Peter Schmieder

When Mata Hari started her career as a dancer in the beginning of the last century she used a fictitious childhood on Java and a make-up oriental descent, presented in many different versions, to authenticate her exotic art.1It is well known that Mata Harialso worked as a spy and that her legend was helpful to her. At least since that time the spy profession connects with a good legend. The artist group has such a legend at its disposal too. What function this legend has in the context of visual art shall be briefly sketched here.

The group Die Weissenhoferexists since 1995, consisting today of the three protagonists Beckmann, Mandernach and Schäfer. Exhibiting continuously, the group presents an extensive body ofwork that – in all the independence of the individual positions –gives room to reciprocal stimulations, relations, associations, allusions and references. The Weissenhofer´s theoretical foundation can be condensed to their concise formulation that the inten­tion is to work out a modern figurative art of associative and narrative nature. Compared to this programmatic brevity the artists’ self-elaborated account of their roots takes up much more space, blankets all programmatics and yet is a first literary evidenceof the artists’ narrative intention.

A fictional biography describes the life course of the Weissenhofer as that of three brothers emigrating from Switzerland to Texas and coming back to Europe again. Since earliest childhood their artistic talent has forged ahead successfully, the Weissenhofer account is full of the rhetoric of success. The only set-back, and at the same time the projection screen of their artistic creation, is the burnt down farm, birthplace of a legend.

This short version can only give a small hint at the potential and the prevailing humorous basic mood that the artists gain from this fictitious mutual biography. The Dortmund exhibition „DieWeissenhofer: SATELLITEN“ is a cooperation of the Künstler­haus Dortmund, the Museum am Ostwall, the Dortmunder Kunstverein and the Protestant City Church St. Petri. While each of the three outstations (satellites) presents the work of one member of the group as a solo exhibition, the group shows in the Künstlerhaus, among other things, „the charred objects saved from the burnt down Weissenhof and large size photos with scenes from their youth.“2

To suppose that the artists would confine themselves to non­committedness with the concentration on a legend, with the concentration on the (fictional) vitae of the brothers from the Weissenhof, would not be adequate. The story of their origins, the Weissenhofer Legend rather has something of a manifesto, not from the point of view of form but from that of approach.With the genre of the manifesto the Italian Futurism created the formal literary basis for the statements of artist groups. Subse­quently Brücke, ZERO, Fluxus, to name but a few, have trusted this form to give a contentual foundation to disparate artistic activities. Individuals became fellow combatants, art served an idea. The declaration of the artistic territorial claim went hand in hand with this contentual self-ascertainment.3 Today one can argue that the place of the artistic manifesto has been taken by the trend. This is no more formulated by the artists themselves though but proclaimed by curators, critics and dealers as the utilizers of art. Often enough a trend is not even defined contentwise but consists of the declamation of the techniques to be used. Where contents have to define themselves as individual settings and the development of contemporary art can be des­cribed as the rotation of crops of the art forms4, there the free space for the recourse to an even older literary form of art history emerges too: the artist legend. But possibly the specific use of fiction is a necessarily taken way out. The Weissenhofer at any rate have been working at the formulation and reinforcement of this legend since more than ten years.

Taking Vasari’s Vitae5 as a formal starting point and stimulus of the artist legend one can first say that he wrote about individuals. At the start of the modern age Vasari on the one hand describes the isolation of the artist, at the same time he releases the positive idea of the creating individual and thus smooths the way for the concept of the genius. If one reads Vasari carefully, and ancient authors too, it becomes apparent that motifs like the early disco­very of the talent or the casual drawing of the rural surroundings are frequently used as myth-creating stereotyped pieces.6 The authors do not source these motifs, and that goes for the Weissenhofer too. But, in front of a historical background aimed at the in­dividual in this manner, the Weissenhofer legend is a multiple artifice.

