When the colossal sculptures were displayed in front of the serene Tiefer Lake, on the banks of the Havel, the place seemed to have erased its turbulent history and returned to times in which Frederick William I, elector of Brandenburg, established his hunting residence there, in the middle of the 17th century. A short time later, following the Edict of Potsdam, the city welcomed emigrants from all over Europe, who were in seek of refuge from religious intolerance that prevailed in the rest of the continent. This place, indulgent and cosmopolitan, became a summer place for kings and emperors, such as Frederick the Great of Prussia who built great villas and gardens there. Among them, Sanssouci Palace (sans-souci, “without-worries” in French) is the center of arts, where the Hans-Otto Opera Theater and Fluxus Museum of contemporary art are located, among others. Today, they give this area its relaxed and intellectual character, and served as the frame to the exhibit. Memory, however takes us to the extreme opposite: stupidity and anxiety have also marked the city.
In Potsdam in 1914, The Emperor William II signed the declaration that would trigger the Great War. On March 21st of 1933 the brand new chancellor Adolf Hitler would seal a pact in that city with the ill-fated president Paul von Hindenburg that would put the German armed forces in the hands of Nazism. In the rattle of World War II the city was devastated by the bombings of the RAF, which destroyed a large part of their works of art, buildings, and historic monuments. Once the war was over, the allied leaders – Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Josef Stalin – met in the Cecilienhof Palace to participate in the Potsdam Conference, between July 17th and August 2nd of 1945. That was the ominous beginning of the Cold War, as the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union with respect to the fate of the world were irreconcilable, and with the German nation and its capital Berlin, in particular. We know what came of it: the division of the defeated nation and the infamous wall that cut the capital city in two. Strategically, the border between both Germanys was drawn precisely to Potsdam, which was on the eastern side. Hundreds of people were killed or captured attempting to cross over the electric fence that stood between both sides – including through Tiefer Lake –, or the sadly celebrated Glienicke Bridge – nicknamed Of the Spies – that unified the banks of the Havel. The ten silent giants faced that direction in the summer of 2010. Without a doubt it was the group of elderly people that best understood the tense meaning of the exhibit, in the middle of the quiet peaceful space.