Zwei Eichen mit Basaltstelen / Two Oaks with Basalt Stelae

The project that represents Joseph Beuys’ most enduring engagement with shaping public space is doubtless his work for the Kassel documenta in 1982, “7000 Eichen – Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung” (7000 Oaks – City Forestation Instead of City Administration). He had a wedge-shaped pile of 7000 basalt stelae heaped up in front of the central exhibition hall, the Fridericianum, and planted the first oak at its tip. One of the stelae was raised next to it. As a contribution to making urban space greener, visitors to the exhibition and residents of the city were then invited to participate in the project and purchase an oak seedling with its accompanying stone for 500 DM. With the participation of the city, the tree was then planted in a suitable place and the stela raised next to it. The pile of basalt in front of the Fridericianum shrank until the last tree was planted and the last stone raised in 1986. The artist, who died in 1986, did not live to see the work completed and, above all, broadly accepted. While the urban landscape of Kassel is marked by Beuys’s oaks to this day, only a few trees of the project were planted in other cities (cf. e.g. Cologne and Düsseldorf).

No less than two of Beuys’ oaks with their basalt stelae can be found in Nümbrecht by the village pond. They were planted within the framework of the “School of Creativity” organised there by Linde Rohr-Bongard, one of Joseph Beuys’ master students and editor of the “Kunstkompass”, 1981-1987.