There is little that soothes Munich residents as much as the view to the south, towards the Alps. At every opportunity people stare at it, from the Old Peter, or from the roof of the Café Vorhoelzer, from the Olympiaberg anyway, everyone is looking for a summit and is happy like Otto when they recognize one. With ingenious image editing skills, postcard designers have been making money for decades by pushing the city skyline outrageously close to the edge of the Alps, or vice versa, depending on the situation. The result is the stubborn impression that Munich lies at the foot of the Alps.
The people of Munich love and maintain this image, because the Alps mean leisure, space, relaxation and the opportunity to get out of the office chair at any second and drive there. The Alps always mean being close to Italy – and that’s particularly great here. The edge of the Alps is an indispensable ornament in Munich’s self-image.
But anyone who has been looking towards the Alps recently will hardly have missed it: something is rotten on the horizon. Exactly where the eye can normally cling so reliably to the endless chain of summits, namely the sharply sloping hump of the Zugspitze. The Zugspitze has shrunk. By a full six inches claimed this week a Berlin artist collective. It claims to have secretly removed the six centimeters from the summit, removed it with a hammer and chisel. Of the 2962.06 meters, only a measly 2962 meters are now left.
The whole thing is a hostage-taking, say the artists, an attempt at post-colonial restitution action. They would have kidnapped the Zugspitz peak, but would give it back if Germany gave back the Kilimanjaro peak in return. A colonial geographer from Leipzig named Hans Meyer climbed Kilimanjaro in 1889 and simply took the top with him. You have to imagine that this was passed on in his family as a paperweight.
Now you don’t have to talk about attempts at blackmail and get angry. Maybe something like a peaceful, temporary summit exchange could be organized. So: Kilimanjaro paperweights on the Zugspitze and Zugspitz-Spitz on the Kilimanjaro, Mont Blanc summit on the Oberammergauer Kofelspitze and so on, alternating every year.
If there were a lot to look at, in terms of climate change, there would be no need to travel to distant countries when the tips are visiting. And so the Zugspitze could also be cheated a few centimeters higher. Because high things, the people of Munich like them too. As long as it’s not the buildings in your own city.