wagner in Bayreuth. Never go there if Wolfgang Wagner, the composer's grandson, is directing a production in between doing the books. The production is usually The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. This is staged without fail in a decor of rustic stepped gables, without any attempt being made to interpret or bring the setting to life.

Wolfgang Wagner is blessed with the realisation that granddad's operas are more than museum-pieces and that the majority of the audiences who forked out large sums to see opera won't touch such dust traps with a bargepole. This is why each year he tempts a director to the 'Green Hill' who has to give Lohengrin, Tannhäuser or even The Ring of the Nibelung a more contemporary feel. A man such as Götz Friedrich, for instance, or Patrice Chereau. Or Heiner Müller, who died young, who was the sympathetic troublemaker in the cultural world of the former German Democratic Republic, whom Wolfgang Wagner, to many people's surprise, let loose on the direstion of Tristan and Isolde. It was a curious sight to see how Müller was suddenly transplanted from the socialist East Berlin to the arch-capitalist Bayreuth, the artistic playground of art-loving Bavarian bank directors and steel magnates, and who then proceeded to create real miracles.

This is what a Tristan should look like, I realised halfway through the first act. So unassuming and modest that you started wondering what work Müller had actually done as the director, apart from sparing us most of those annoying 'director's clever ideas'. He completely stripped Tristan of decorative fripperies and presented a performance which was almost sensational: self-restrained dramatics, pure art without any kitsch at all, supported by performers who could both sing and act, and it seemed once again that a musical drama like this which sounded like it was rutting works perfectly as the supreme abstraction.^^

As for Joseph Beuys, it is not clear if his war service had made any impact on his psyche. He never talked about his war experience. Maybe he suffered nightmares like my brother for the rest of his life. Beuys turned into an artist/activist, but at the end of his life he dismissed all political directions. March 1986 Jacqueline Burckhardt arranged an important discussion at the Kunsthalle in Basel Switzerland where Joseph Beuys, Jannis Kounellis, Anselm Kiefer and Enzo Cucchi met. The agenda was the state of the world. Beuys was very concerned about the decline of humanity, governments drifting to the right, abandoning their responsibility for their people. Beuys maintained that we can no longer rely on God and Government - we have to become God ourselves now and change things. My problem with Beuys' thinking is that I have always found him to be like a monk or a priest who means well, but is somewhat inaccessible to the ordinary people in the street - the people who are his major concern.

^^ Martin von Amerongen: Der Ring, Tristan und Isole, Parsifal. BMG Classics, 1997. P. 67 It is difficult to compare one art form with another. In many cases the agenda is similar and even if artists come from different disciplines and life experiences, the urgent need to make a difference is recognised. I feel more comfortable with Bertolt Brecht than with any other artist. Brecht is an artist who always addressed the problem directly. There is no sentimentality In his writing, Brecht is all about reality. In Mother Courage and her Children Brecht illustrates the brutal reality of war in which people often get entangled without choice. It becomes a situation of survival. One by one she loses her children in war, but she won't give up her wagon which is her bread and butter. Brecht's epic play of the Thirty Year War fits well into our contemporary time. This is what makes Brecht's writing so ardently potent.

Kafka, in contrast to Brecht, was a humanist without revolutionary ambition. His writings were observations on life, his complex relationship to his father reflected in Die Verwandlung (¡Metamorphosis), can be seen as a universal voice of human failure. Brecht as a Marxist writer saw life as action, he believed that to change things you need action. Brecht respected Kafka as a major contributor to human understanding. Both writers, Kafka and Brecht stand tall, side by side. They are our most important writers in the German language of our contemporary time. Franz Kafka died prematurely in 1924 in Vienna. Through death he escaped the onslaught of fascism. Had he lived who knows what direction his writing would have taken.

Bertolt Brecht died in East Berlin in 1956. His last words were ''Lasst mich in Ruhe" (Leave me alone.) Brecht was spared seeing the wall being built in 1962. In 1989 East Berliners took to the streets shouting, ''We are the people". It echoed throughout Berlin and the wall came tumbling down. This was a knockout punch in the spirit of Brecht. Brecht had been fighting walls all his life. It is a shame he could not see this one coming down.

Maybe Brecht died at the right time. It spared him the inevitable confrontation between socialism and the destructive forces of capitalism, the betrayal brought about by the seduction of materialism. That 'II learn EM. 1935 Diese im Jahre 1935 in New York von George Grosz ausgeführte Feder- zeichnung ist ein erschütterndes Gedenkblatt für den von den Fosdiisten gefolterten und im KZ Oranienburg 1934 ermordeten revolutionären Lyriker und Dramatiker Erich Mühsam.

Rückseite: 12 Nachwuciis (auch: Bei Horcher). 1922

Whilst in New York, George Grosz did this work in response to the execution of his good friend, Erich Muhsam, by the Nazis, 1935. Erich Muhsam was a Jewish political activist and writer. Beriin im Ju!i 1945

Berlin, 1933 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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