Originally aimed at the singular artist in literature, the Weissenhofer use the legend for themselves as a group. The musical parts, sprinkled into both the story and the exhibitions, indicate that a fusion of the legend of the visual artist and the legend of the rockband is being created. With this reference to High Culture and Pop Culture, „High and Low“7, the Weissenhofe rget a chain reac­tion of opposing pairs going. Their roots, described as rural, contrast with the choice of name of the group, which can be taken as a reference to the International Style of the Weissenhof­siedlung in Stuttgart (location of the Art Academy). Handcrafted and rustic or planning and intellectual activities can be contrasted with the mentioned terms as well. The word brothers they use is both the name employed by painters for a dynastic degree of relationship8 and the allusion to the membership in a (painter)guild. In the brothers’ temporary residence in Texas and the backwoods Valais legend9 Old and New World combine.10

Their description turns out to be premodern though – the Weissenhofer´s Switzerland is the one before Segantini and Hodler, the USA, and especially Texas, are the projection screen of childhooddreams – as the sixties of the last century provide them – for the Weissenhofer. With this attitude the Weissenhofer invalidate every possible objection to their legend before it can even arise: they legitimate their story and their activities as play.
This play with identity, which the Weissenhofer devote themselves to, creates the psychological relief function that goes hand inhand with taking other roles. The artists use the artificial identities of the brothers Bob, Keith and Carl to gain relief from constraints, for example the constraint of having to live up to the social ex­pectations in individual artists.

This relief simultaneously releases a considerable creative energy. Changed and strengthened at the same time by the almost carnivalesque proceeding, by putting on a different hat, the artists turn their activities without false timidity and unrestricted by considerations completely to one another.Thus they promote the aspired creative flow that is a matter of course in children’s games. This is not to be understood as re­gression though, but rather as an emotional release that allows for generally raising the central question of art as fiction in the fake of the vita. The fake legend describes elemental artistic concerns: to comprehend the image as image, as something made, with its own reality, as thinking that has become form.
So, through largely refraining from a manifesto in favour of the narrative and by way of parodying the artist legend, a free space is opened in which the artists’ work can feed back to constantly new pushes of creativity. This free space is created with the aspiration for a Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork) in which facets display themselves in the works of the individuals which, seen together, result in a bigger whole that – as humorously founded as it may be – still is a serious depiction of the artist group.


1 Sam Waagenaar: Sie nannte sich Mata Hari, Berlin: Ullstein 1968

2 from the Weissenhofer’s „timetable“

3 see Friedrich Wilhelm Malsch: Künstlermanifeste, Bonn: Diss. 1996. Malsch describes artist manifestos as an independent contribution of visual artists to the media question at the zenith of the print media dominance. Maybe the Weissenhofer’s parody of the artist legend is an answer to the dominance of the electronic media?  

4 Formulation by Monika Brandmeier, Berlin/Dresden

5 Giorgio Vasari: Lebensläufe der berühmtesten Maler, Bildhauer und Archi­tekten. Zurich: Manesse 2005, orig. Florence 1550, rev. 1568

6 Ernst Kris, Otto Kurz: Die Legende vom Künstler, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp1979 (1934), p. 37 et seqq, 52 et seqq

7 „High and Low“, exhibition on the theme in the Museum of Modern Art, New York 1990
All remarks in writing and music about America by the Weissenhofer may be associated with the artists’ socialisation by the Western series „Bonanza“.

8 see the Lorenzetti brothers, van Limburg, Carraci

9 a deliberately premodern Alpine image, in: Cat. Reutlingen, Der Weissenhof liegt im Wallistal, Heidelberg: Verlag Das Wunderhorn 2007

10 „Europa/Amerika“, Die Geschichte einer künstlerischen Faszination seit 1940, Cat. Cologne 1986

Martin Mäntele

When a small Berlin cinema that prefers to remain unnamed was being cleaned up, a sailcloth bag was discovered with manuscripts, film programs, censors’ plot descriptions, and old still photos from films. Intensive research in the archives of the film institutes in Berlin, Paris, Prague, and Buenos Aires showed that the photos served as display case advertising images for an early Expressionist silent film from the year 1917. The film “Die Wurzeln der Wissenschaft” (The Roots of Science), shot in Prague, Ulm, and Dessau, whose innovative camera and cutting technique, expressive lighting direction, and theatrical staging would influence the style of Expressionist silent movies (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, Metropolis) and Film Noir, has been lost. But now the plot and content of the film epic have been reconstructed on the basis of the scene photos and detailed censor’s card that were found.
The film tells the story of the secret research of the Weissenhofers’ forefathers. Seasoned German and Czech theater actors of the time embody the scientists who, in the course of the film, increasingly intensify their search for truth, leaving society’s ideas and conventions behind them and – after experiments with minerals, electrical media, scents, animals, and the corpses of the freshly deceased – finally hope to find final expansions of knowledge and consciousness in experiments on themselves.

