The day of the vote in the Wunsiedel city council on the “Wunhenge” project felt like a double whammy for German Schlaug. Firstly, there was the large majority for the “true to the original and true to scale 1:1 replica” of the legendary South British stone circle Stonehenge, according to the city announcement – which City Councilor Schlaug was not happy about. Even more depressing, he says, was the feeling of having apparently “failed” as a high school teacher. Why? Five of the city councilors who raised their hands in December 2020 in support of “Wunhenge” once sat in his art class, says the retired art teacher.
There, in turn, the delicate relationship between copy and original, the complex aesthetics of the dummy, and eclecticism were of course also at stake. From Schlaug’s point of view, at least, he must not have done something quite right if the people he introduced to the world of art later vote for – according to the city’s own advertising – a “worldwide unique tourism project” in the Fichtelgebirge. Rather, Schlaug is convinced, there is a risk that a millennia-old world heritage site will be “kitschy and commercialized”.
Great fun: The artist Jeremy Deller has created a Stonehenge to romp around in – made of plastic and easy to dismantle and assemble.
(Photo: Duilio Piaggesi/imago)
The art educator, pub owner and “Bunte Liste” city councilor has therefore now brought the much cheaper work of the artist Jeremy Deller into play as a quasi-alternative draft. On the occasion of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, he had the British national shrine rebuilt in its original format, but as a bouncy castle, and could not complain about the lack of response. A reviewing bounce tester of the time For example, it came to the conclusion at the time that spiritually inclined people would boast of mysterious powers after Stonehenge – on the plastic counterpart, on the other hand, one could actually “do nothing but rush around ecstatically, let oneself fall rejoicing, jump up and down enraptured”. Ecstasy and rapture, who would say no in the Fichtelgebirge?
But is that serious? At least not completely irresponsibly, explains Schlaug. After all, he is currently in constant contact with the British multi- and also bouncy castle artist, who could not provide his London original Stonehenge copy if required – due to wear and tear, which at least indicates the corresponding popularity – but one for Wunsiedel and a low six-digit amount Originalstonehengecopy copy would have made. In a way, as an extended contribution to the original-and-replica debate in East Upper Franconia. Incidentally, during her time in London, Deller christened his work “Sacrilege” because of the supposedly outrageous treatment of a British identity icon.
Mind you: British, not Fichtelgebirge people. To understand why a kind of Stone Age light discourse ignited there at all, you have to go back about a dozen years to when the Wunhenge idea of a local artificial rock entrepreneur first saw the light of day. At that time it wasn’t set in stone, the vision petered out once and later a second time. Shortly after the 2020 local elections, however, leading local politicians approached the idea again – and this time, he has Franconian entrepreneur Kai Hammerschmidt once in the taz stressed, the initiative did not come from himself. But from politics.
The realization of “Wunhenge” is “quite realistic”
In the SZ interview, Wunsiedel’s mayor Nicolas Lahovnik (CSU) described at the beginning of 2021 that “Wunhenge” was a “private tourism project” that was to be financed by entrance fees. They don’t want to deprive anyone of space, but use an already existing festival area and hope to make the city interesting again as a “hotel location”; at least 100,000 visitors per year can be expected.
A year later, Lahovnik says that the city and the entrepreneur – whose employees, according to the mayor, know how to “model natural stone true to the original out of concrete” – have used the twelve months that financing from private funds is taking shape. A “final line” has not yet been crossed, but the realization of “Wunhenge” is “quite realistic”. A bouncy castle on the other hand? As mayor, he has “no opinion” on this, says Lahovnik, as long as he doesn’t know anything “more detailed” about it.
The city councilor Schlaug, on the other hand, is convinced that the concrete variant of Stonehenge in the Fichtelgebirge will not come. It wouldn’t be the first copy in Bavaria anyway, a landscape gardener has already artificialized himself in Lower Bavaria on a much smaller financial scale. Wunhenge, on the other hand, will not come, Schlags hopes. The million-dollar project will “collapse like a soufflé,” he predicts, “or a bouncy castle.”