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The Writer Monika Maron Comments on the Popularity of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Wrapped Reichstag (July 3, 1995)

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Suddenly, in the middle of the ill-tempered hustle and bustle, enticing and fleeting like a fata morgana, there stands Christo’s wrapped Reichstag, and Berliners are doing what the Senate is trying in vain to teach its public sector employees in continuing education courses: they are smiling. Within the precinct around the Reichstag, they are everything they are accused of not being: metropolitan, peaceful, relaxed, even polite, as though they were using the wrapping as a projection surface for everything they miss in their city and in themselves.

Berlin has turned the wrapping of the Reichstag into a party, because it needed a party. Had it needed a scandal, maybe it would have become a scandal. Of course, so much radiating harmony is suspect to some people, and someone like me can find herself accused of philistinism a second time: the first time because I was not a supporter of the wrapping, and now because I like it.




Source: Monika Maron, “A Gigantic Plaything” [“Ein gigantisches Spielzeug”], Der Spiegel, July 3, 1995, pp. 24-25.

Translation: Thomas Dunlap

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