HARZ BRICHT AUS: A MONUMENT FOR FRANZ JUNGHUHN IN GERMANY'S EMPTY CENTER

In the seminar week “Footnotes from Central Java” we followed our cicerone, the explorer Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn (1809-1864) to the crater rim of his favorite volcano, Gunung Merapi. Now, it is time to search for his origins and to locate the birthplace of tourism, the Harz mountain range in Northern Germany. The seminar week will bring us to Mansfeld, where Junghuhn grew up. Our mission is to erect together with artists a Non-Monument in the forest to commemorate Junghuhn’s escape from Germany after a duel. We will travel in mobile homes, walk through the night, and read Heinrich Heine’s first publication, the Harzreise (1826), a prefiguration of modern German travel literature. We will climb the Brocken, a symbol of the German national identity and reenact Goethe’s Walpurgisnacht.