2013

öffentlich zugänglich

Wihelm-Hausenstein-Gymnasium, Elektrastraße 61, 81925 München

Bronze-Abguss eines Baumstamms im Außenbereich und Bronzefläche eingelassen im Boden der Pausenhalle

Architecture: Friedrich Hingerl, München

Landscape architecture: Teutsch Ritz Rebmann, München

Photos: Christoph Mukherjee

Text: Cornelia Gockel

Sometimes it is inevitable that old trees are felled when new construction is erected. This was the case when the Wilhelm Hausenstein Gymnasium in Bogenhausen was renovated and expanded. A tall, old beech tree had to give way to a flat annex that had been planned for this spot.

On his first visit to the site, Tim Bennett decided to create a memorial to the old beech, which had survived so many students during the years it stood next to the Wilhelm Hausenstein Gymnasium. After the tree was chopped down, he had its trunk cast in bronze and installed the sculpture near the entrance. A bronze plaque in the new break room recalls its original location.

With the title of the piece, Once Upon a Time There was a Tree, the artist refers to a section of Wilhelm Hausenstein’s tale “A Tree is Felled.” In it the author links his melancholy observations of nature with the passage of time. To include the school’s pupils in the work, Bennett conducted a workshop in which the participants were invited to find fragments of texts and images that they wanted to etch into the tree trunk, as signs of remembrance. The goal was not only to reflect upon their own feelings, but also to think about how future generations of students would perceive their contributions.

The students and the artist paid a visit to the foundry in Munich’s West End to carve their signs into the still-soft wax mold for the bronze casting. Thus, Tim Bennett’s work A Tree is Felled not only recalls a bit of nature from the past but also the pupils who spent a few years of their lives in this school and were then released into life.