After 1945, the need to reconstruct old church windows presented artists with a new challenge. Stockhausen trusted primarily in "light that carries colour through a room and lets it become an immaterial force." This force, he believed, has the ability to help transcend borders, as in Ulm cathedral (1955 / 1956) where he, in 1986, preserved the memory of the sufferings in Treblinka, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen with his "Israel window." His "works of mercy" are an ongoing theme. In architecturally dictated situations, Stockhausen follows primarily what is already there, as with the Mendelssohn window created in 1997 for the Thomaskirche in Leipzig: space and time become one, distance is made tangible. This publication illustrates, in vibrant images, the narrative and contemplative forcefulness of Stockhausen’s art.
Text in English and German.