A watercolor album has come down to us from the archive of the Weissenhofer family. For restoration and exhibition purposes, it has been taken apart so that the individual pages can be viewed individually. It is a compilation obviously created by several different drawing hands. Because of the in part seemingly outmoded idea of science apparent in them, today’s viewer probably regards the meticulously painted pictures more from the standpoint of pure aesthetics or as a strange cultural history. But we must keep in mind that, with the aid of these pictures, the researchers prepared precise experimental arrangements, reflected on the inner cohesion of the visible and invisible world, and documented experiments already carried out and their results. The scientists also report on the successful or failed enterprises of their forefathers, so that the album can be regarded as a revealing chronicle of a family of researchers.
More or less solid training in the fundamentals of draftsmanship was one of the tools of earlier generations of scientists, as is prominently evidenced by the research traveler Alexander von Humboldt and the dabbling naturalist and color theoretician Goethe. The pictures preserved here identify these researchers as precise observers who were able to carry out what they saw externally and what they imagined internally with equal precision and veracity.
Wild thinking sometimes also leads to an anarchic approach to language conventions. For better comprehensibility, the language of the written notes has been cautiously updated and the spelling corrected before going to press.


The Lab – The World

The laboratory is the site for researching the world. Here we try to get to the bottom of phenomena of the visible world and do not shy from the secrets behind things that have been well concealed up to now. In this album, intended for later generations that we hope will muster more understanding than our contemporaries do, we – I, Adalbert Weissenhofer, and my brothers – want to faithfully record our experiments and considerations.

Fig. 1:
A painter is hidden in the body of the true artist; he creates the internal images that the artist brings to light in phases of sudden lucidity. By means of vivisection, we want to seek out the inner painter.

Fig. 2:
The reaper studies a blank book – tabula rasa.

Fig. 3:
A wooden box: In the interior, a candle glows behind an upside-down painted pane of glass; its light rays cast the image through a lens-outfitted tube onto the wall. Caution! The countenance of the Adversary can appear. The writings of the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher teach us humility before the laws of optics.

Fig. 4:
My brother Ruedi has long been experimenting with the energies of mesmerism. We want to make magnetic fields utilizable for the alleviation of psychic suffering and for contacting our ancestors.

Fig. 5:
For the purposes of experiment, the good Marie Weissenhofer, née Lang, was put into an unconscious sleep by her husband Fritz; then she was placed in a glass tube and subjected to pulses of electricity. Afterward, she was as if transformed and couldn’t even recognize her own children.

Fig. 6:
A model of the Weissenhof floats in the lower glass flask while above it, in the second flask, a powerful bolt of electricity releases energy.


Flight Models

The bat offers us a model of the realization of the dream of flying. Our goal now is to transform nature’s model into a practicable mechanical model.

Fig. 1:
I, Eusebius Weissenhofer, developed this mechanical hand after losing my own natural right hand in experiments with black powder.

Fig. 2:
I built a flying machine for my wife Amalie Josepha on the model of the bat, whose anatomy I studied and transposed into a mechanical-thermal model. Amalie boarded the apparatus after our faithful dog Harras had survived a test flight with a smaller model.

Fig. 3:
The winged bonnet of Saint Maria Magdalene inspired me to further experiments with billowing flight bonnets that are attached to the head with strong belts. According to the statements of the test persons and my own experience, the effect is like an internal soaring. Sometimes neck pains are noted as a side effect.

Fig. 4:
The aforementioned bat of European origin is faithfully depicted here.

Fig: 5:
With precise knowledge of the laws of thermal lift, a model can be developed from bent, light pieces of wood that are driven by a propeller mounted on a rotating screw. These theoretical considerations await implementation in practice.


