Have a look: Prussian Machine
The “Prussian Machine” (1981) is a large-scale installation that was presented in the nave of the chapel at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Measuring approximately twelve meters in length and 2.80 meters in height, it deliberately occupies the space of monumental representational art, while simultaneously subverting it ironically.
The figures—grotesque mechanical hybrids of wood, metal, leather, and everyday objects—appear like distorted reincarnations of the classical equestrian statue. Allusions to military tradition, technical rationality, and power gestures of Prussian history are transformed into a parody: instead of heroic gestures, the bodies appear cumbersome, disfigured, and disassembled into mechanical parts and non-functional apparatuses. The equestrian figure with its tricorn hat, both marionette-like and monstrous, particularly alludes to the genre of the ruler's monument, yet subverts it through its fragile mechanics and surreal exaggeration.
Through the interplay of material, scale, and ironic reshaping, the "Prussian Machine" becomes an allegory for militarism and the cult of power, but also for the absurdity of historical repetition. It thus stands in a line of critical engagements with national symbols in the art of the 1970s and early 1980s and can be read as a bitterly ironic commentary on the traditions of German collective memory.
Frederick the Great in the Garden of Sanssouci in Potsdam (students of Daniel Rauch: Aloisio Lazzerini and Carlo Baratta, 1865)
Friedrich der Große im Garten von Sanssouci in Potsdam
PREUSSENMASCHINE, 1981, Installation im Mittelschiff der Kapelle im Künstlerhaus Bethanien/Berlin, L ca. 12m, H 280 cm
Im Atelier Kulmerstrasse, Berlin
Aufbau im Rehbergepark Berlin
Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
SOLDAT und REICHSADLER, Atelier Kulmerstrasse, Berlin
Rehbergepark Berlin
Einblicke in die Ausstellung: „Borussia vor…noch ist Preußen nicht verloren“, „HERRSCHERDENKMAL“
Zeichnungen und Prozesse zur PREUSSENMASCHINE