Eugen Gomringer was 100 years old.
He died on August 21 in Bamberg. Our sympathy goes out to his family.
The Alice Salomon Hochschule (ASH) Berlin has a comparatively short association with the poet's person and work, but in many respects. When commenting on Gomringer's work today, reference is almost always made to ASH Berlin and Gomringer's poem avenidas on its façade:
Eugen Gomringer received the 5th Alice Salomon Poetry Prize in 2011 after Michael Roes (2006), Gerhard Rühm (2007), Rebecca Horn (2009) and Valeri Scherstjanoi (2010).
His façade design with the poem avenidas, which was a guiding light for Concrete Poetry, was on display on the south side of ASH Berlin from 2011 to 2018. For a further seven years, Barbara Köhler (Poetry Prize winner 2017) designed the wall with her poem, as a palimpsest that allowed the letters of Gomringer's avenidas to shimmer through (2018 - 2025).
The "facade debate" (detailed information here), which was triggered on the occasion of the redesign of the facade in 2017 and which established a further lasting connection between Eugen Gomringer and the university, led to a lively exchange of opinions far beyond the university. In the process, the freedom of art and the autonomy of a university were constructed as polarizing opposites, as if the university was acting against the freedom of art in order to make an autonomous decision. We have learned from the debate, however, that it is precisely in the productive interplay of both values that a productive and practicable force lies.
We will remember Eugen Gomringer for our personal encounters and discussions with him and for his impulse to present poetry objects as art in public space in the first place. ASH Berlin will continue to do this with the regularly changing works of its poetry prize winners and a growing poetry gallery in the plinth area.