Mesmerism

The magnetic forces and their effects on the human spirit and consciousness are the basis of our experiments in the field of mesmerism. Skillful application can contribute to influencing and healing psychic disturbances.
The foundation for the experiments with the effects of magnetism on our consciousness is, first, the investigation of the human brain, in which we hoped to discover the spheres of consciousness already described by Hippocrates; their coloration and distribution in the various regions of the brain seem to call forth different psychic moods. The distillation of these consciousness spheres, gained by vivisection, will allow us to extract variously colored fluids to be employed in further experiments. Ingesting the fluids, in combination with a strong magnetic field, promises to have unimagined effects.
In a second experiment, independent from the first, we were already able to show that consciously concentrating on a magnet located in the neighboring room was, by itself, already enough to give the test person enough mental powers to make a glass flask filled with gas and prepared with carbon filaments glow. However, the experiment has so far been successful only with individuals who are especially spiritually gifted.


The Fly

A second object that we want to analyze to investigate the laws of natural flight is the common housefly. To breed specimens whose body size and strength makes them able to carry grown humans through the air, the growth of the fly larvae will be artificially stimulated and enhanced. The larvae, which thrive on rotten apples, are injected with radioactive cattle urine to which we add other ingredients, which, however, cannot be named here. Through inattention, a fly escaped from the carefully sealed glass cube and thoroughly frightened the little Joseph W.


The Metamorphosis of the Sausage

With the aid of targeted electrical impulses and powerful light frequencies, it seems possible to change living beings internally, while maintaining their external husk, so much that their entire being, emotional world, and individual behavior reverses. The manipulated creatures, whether animal or human, then resemble automatons whose actions obey only the will of the mental power exerting influence over them. In a laboratory experiment, we had astonishing successes with a sausage, but the simultaneously detected increase in heat soon boiled it. Other experiments with animals and humans will probably be possible only after the successful development of a suitable coolant.


Vivisection

Vivisection undertaken by a staff of specialists is the foundation of all serious study of the human body and of the healing arts in general. To this end, we use especially developed instruments, but ordinary household utensils can also be profitably employed if properly applied. Thereafter, it is important to prepare and conserve interesting organs and tissue samples in order to preserve them for science and have them serve coming generations as instructional material. Some especially curious preparations are found in the anatomical collection of the Weissenhofer family. Science is bewildered by organs never before seen in these forms and sizes and whose functions could not be clearly proven.


The Illuminati – Basic Patent Number 223898

Although our great uncle’s research doesn’t really fit in this context, I would still like to record it and thereby pass it on to posterity. Toward the end of the last century, Erwin Thomas Alva Weissenhofer, the family’s scientific jack of all trades, not only built a mechanical marionette that could speak and do arithmetic and was also of versatile use in other ways (the painter Oskar K. ordered this life-sized marionette from E. T. A. Weissenhofer after the death of his beloved Alma M.); no, he also developed a windmill that would have supplied the Weissenhof with electricity at an early time if there had not been a wiring fire, to which fortunately only the experiment shed fell victim. Erwin liked to astonish his neighbors at celebrations by electrostatically charging his body and then making light bulbs glow with his bare hand. He registered this useful trick at the Eriswil Patent Office under the Basic Patent Number 223898.
At such a performance at the legendary meeting of November 13, 1809, the faces of three previously unknown persons and the letter “W” appeared in the glass bulb. Our great uncle thereupon broke off his experiments forever and devoted himself entirely to gardening and the composition of enthusiastic-religious didactic poems.


The Dream Projector

Always this toil and monotony. Day after day, the eternally unchanging, arduous routine: working in the fields, caring for the livestock, whittling spoons, and painting clock plaques during the long winter months. The Weissenhofers never knew the meanings of the words diversion or entertainment.
Thomas Weissenhofer, who was proud that he had risen to the rank of captain in the Swiss army and had thus seen more of the world than just the Weissenhof, wanted to finally change that. He had been pondering this idea for a long time, ever since that time when Josephine served him a mushroom soup that she had prepared from the jolly little mushrooms that thrive so numerously on the cow patties. Consuming the soup led Thomas forward into a strange over-world, where he felt an exuberant joy that convinced him he had experienced paradise. When he tried to tell something of this to his family, he immediately realized he wasn’t even close to having words to convey what he had experienced.
So he decided to build a machine that he wanted to connect directly with his own mind so that, for his family, he could project onto the wall the same images that he saw in his innermost self when he journeyed in the over-world.


