Alois Riederer and the Landshut district office are at odds. The artist has built an impressive hobbit house on his property. But the authorities want him to tear it down again. Now a court has to decide.
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Patrick Wehner, Hohenthann
When you enter Alois Riederer’s garden, you leave the normal world a little far behind. The garden, which stands in the middle of the otherwise architecturally rather average 4000-inhabitant town of Hohenthann, looks like a wild piece of fantasy that somehow made it out of Riederer’s head into reality. There is a bowling alley here, huge, intertwined tree trunks that he collects all over Bavaria, bizarre metal constructions, wild vegetable beds, a waterfall. And a large, lopsided, round, crooked, surreal house made of clay, wood and straw. The so-called hobbit house. And because of this house, Riederer is in big trouble.