Hundertwasser

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Miguel Raurich

20 Years Martin-Luther-Gymnasium Wittenberg
1999 - 2019
2019-05-29

where children’s souls can develop like the leaves of the trees… Hundertwasser, November 1994

On the occasion of the total refurbishing of the concrete-slab sandwich construction from the 1970s, the pupils and teachers at the “gymnasium”, the German secondary-school type which prepares for academic studies, expressed the desire that Hundertwasser assume the task of redesigning the school. The construction begun November 1997 and the opening took place on May 29, 1999.
Since August 1, 2006, the official title of the school is "Luther-Melanchthon-Gymnasium Wittenberg".

Hundertwasser on this project:

It was precisely in architecture for children, schools and kindergartens, that sins were committed after the war in downright criminal fashion.

The children spend their most precious time, their youth and developing years, in architecture which is more like penal institutions or stacked-up chicken coops, in which the soul of the child is ruined, with all the evil consequences for our society – dreams and creativity of their own, with
out which man cannot exist, are suffocated in these authoritarian, unfeeling educational institutions before they can develop.

Headaches, nausea, aggression, psychological disorders and the escape to narcotics etc. etc.; that is the bill we all have to pay, only a bit later.

I was asked to do a pilot project in the neglected humane direction in the City of Wittenberg, of all places, after having demonstrated for years my efforts for a method of construction which is more compatible with man and nature.

A roof landscape with trees which can be walked on, where the diversity of spontaneous vegetation converges with the creativity of man, where children’s souls can develop like the leaves of the trees growing on the roof.

Not to mention the practical instruction in environmental protection in this beginning ecological era.

It is the fight, the last-ditch effort of the stubborn concrete builders, levellers and straighteners against the unavoidable compensation to be made to nature and the soul of man.