Dream Projector Brew and Distillate

But the dream projector required a more powerful fuel than Josephine’s mushroom soup. After all, it aimed to propel not only him into other spaces. The stuff had to be strong enough to let the others participate in his consciousness expansion.
A process would be applied that the Weissenhofers already used to preserve their rotten fruit. A brew of cow patty mushrooms was first fermented and then boiled. The distillate was the essence that was to send Thomas Weissenhofer and his family on their journey.
But something must have gone wrong, because since then, to this day, Thomas Weissenhofer has not returned from his journey. And everyone who thought they would find entertainment and diversion through the images the projector delivered saw themselves equally deceived and disturbed. Instead of simulating the world that Thomas had traveled through, after flickering up briefly, the machine cast only a single enigmatic image on the wall: a film camera, and nothing else. And so, down to the present generation, the Weissenhofers are doomed to remain serious, introverted people, alien to all entertainment and joy in their work.
By the way, a little later, Captain Thomas Weissenhofer achieved a certain fame. A singer who heard of his story composed an enchantingly beautiful song about it, clothed in veiling metaphors. It bears the title “Space Odditiy”.


The Weissenhof Cage

Lightning storms in the mountains were especially violent.
Alois Weissenhofer no longer wanted to leave it up to fate whether the Weissenhof, and with it the lives of all the people, goats, dogs, and livestock, would be endangered by a lightning bolt. One day, he happened to observe how the rabbits in their stall survived undamaged when lightning struck. The only explanation he could find was that the lightning bolt was diverted by the wire mesh that completely surrounded the stall. To protect the Weissenhof from the deadly lightning, Alois therefore built an apparatus that functioned on the same principle as the rabbit cage.
The experiments with the Weissenhof cage were ceased when one carried out on a living object was not as successful as expected. No one could explain why the experiment failed. And then someone else stole Alois Weissenhofer’s invention and registered it for a patent in 1836, gaining great success and going down in history with the cage. Alois Weissenhofer later tried one time to prove that he had originated the invention, but found himself accused of fraud. He died a few years later when he was struck by lightning while working in his fields.


The Formula for the Quintessence

Heinrich Weissenhofer wanted to find out with his experiments what holds the world together in its deepest interior. But he was not so concerned with satisfying his thirst for knowledge for its own sake. No, the real purpose of his research was to make the world a better place. Here are the notes from Heinrich Weissenhofers laboratory diary:
“Everything is connected with everything else. Everything can be transformed into anything else. Nothingness can be transformed into anything. Work in seclusion. Be taciturn. Be patient, observant, and tough. Work in accordance with a fixed plan. Use only glass or glazed vessels. Have nothing to do with princes or the nobility. To transform the impure into the noble, to heal the sick, and to unite what the Diabolus has divided, find the quintessence. To this end use this formula…”
His contemporaries regarded Heinrich as a charlatan and fraud. Only today can we recognize how much truth lies in what he discovered here. It manifests itself in the unexpected results in our day of the enterprises of our contemporary alchemists, who have meanwhile shifted the focus of their activity to the financial world and implemented Heinrich’s theories in practice. Though not always with Heinrich’s original intent of improving the world.


Music of the Spheres

It was on a starlit night when the livestock was sleeping and the hammer trio of the smithy in the valley had ceased their labor: it was so quiet that Schorsch Weissenhofer thought he could hear very faint, wondrous harmonies that seemed to come from far away. They were not comparable to any other sound he had ever heard before. These sounds could not have had their origin on the earth.
Schorsch came up with a theory whereby the motions of the planets around the Weissenhof had to produce these tones. The theory seemed very plausible. After all, one could also observe that the wheel bearings of the hay wagon produced strange sounds – and all the more if they hadn’t been properly greased for a long time.
To be able to prove his theory, Schorsch built an amplifying device, with which he hoped to hear the music of the spheres more clearly and make it possible for others to listen to this music, as well. But it turned out that no one but Schorsch could hear the music of the spheres. People accused him of being a liar who merely wanted to make himself seem interesting with his exotic theory. Today we think that Schorsch very probably had developed tinnitus because of the constant strain of his work in mountain agriculture. But fortunately it was not a particularly severe case and only perceptible when things were especially quiet.


