2023-09-30 10:45:00
With the “Work of the Week” the “Freie Presse” presents art in public spaces. Today: The metal sculpture “7 lean and 7 fat years” by Ralph Siebenborn in Chemnitz (1998).
Culture in public space.
Seven polished metal columns of different heights glitter in the late summer sun in front of the market hall on Chemnitz’s Seeberplatz. They rise at different heights from a paved, slightly arched base. As is often the case in Chemnitz, the work of art is not labeled, and there is nothing to indicate that at the opposite end of the market hall, near the Bierbrücke, seven narrower, equally high columns are the second part of this work by Ralph Siebenborn. They now look more like the boundaries of the parking lot right next to the street.
The “7 fat years” are on Seeberplatz and the “7 lean years” are at the other end of the market hall. The minimalist, abstract work of art refers to the Old Testament story in which Joseph interprets one of the Pharaoh’s dreams. Ralph Siebenborn, in turn, interprets this in his own unique way with his work.
How Pharaoh asks Joseph for advice
In the 41st chapter of the book of Genesis in the Old Testament it is told how Pharaoh asks Joseph for advice: “I have had a dream, but no one knows how to interpret it.” He says: “In my dream it seemed to me that I was standing on the bank of the Nile; then I saw seven well-fed, beautiful cows coming up from the river and grazing in the sedge. After these I saw seven other cows coming up, which were thin and very ugly and were thin in flesh; I have never seen anything as ugly as these in all of Egypt. Then the lean and ugly cows ate up the first seven well-fed cows; but even when they had come into their wombs, you couldn’t tell that they were in had come into her body; no, her appearance remained as ugly as at the beginning. Then I woke up. Then in my dream I saw seven ears of grain growing on the top of a stalk, full and beautiful. But after these sprouted seven dry, thin, ears of grain scorched by the east wind; and the thin ears of grain swallowed up the seven beautiful ears of grain. I have already told this to the scribes, but no one has been able to give me an explanation.”
But Joseph immediately knows how to interpret Pharaoh’s dream: “The seven beautiful cows mean seven years, and the seven beautiful ears of grain also mean seven years: it is one and the same dream. Also the seven thin and ugly cows that come out of the world after them The seven years of the river are seven years; The abundance in the land of Egypt will be forgotten; and the famine will so consume the land that the former abundance in the land of Egypt will no longer be noticed because of the later famine, for this will be extremely severe.”
When Joseph opens all the stores
Joseph advises: “And let Pharaoh take precautions to appoint overseers over the land, and collect the fifth part of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven years of plenty. In this way, one gathers the entire harvest of those good years that are now to come , and store up the grain in the cities under Pharaoh’s care, and keep it there. Then this store will sustain the land for the seven years of famine that will come to the land of Egypt, and the land will not be affected by the famine be destroyed.”
This dream interpretation was perhaps not entirely selfless, because Joseph now became the “ruler of the land”, collecting grain throughout Egypt during the “seven fat years” and selling it, of course at his own price, in the “seven lean years”: “As When the famine had come to the whole country, Joseph opened all the granaries and sold grain to the Egyptians. But the hunger became more and more pressing in Egypt. The whole world also came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph; because the hunger became more and more pressing the whole earth.”
On the one hand, the Bible refers to the constant succession of good and bad times, which in Egypt at that time was caused not least by warmer and colder, more rainy and less rainy years, and it urges us to take precautions in the good years for the worse years – which is still the case today an important part of statecraft, economic and tax policy, but also personal budget management. And it also describes a piece of capitalism with its cyclical crises and economic fluctuations and refers to globalization long before it existed on a large scale. In a sense, Joseph becomes the first speculator who enriches himself from the misery of others.
Rather lean years for the East
The sculptor Ralph Siebenborn, born in 1947, does not simply juxtapose seven thick and seven narrow columns. He created the sculpture in the 1990s, which were rather lean years for eastern Germany: closed businesses, high unemployment, no savings that people could fall back on. The pillars of the “seven lean years” are thinner, but they are all the same height. The columns of the “seven fat years” are thicker, but they have different heights. That could mean: the fat years don’t make everyone equally rich. But the lean years make almost everyone poor, and they remind us of who still foots the bill in bad times. This is also echoed in the novel “Behind the Tin Wall” by the Pole Andrzej Stasiuk, who writes about the residents of a small town in the east in those lean years: “They didn’t want to pay for something they hadn’t ordered. They smelled the roast, and instead of freedom they would have preferred equality.”
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