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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMuseum's Future Clouded by Chance Discovery: Swastika Hiding in Plain Sight
The swastika on the floor of a studio at the Kunststätte Bossard.Credit...Gordon Welters for The New York Times
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Museums Future Clouded by Chance Discovery: Swastika Hiding in Plain Sight
The discovery of a Nazi symbol in the mosaic floor of a German museum has prompted bitter debate about its creators past and the institutions role.
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JESTEBURG, Germany In 1911, the Swiss artist Johann Bossard came across an empty property in the grasslands near this small town south of Hamburg. Inspired by the location, he purchased the land and together with his wife, Jutta, spent decades building his lifes great project: three esoterically shaped art-covered buildings and a landscaped garden. Since 1997, the site has been a museum known as the Kunststätte Bossard, and an off-the-beaten-path destination for fans of expressionist art and architecture.
But in 2017, Alexandra Eicks, an employee on the site, made a discovery that threw the project in a more sinister light. Ms. Eicks was preparing for a childrens art class when she noticed a geometric shape on the studios mosaic floor that nobody at the museum had seen before: a swastika. Because the tiles had been installed after the Nazis rise to power, it raised the possibility that the Bossards held more troubling views than had previously been known.
Three years later, the mosaic is at the center of a pointed debate in this pastoral corner of northwestern Germany. Activists are demanding the swastikas removal, but the museum says the whole site is a Gesamtkunstwerk a total work of art that should not be altered impulsively, and that the symbol should stay so it can be used to educate visitors about the countrys past.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/arts/design/swastika-germany-museum-kunststaette-bossard.html?action=click&algo=bandit-all-surfaces&block=trending_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=727931411&impression_id=cd19efd5-e086-11ea-9bdf-b769e62228b7&index=5&pgtype=Article®ion=footer&req_id=944665708&surface=most-popular
eppur_se_muova
(36,258 posts)Get a grip, people.
Demovictory9
(32,445 posts)Solomon
(12,310 posts)Solomon
(12,310 posts)mantis49
(813 posts)You really have to stretch your imagination to make it a swastika. Looks pretty random to me.
Princess Turandot
(4,787 posts)after the Nazis rose to power.
After all, based on his correspondence, Johann Bossard, founder of the art center, was an anti-Semite and a fervent admirer of Adolf Hitler. Bossard rejected the Weimar Republic, so from 1921 onwards, he developed his estate into a Gesamtkunstwerk, which he saw as a center of counterculture. He hoped for political change with the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Soon after, he had a swastika placed in the mosaic floor of his residence.
If the Germans say something is a swastika, I'm inclined to believe them.
Bossard did become less enchanted with the Nazis, but only after they declared the art style that he practiced, Expressionism, to be degenerate art.
bluedye33139
(1,474 posts)He seems to have been a straight-up Nazi. Folks are now concerned that they will be creating a temple for neo-Nazis to make pilgrimages to.
https://www.dw.com/en/a-museum-for-a-hitler-supporter/a-53222452
Layzeebeaver
(1,623 posts)Removing or covering over one floor tile does not destroy a museum.
lapucelle
(18,242 posts)the swastika was a common design element in architecture.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-26369329
https://www.brooklynpaper.com/stika-shock-greenwood-heights-building-adorned-with-nazi-symbol/
A few years back, there was (ostensibly) a movement to reclaim the symbol, including merch for sale with rainbow colored swastikas. It failed.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/07/542068985/companys-line-of-rainbow-themed-swastika-t-shirts-backfires
Response to lapucelle (Reply #8)
bluedye33139 This message was self-deleted by its author.
bluedigger
(17,086 posts)I wouldn't call it art.
Betty88
(717 posts)I thought I saw it then my eye went to the right and I think I found what they are talking about in a different set of tiles. Like someone said just take out those tiles, or bits of tile and issue gone.