Igor Weissenhofer, the Pioneer of Marketing Research

By now, the Weissenhof was overflowing with the countless painted clock plaques, whittled spoons, and painstakingly framed family photos taken by photographers passing through.
As lovingly as everything was designed and despite years of efforts to sell some of it, no one appeared who was willing to spend even a centime on this beautiful handcrafting. And in the cellar, over the course of time, the first paintings began to grow mildew and the wooden spoons were already bent and twisted with mold and dankness. So something urgently needed to be sold, even if it would fetch only a pittance. The main goal was to make room again. And that the decorative items that had been so diligently crafted would not rot in the cellar. Fortunately, Igor Weissenhofer remembered the ugly old urinal that Great Uncle Urs had lugged home long ago and that, for lack of any water hookup, had been banished to somewhere on the hindmost shelf. The family sighed with relief when a Frenchman, who stumbled upon the Weissenhof while hiking in the mountains, declared his willingness to take the misshapen object with him for a low fee. Later, Igor Weissenhofer learned that their old, useless urinal had meanwhile been given the title Fontaine and, under the entirely fictitious term Readymade, had become an icon of art history: a work of art for which museums and art collectors were willing to pay just about any price.
“Why shouldn’t what succeeded with the old Weissenhofer urinal also work for the Weissenhofer handcrafted items?” thought Igor. At any rate, whether or not an object is regarded as valuable seemed to have to do with the name it was given. Best would be to invent new, euphonious terms. After that, one would need only to bring these terms with advertising appeal into circulation, so that people would see the thus-designated old objects with new eyes. And one would have to convey that anyone could enjoy high standing simply by buying these objects.
Igor Weissenhofer got to work immediately; the first thing he did was invent a new name for himself: Iggy Pop. That sounded like fame and success; and for that reason alone, because that’s how it sounded, it would make him famous and successful. He thought up such a plethora of melodious names that the family couldn’t decide. Every Weissenhofer had ideas all his own that were not compatible with those of the others; in the end, they were hopelessly at odds. And the result of their quarrel was that they threw all their beautifully painted clock plaques, their lovingly whittled spoons, and their painstakingly framed family photos into the closest glacier crevasse.
Iggy was so disappointed about this that, like many other Weissenhofers before him, he resolved to emigrate to America and seek his fortune there.

Jakob Weissenhofer almost Invents the Electric Guitar

“These darned bears! Especially in the long winter nights, they come much too close to our farm. Mona and Lisa, our calves, shiver in mortal fear every time. And their mama gives only milk that has already curdled when it comes out of the udder.
Now we’ve also lost our Harras. The brave little guy tried to protect us. The greedy brown bear just bit more ferociously when Harras barked at him. An unequal fight in which he sacrificed himself for us. Now there is nothing to protect us from the cruel bears; they don’t even respect the crack of our rifles anymore.
We have only one last chance. I must finally invent a machine that is infinitely louder than our rifles. A machine that produces such a racket that the bears are driven away for good.”
Thus Jakob Weissenhofer’s diary entry from 1968. The noise machine was successful – and has been gathering dust in the hayloft ever since.
What Jakob Weissenhofer didn’t know yet at that time: overseas, something comparable had already been invented much earlier, but not as a noise machine. There, an infernally roaring musical instrument named the electric guitar was being sold in great numbers.
When Jakob heard about this, he smelled opportunity. He bade farewell to the Weissenhof and moved to America. There he changed his name to Jack and his family name Weissenhofer to White and is now enjoying great success as a rock musician.


The Bestiary

That Andreas Weissenhofer, a great-grandson of Albrecht Waisenhofer, traveled far is only vaguely evidenced by sparsely preserved notes. But it is known that, as a taxidermist working in secret, he earned a dubious reputation that adheres to him to this day in the region around Ammern. Earning his living as a fur dealer – a profession passed down in the family for generations – meant that he had always hunted animals.
In the old village chronicle, he was repeatedly brought into connection with the traceless disappearance of animals from the neighboring farms. People also speak of his secretive nocturnal activity and the delivery and pickup of great wooden chests. A bestial stench that contaminated the near surroundings from his fortress-like property also unsettled neighbors in the community, who had always tended to be superstitious. When one night in 1666 one of the suspicious neighbors claimed to have seen the Devil incarnate in the Weissenhofers’ barn, a rapidly mustered militia stormed the farm. The creatures exposed to view in the huge barn could have come only from hell. The aroused mob swiftly lynched Andreas Weissenhofer on site and set up a forbidden zone around the cursed farm. The huge property was never entered after that night and fell into a kind of Sleeping Beauty trance.
Not until 1916 did Urs Weissenhofer, a late descendant of Andreas W.’s line, learn of this mysterious legacy. Without delay, he resolved to acquire the neglected property. How great his astonishment must have been at the well-prepared, outlandish creatures there! And all the more generous must we regard his decision to offer this bestiary as a gift to the community of Ammern in the Wallis Valley. His only condition was that this unique collection of curiosities should be awakened from its twilight sleep and made accessible to the interested public.
And so to this day, visitors can gaze in wonder at this strange menagerie of monsters in the rear meeting room of the Ammern Community Center in the canton of Wallis. One need merely ask for the key at the gate below.


