Last Wednesday in Dessau

Much is written these days about Dessau and the Great Pyramid. Since the reopening of the Bauhaus a few years ago, the city was not in international news on that scale. Some say, the Great Pyramid will be built there, some other tell the story, the project is not supported by the city and others again are saying we initiators have turned away from Dessau. So, what´s the truth?

Our About-section tells, how we came to Dessau in the first place. The cultural heritage there is amazing. There is no other region in the world, where you would find three UNESCO World Cultural Heritages within a 20 km distance: The Bauhaus, the Dessau-Woerlitz Garden Realm and the Luther sites in nearby Wittenberg. We had used that argument a lot during the last months and not to our surprise, also Saxony-Anhalt´s Tourism Board finally realized its simple power. If you stroll through Berlin these days, you can hardly overlook a massive number of posters like this here.

The tagline says „ In Saxony-Anhalt we have more of these - 3 UNESCO World Heritage Sites within 18 km distance“. Funny, isn´t it?

So far we had talked to the Head Mayor of Dessau-Rosslau, Klemens Koschig, and a few people from the administration. They all were interested but no one would put the project on the political agenda. What made things not easier, was the verdict of the Streetz Ortschaftsrat (a minor legislative body below city level) in last August, that declined any interest to host the Great Pyramid in their borough. There, people had built single homes in a quiet, green environment and did not feel any urge to change a thing in their sleepy little town of 200 inhabitants.

But should Dessau and the whole region miss the chance to appear on the global agenda again, after they had made the couraguous decision to host the Bauhaus after it was expelled from Weimar in 1925? Shouldn´t they make it clear that the region is still open to renewal after Christian reformation was initiated by Martin Luther there, only 20 km away in Wittenberg back in 1517? Should the city council shy away from discussing the project, because an advisory board representing only 200 out of 90,000 inhabitants had hurriedly dismissed it even before any formal proposition was entered? We always thought the answers to these questions were quite obvious – and last Wednesday we were proved right.

After we had introduced the Great Pyramid project and the designs from the architectural competition, we first discussed the project´s opportunities on the panel and then invited the Dessauers to voice their thoughts and opinions. About 50 of them had come, a turnout our host Omar Akbar, the Dessau Bauhaus Foundation´s Executive Director, found remarkable.

It´s been good to talk. The local BILD tabloid had written the Great Pyramid up to an intimidating height of 600 meters, others had claimed we were a sect – everybody knew something, but not necessarily the true facts. To make a long story short: Representatives from major fractions of the city council in the end stood up and unambiguously stated, that Dessau should not let this unique chance pass. Since last Wednesday we have a political process in the city, that might finally bring new life to Dessau in case the city makes the winning bid in the Great Pyramid´s location tender over the next months.

Just providing political support and even land will nonetheless not be enough, the Great Pyramid will have to be built where customers want it. That might be Dessau in the end – or some place else in another country. At the Gala we showed a couple of charts, exemplifying some drawbacks we see in Dessau. Here is one, that will appear in the forthcoming Great Pyramid book out at Sternberg Press in May 2008.

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We always liked Dessau, now finally Dessau starts to like the Great Pyramid. It´s been a good start for the current front-runner..