The Walk of Ideas was a set of six sculptures in central Berlin designed by Scholz & Friends for the 2006 FIFA World Cup football event in Germany. The sculptures, part of a campaign called Welcome to Germany – the Land of Ideas, were put up between 10 March 2006 and 19 May 2006. The opening of the exhibition was covered by reporters for the international mass media. The sculptures were on display until September 2006.
Background information
The "boulevard of sculptures" was a central component of a nation building campaign called "Deutschland – Land der Ideen" (Germany – Land of Ideas). The campaign, under the patronage of the then German President, Horst Köhler, was a collaboration between the German government and the German business sector, (represented by the Federation of German Industries), whose purpose was to communicate a positive image of Germany both nationally and internationally.
The campaign's corporate design, as well as the design of the sculptures, was developed and realized by the Berlin design agency Scholz & Friends Identify. The agency has since received multiple awards for this campaign (such as the renowned German EVA Award in 2006). The sculptures were placed on central squares (Bebelplatz and Gendarmenmarkt among others) in Berlin's city center. Many politicians, members of the initiative or representatives of the companies involved held speeches at the small opening ceremonies accompanying the unveiling of the sculptures. The first sculpture to be unveiled was "Der moderne Fußballschuh" (The Modern Football Boot), at Spreebogenpark on March 10, 2006. The final sculpture "Relativitätstheorie" (The Theory of Relativity) was unveiled and handed over on May 19, 2006 to the Berlin park Lustgarten. In autumn of 2006, the sculptures were removed again. One sculpture, Das Automobil, was transported to Munich; it is not certain if or how the other pieces of art have been recycled or used elsewhere.
From the planning stage to the finished pieces, the total cost per sculpture lay between 300,000 and 350,000 euros. The sculptures were all built using the modern synthetic material Neopor, and coated with a special brilliant white varnish. The production time for each sculpture was roughly two months, with the final assembly on site spanning 2–3 days.
Plaques in both German and English provided explanatory details on the symbolism of each object along a path exemplifying Germany's research landscape and cultural history.
Sculptures
Modern Book Printing
The installation of the statue "Der moderne Buchdruck" (Modern Book Printing) took place on April 21, 2006 at Bebelplatz opposite Humboldt University. The assembly of this object on the street Unter den Linden took three days.
A steel structure held 17 different-sized shell segments together; each of them representing a single book. Including the stabilizing ballast weight, the tower ended up with an overall weight of .
The 17 books were stacked on their sides and bore the names of German poets and writers on their spines; Goethe formed the base as the lowermost book. The sculpture was erected in remembrance of Johannes Gutenberg who invented the modern letterpress in Mainz around 1450 and created the first bestseller in history with the Gutenberg Bible. Of the approximately 180 original copies of the first edition, 48 are known to still exist.
Here is the full list of names on each spine, beginning with the topmost book: Günter Grass Hannah Arendt Heinrich Heine Martin Luther Immanuel Kant Anna Seghers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel The Brothers Grimm Karl Marx Heinrich Böll Friedrich Schiller Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Hermann Hesse Theodor Fontane Thomas and Heinrich Mann Bertolt Brecht Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Milestones of Medicine
The ceremonial inauguration of the sculpture Milestones of Medicine took place on March 30, 2006 at the Friedrich-Ebert-Platz which is located just east of the Reichstag. It was in the shape of a pill and, with a diameter of , was impossible to overlook on the waterside promenade of the Spree across the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus which houses the Library of the German Parliament. The sculpture was anchored below the pavement by a steel base which measured .