City Forestation Instead of City Administration

Joseph Beuys planted three linden trees in front of the choir at the Kirche St. Gereon. He placed a basalt stele beside each tree, with the bottom third of each steel embedded in the earth. The planting dates back to the project he began at the 1982 documenta in Kassel: City Forestation Instead of City Administration (7000 Oaks). For the original exhibition, Beuys had an enormous pile of 7,000 basalt stones unloaded in front of the Fridericianum exhibition building. For every oak tree that was planted in the city of Kassel, a stone was removed from the pile and placed beside it.

Side by side, the tree and stele juxtapose living growth with the constant. To explain his project, Beuys referred to Novalis:

“For this age, reason and the divine spirit do not speak audibly or strikingly enough from a human being – stones, trees, animals must speak in order to make the human being feel himself and make him reflect.”

Although the Kassel project aroused great interest, the City Forestation didn’t move quickly enough for the artist and he decided to modify the project and expand it to other cities, including these trees in Cologne. At the time of his death, 5,500 trees had been planted. The last of the 7,000 trees were planted by his son Wenzel at documenta 8 on June 12, 1987.

Reference: http://m.skulpturenfuehrer.de/de/skulpturenfuehrer-koeln/ort/stadtverwaldung