Category: Heute

21-today

21

Passion

“On the next day some policemen gazed over the garden gate by accident, saw what they believed to be the naked body of a woman covered in blood and rushed into the house expecting to find the location of a murder of passion. In fact that was exactly what had happened ecause on that very evening I murdered Alma ….”
It was the Viennese artist Oskar Kokoschka who was under suspense. The exalted painter had chopped off the head of his former mistress Alma Mahler in his front garden. Before that he visited the Semper Opera with her. The desperate Kokoschka had a cloth puppet with the looks of Alma made by a puppet maker. It was this puppet that was seated beside him at the Opera and that he later ritually murdered during a night of binge drinking.
On some paintings by Kokoschka the Alma puppet is shown and three photos of her are also known.

20-today

20

After a day in the sun, a night under the barrel-vault

This famous Dresden jazz club was accessed though a basement, its barrel-vault inspired the name: Tonne (barrel). Many hours of building and renovation had to be spent before on 13th March 1981 the vaults were opened to the public. Besides the basement and the vaults not much was left; the Kurländer Palais (Courland palace) was the last building of the old town that was still in ruins and was only rebuilt between 2006 and 2008. Since 2015 the Tonne is back in its original location – the vaults of the basement under the now reconstructed palace.