The Idea Machine

Ruedi Weissenhofer, who emigrated to the United States, visited New York in 1925 to promote his book “I like America and America likes me” for the publisher, Blockhead Press, with a reading. At a soirée of the collector couple Louise and Walter Arensberg, he was introduced to Marcel Duchamp. Their spontaneous mutual affection was based not least on a common predilection for decontextualized urinals, and so they became friends. Whenever Ruedi was in the city, he came around to Marcel’s studio on 67th street for a game of chess, where he was a welcome guest all his life.
It must have been on one of these visits that he stumbled over the chocolate grater that Duchamp memorialized in 1914 in one of his last painted pictures (Broyeuse de chocolat no. 2, oil, thread, and pencil on canvas, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, collection of L. and W.  Arensberg) and that since then was left in a corner of the studio between snow shovels, clothes hangers, bottle drying racks, and other odds and ends.
For years, the two tinkered again and again on a machine with the working title Le troisième oeil ou la machine à idees, as whose heart the chocolate grater served. The purpose of this apparatus was to free the artist from creative ballast so he could devote himself to his work. In this connection, special mention is owed to a drawing by Duchamp from the year 1934 that may have served as a preliminary study: Sex Cylindre (W.A.S.P.), pencil on paper, Milan, collection of Arturo Schwarz.
Finally, in 1985, in the attic of the Weissenhofer ranch in Texas, Bob Weissenhofer found a dusty cardboard box labeled “The Third Eye Or The Idea Machine, Marcel Duchamp and Ruedi Weissenhofer, New York City 1941”. Thanks to the detailed instruction manual included in the box, he was able to assemble the individual parts of the apparatus effortlessly. He put on the helmet with the third eye, pushed the tubes through the appropriate sleeves, and connected them with the chocolate grater. In the classic pose of the thinker, which he adopted from Privy Councilor Goethe, he sat down on two Ulm stools and suddenly had an idea.


The Mushroom Meadow

We know little more about Aunt Theresa Weissenhofer than that she waited in vain all her life for her husband Ruedi to return from faraway America. But a little book titled The magic mushroom meadow – tasty mushroom dishes and their very wondrous effect on the human senses, which was found in her estate, bears witness to her ability to sweeten the wait.
Their curiosity piqued, Bob, Carl, and Keith set off in search of this arcadian place last late summer. They found a precise site plan tidily folded up between the last pages of the yellowed book. Deep in the forest, a sunny clearing opened up for them on which, so it appeared, all kinds of mushrooms grew. They tasted here, then there, and so spent a very entertaining afternoon.


The Commune 1969

In 1969, Cousin Elliot Weissenhofer experimented with new forms of living together. But not in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district; no, Elliot moved to the Northeast of the USA, in remote New Hampshire. He squatted an old, abandoned hotel. Gradually, all those disappointed with American society or who had fallen through the gaps in the bourgeois safety net – pioneering thinkers, the obsolescent, primates, and artists – found their way there. A handful of freaks and stranded people who wanted to have a good time together.
Monday evenings there were lectures in the fireplace room, Thursdays they all cooked together, and Fridays they engaged in sports or listened to records. But after a few weeks, they dispersed again. Somehow it didn’t work out the way Elliot had imagined. It was simply too boring.
So Elliot bought a motorcycle and disappeared for several years in Tibet. Later he ended up as a radio moderator.


