Wolfram Höhne

A narrative as a monument. The method of narrative reconstruction using the example of the space flight planetarium “Sigmund Jähn” in Halle an der Saale.

In 1978, the city of Halle opened its space flight planetarium. At the time, the structure was a technical innovation in two respects. Zeiss Jena uses the planetarium to present a new generation of star projectors. And it surprises with its unusual architecture. The building owes its unusual design to a system construction method in which thin-walled reinforced concrete shells are produced as prefabricated parts and assembled to form facades and roofs. Over the years, the planetarium became an important part of the educational biography of many people in Halle. When a flood severely damaged the building in 2013, the city administration decided to demolish the building, which is now a listed monument. To this day, this decision remains controversial. Because the loss of the architectural monument is planned, the material and spatial condition of the structure is recorded according to the requirements of monument law. Undocumented, on the other hand, is the past that makes the house a controversial heritage. A controversial legacy.

Based on institutionalized monument preservation procedures, Wolfram Höhne develops an alternative method for documenting endangered architectural monuments. Methodological criteria for the selection of testimonies, their arrangement into narrative structures, and the use of narrative text forms in historiographical texts are developed and tested using the object biography of the Space Flight Planetarium. As the structural shell is demolished in winter 2018, the author assembles the fragments of what has survived into a historiographic text. Telling the story backwards, the building biography uncovers different layers of time. Beginning with the afterlife of the building at its former location, the author describes how the GDR’s architectural legacy was dealt with in the post-reunification period and ultimately takes the reader back to the origins of modern and socialist utopias of progress. Contradictory narratives are presented. The scientific-technical fascinations of state socialism are juxtaposed with the individual life plans of individual biographies, but also with the idea of disposing of old burdens, which dominated after the fall of the Wall.

https://www.uni-weimar.de/projekte/raumflugplanetarium/

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Artistic Projects

• „Das Schweigen des Sichtbaren“, Spuren des Wismut-Erbes im Bundesgartenschaujahr, Gera, 2007
• „Das Vermögen der Kunst“, Ausstellung und Deutschlandreise, Kunsthaus Dresden und Goethe-Institut Tel Aviv, 2005
• „Was in den Sternen steht”, Wandbild für die Fachhochschule der Polizei, Rothenburg, 2004
• „Show Your Wound“, Ausstellung und Israelreise, Goethe Institut Tel Aviv, 2003
• „Simultane Perspektiven“, Gestaltung der Turmplattform der Technische Sammlungen Dresden, 2003
• „Platz der Zukunft“, Utopien für den Jenaer Engelplatz in Kooperation mit dem Theaterhaus Jena, 2002
• „Katzengold”, Ergänzungen zur Sammlung Maenz, Neues Museum Weimar, 2002
• Partizipatorische Projekte mit der Gemeinde und der Kollwitz-Gedenkstätte Moritzburg, 2000

Film Projects

• „Das Kämpfer-Gen“, Dokumentarfilm (MDR 2011)
• „Die ganze Natur“, Filmreihe zu Goethes naturwissenschaftlichen Forschungen (Komplett Media 2010)
• „Elham – meine Musik für Afghanistan“, Kinderdokumentarfilm (KiKa / ZDF 2014)
• Wissensfilme für die Plattform „Studio Bauhaus“ der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (2008-2012)
• “Aus dem zweiten Leben”, Mitarbeit an Filmen über die Exilgeschichten jüdischer Architekt*innen, Centre for Documentary Architecture (2013-2017)

Contributions to publications

• Das Vermögen der Kunst (Böhlau, 2008)
• Vom Labor zum Projekt (Verlag der Bauhaus-Universität, 2011)
• Sammlungsdidaktik. Die ‚nicht mehr neuen‘ Medien in den Universitätssammlungen (VDG-Verlag 2016)