Avery F. Gordon E-Book

Avery F. Gordon

• Herausgeber: Hatje Cantz Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: E-Books
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 49

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

 In diesem Notizbuch beschäftigt sich Gordon mit Breitenau, einem Benediktinerkloster aus dem 12. Jahrhundert, 20 Kilometer südlich von Kassel gelegen, das für unterschiedlichste Zwecke genutzt wurde und seit dem 19. Jahrhundert als Ort der Gefangenschaft und  » Umerziehung «  diente. 1874 wurde es zu einem Arbeitshaus, während des Nationalsozialismus zu einem Konzentrationslager, bis in die 1970er Jahre war es eine Besserungsanstalt für Mädchen, und heute ist es eine  offene psychiatrische Wohn- und Therapieeinrichtung sowie eine Gedenkstätte,­­­ ein Museum und ein Forschungszentrum. Während eines gemeinsamen Besuchs mit der Künstlerin taucht Gordon mit der Hilfe des Mitgründers und Direktors der Gedenkstätte, Gunnar Richter, in die Geschichte Breitenaus ein, erinnert sich an seine Funktion als Ort des Freiheitsentzugs für »ungehorsame soziale Subjekte« und deren Ideen und entwickelt »eine Art Enzyklopädie des Häftlings«.    Avery F. Gordon ist Professorin für Soziologie an der University of California, Santa Barbara, und Visiting Faculty am Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College, an der University of London.      Sprache: Deutsch/Englisch 

Leseprobe

100 Notes – 100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken

Nº041: Avery F. Gordon

Notes for the Breitenau Room of The Workhouse— a Project by Ines Schaber and Avery Gordon / Notizen für den Breitenau-Raum von The Workhouse – ein Projekt von Ines Schaber und Avery Gordon

dOCUMENTA (13), 9/6/2012 – 16/9/2012

Artistic Director / Künstlerische Leiterin: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Member of Core Agent Group, Head of Department /

Mitglied der Agenten-Kerngruppe, Leiterin der Abteilung: Chus Martínez

Head of Publications / Leiterin der Publikationsabteilung: Bettina Funcke

Managing Editor / Redaktion und Lektorat: Katrin Sauerländer

Editorial Assistant / Redaktionsassistentin: Cordelia Marten

English Copyediting / Englisches Lektorat: Melissa Larner

English Proofreading / Englisches Korrektorat: Sam Frank

Translation / Übersetzung: Nikolaus G. Schneider, Ines Schaber

Graphic Design / Grafische Gestaltung: Leftloft

Production / Verlagsherstellung: Monika Klotz

E-Book Implementation / E-Book-Produktion: LVD GmbH, Berlin

© 2012 documenta und Museum Fridericianum Veranstaltungs-GmbH, Kassel;Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern; Avery F. Gordon

Illustrations / Abbildungen: p. / S. 1: documenta III, 1964, installation view with /Installationsansicht mit Wilhelm Loth, Signal anthropomorph, 1960/61, and /und Alicia Penalba, Grande Ailée, 1960–63 (detail / Detail), photo /Foto: © Lederer/documenta Archiv; © Wilhelm-Loth-Stiftung, Karlsruhe; p. / S. 2: courtesy Ines Schaber

documenta und Museum Fridericianum

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Friedrichsplatz 18, 34117 Kassel

Germany / Deutschland

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www.documenta.de

Chief Executive Officer / Geschäftsführer: Bernd Leifeld

Published by / Erschienen im

Hatje Cantz Verlag

Zeppelinstrasse 32, 73760 Ostfildern

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ISBN 978-3-7757-3070-9 (E-Book)

ISBN 978-3-7757-2890-4 (Print)

Gefördert durch die

funded by the German Federal

Cultural Foundation

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Detail of Ines Schaber’s studio wall for The Workhouse, 2011 /

Detail von Ines Schabers Studiowand für The Workhouse, 2011

Avery F. Gordon Notes for the Breitenau Room of The Workhouse—a Project by Ines Schaber and Avery Gordon / Notizen für den Breitenau-Raum von The Workhouse – ein Projekt von Ines Schaber und Avery Gordon

Avery F. GordonNotes for the Breitenau Room of The Workhouse—a Project by Ines Schaber and Avery Gordon

I

these things,

I feel them stir1

The visitors from the big cities remark on how beautiful it is. And it’s true that the Benedictines had a knack for choosing the finest locations for their monasteries, and this one too, sitting alongside the long River Fulda amid verdant meadow, its large stone buildings nestled in among the smaller village houses, farms, and woods, makes a good impression. Slowly Ines shakes her head. No, no, no. It’s not beautiful, she says, it’s claustrophobic.2 I understand. I’m prepared for a haunted ruin of an old prison.

II

the anchorage of a name3

Breitenau is located in the village of Guxhagen, some twenty kilometers south of Kassel. In its walled center sit the remains of a Benedictine monastery founded in the twelfth century by Werner von Grüningen. After dissolution in 1527, the monastery became an estate of the local aristocracy and eventually state property. By 1579, the original monastery church had been converted into storage for agricultural produce; a large horse stable, a dairy, and the first designated prison were built on the ground floor. Badly damaged in the seventeenth century and vacant for much of the eighteenth (notwithstanding a couple of failed development schemes), in the nineteenth century the site began in earnest its long history as a place of confinement and “correction.” Used briefly to house seven hundred fifty French prisoners of war in 1871, in 1874 Breitenau became a workhouse and correctional facility for the rural poor, targeting beggars, vagabonds, and prostitutes; it remained a workhouse and a center for convict leasing until 1949. The modernization of the prison via introduction of the cellular system was designed to accommodate the isolation of “intractable” (i.e., disobedient) workhouse prisoners, as well as inmates from the Kassel-Wehlheiden Penitentiary. The changes at this time created the physical infrastructure for Breitenau’s use during the Nazi era and after, when, between 1933 and 1934, Kassel’s police chief confined four hundred seventy men in a concentration camp for communists and socialists attached to the existing workhouse. Breitenau was also used to imprison Jewish people from Guxhagen and other neighboring villages during the 1938 pogroms, and then as a temporary collection camp for Jewish people and those persecuted as Jewish before they were transported to other concentration or extermination camps. In 1940, the Kassel Gestapo attached a new camp (a so-called Arbeitserziehungslager) to the workhouse and, until the end of the war, imprisoned approximately one thousand three hundred German Gestapo prisoners and seven thousand workers from various countries, primarily for running away or refusing to work as conscripted or slave labor. After 1945, Breitenau continued to function as a prison for homeless youth, for those with sexually transmitted diseases, and for “difficult girls,” with work remaining central to the correctional regime. From 1952 to 1973, Breitenau was known as the Jugendheim Fuldatal (Fuldatal Home for Young People), and by the late 1960s was the subject of intense public criticism, most notably by Ulrike Meinhof, whose journalistic exposé of the repressive treatment of the young women contributed to its being shut down in 1973. Subsequently, Breitenau was a state psychiatric hospital, and currently it is an open residential treatment facility and a rehabilitation center for the mentally ill. Since 1984, Breitenau has also functioned as a memorial/museum/research center, open to the public and directed by Dr. Gunnar Richter, its cofounder.4