Den Toten Helden der Revolution (To the Dead Heroes of the Revolution)
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht monument, which is formally and politically effective, soon became a meeting point for the German radical left. To reinforce its polical function Mies van der Rohe conceived a series of commons communist symbology elements: a large five-pointed star made of steel, with a hammer and sickle in its centre, and a pole on which to hoist the red flag on major occassions.
The star measured two metres and eighty centimetres. This size made impossible to commissioned the project to a small manufacturer thus Mies van der Rohe was force to talk with the Krupp steelworks. The Krupps, a major German industrial dynasty later know for their collaboration with Nazism, refused to supply a communist symbol. Faced with this refusal, the architect ordered five pieces of diamont-shape steel, five pieces divested of any political significance, which Krupp agreed to supply. Once they had been assembled, they became the five-pointed star which presided over the monument until it was taken down by the Nazis in 1933.
This work recreates the prior moment of impasse in which five silent geometric pieces, at rest, can spread their capacity for political activism.