This is about some buildings in Ehrenfeld. The “Zentralmoschee“ is a -mosque which the local muslim community began to erect. Some citizens and a right-wing party were against the building of the mosque. They feared it could -become too big and no one could ever see the rest of Cologne. I drew the -mosque together with two buildings which are located in the same area. So it’s easy to compare the actual sizes. Just for fun I also put the deputy mayor and right-wing politician who didn’t want the mosque to be built next to the buildings. A funny thing: the building of the mosque began in 2009 and it still isn’t finished. Maybe that’s the fate of sacral buildings here. The famous cathedral of Cologne (which was the worlds highest building in 1880) took 600 years to be finished ...
Ehrenfeld has very few green areas. The size of the poster is the complete area of the district, the green rectangle symbolizes the public green areas.
Election results
Here I compared two districts of Cologne: Ehrenfeld (left) and Hahnwald (right). The colors of the bars symbolize results in the municipal elections. Ehrenfeld’s voters are orientated more to the left, Hahnwald’s voters more to the right.
Birds on Melaten cemetary
Melaten is an old, large cemetary in Cologne-Ehrenfeld. It’s kind of an island of peace in a very busy area. There are many old trees and so birds of 58 different species came and made Melaten to their home. The names of those birds (in English e.g. black redstart, chiffchaff or firecrest) were put in the shape of a swallow.
145 nationalities in only 1 district
The city of Cologne has about 1 million inhabitants. One of the city’s districts is Ehrenfeld with about 100.000 inhabitants. It is in every respect a very mixed area: age, wealth, household size, and also nationalities. To show the variety of nations, I simply put as many stick figures on the poster as there are different countries of origin. At the time of my exhibition the world championship of -soccer took place. I indicated the participating countries by a soccer ball
The (short) life of a plane tree
In the year 1988, a subway was built in Cologne-Ehrenfeld. Alongside the street, plane trees were planted. 22 years later the trees had to be felled, because their roots didn’t have anough space in the ground. We found a stump which was cut from one of those plane trees. The stump itself became part of the exhibition. For the chart I took a photo and put a timeline to the annual rings with 22 incidents that happened in Ehrenfeld in the respective year. E.g. 1989: The prosecuted author Salman Rushdie (“The Satanic Verses“) hides in the house of his friend Günther Wallraff in Ehrenfeld. 1992: The factory Ostermann & Co. closes. It used to be the biggest producer of ship’s propellers in the world.
Songs about Ehrenfeld
Cologne is a city of music and musicians. Many people like to sing, and they prefer to sing about their city. Some songs are especially about Ehrenfeld.