The Energy Collection Vessel

Wilhelm Reich’s idea and attempt to infuse the human organism with cosmic energy using the orgone accumulator he developed for this purpose had long fascinated the three Weissenhofer brothers Bob, Carl, and Keith. They decided to reverse the principal ideas of this experiment and to generate energy themselves. The energy was to flow into a collecting vessel and be available on tap as needed. As simple as the idea was, it was hard to implement in practice. The trio of brothers moved to the border region between Arizona and Utah. There lies a valley in which the Anasazi Indians (the ancient ones) already made energy flow more than 1,500 years ago by adorning their rock cave housing with magical signs. What flows through the same valley today is streams of tourists.
There, Bob, Carl, and Keith installed their energy generating building, into which they wanted to withdraw for three days and three nights. Carl’s little building was a somewhat smaller replica of the flying saucer that Madeleine Rodeffer sighted in the company of George Adamski on February 26, 1965 in a suburb of Washington, D.C. Bob built himself a closet-like box with a seat and carefully lined its interior with thin copper sheeting, which he normally used to make his engravings. And Keith ordered a Finnish outhouse from a mail-order catalog. He had learned to esteem such buildings years earlier on a hiking vacation in Lapland.
The days were scorchers and the nights bitterly cold. The three of them survived this experiment only because an old Navajo Indian who happened to fly by on his peyote trip rescued then from dying of thirst on the third day. Completely exhausted, they guzzled the collecting vessel dry and then sold all the stuff amassed there for scrap.


Indoor Vegetable Growing

When the Weissenhofer Ranch was established in Texas in 1982, the property comprised the home, generous studio spaces, the barn for music rehearsals, and a small vegetable garden. Mother Josefa wanted to ensure that her beloved family was well-nourished and she didn’t trust the selection of fruit and vegetables at the huge supermarkets in the vicinity. As a matter of fact, the closest supermarket was a good day’s car trip away – if the rickety Ford Model T that they had received from Uncle Ruedi for Carl’s sixteenth birthday could even be cranked to a start. And so Josefa put all her gardening ability and all her strength into the little garden that she cultivated behind the house. Cucumbers, squash, asparagus, melons, eggplants, zucchini, bell peppers, carrots, and potatoes thrived magnificently under the merciful sun of the West. But dear Mother grew older and the work no longer came as easy to her as it once did.
For Josefa’s seventieth birthday, the three brothers and devoted sons, Bob, Carl, and Keith thought about a special present for their mother: a vegetable production within her own four walls. Independent from wind, weather, and the seasons, the crops would flourish – and on top of that, be easy to harvest. The idea of indoor vegetable cultivation was born.
The big cellar under the living room was quickly emptied. All kinds of containers lying around the house and yard were turned into beds and filled with the finest Texas soil. Old metal watering cans had to serve as a well thought out irrigation system. Light came from a few 500-watt lamps that had last illuminated the three brother’s triumphant gig in the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas. Last, a suitable mural had to be painted that would stimulate the growth of the plants. The three were able to engage their old friend Bridget for a design, while the brothers themselves executed it.
After everything was set up well, the seeds were sown – taking the constellation of the moon and stars into consideration, of course.
Sometimes things then occur that cannot be explained by our everyday understanding. At any rate, what happened was that, in a moist cellar in the middle of Texas, illuminated by garish artificial light, the ripest, plumpest, and best-taking fruits grew in the earth-filled boxes, crates, buckets, and other containers. Josefa was overwhelmed and Bob, Carl, and Keith were a mite bewildered.


The Experiment Table

The moon is full and the year is 1990. This is the night on which the three brothers Bob, Carl, and Keith have decided to have a contest. They want to see who’s best. A contest for the first successful experiment. The winner will have to pick up rolls the next morning, and the next bakery is far away – almost as far as the next supermarket.
Bob had set up the do-it-yourself experiment table behind the ranch on the edge of the prairie. Only the bright Texas moon shone on the scenery. Each of the three had prepared an experiment. A test, an experiment, a research project, dug up from the annals of the broadly branched history of the Weissenhofer clan.
Genealogical research is being conducted here, driven by the existential questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? How did we become who we are? Or simply: what distinguishes talent from genius and who is a charlatan?
Keith, a highly gifted guitarist and sensitive musicians, had long carried out research in search of evidence for the primal guitar, the legendary first guitar, the mother of all guitars. In his investigations, he came upon the construction manual of a certain Johann Hendricks Wittehus, of Holland. The latter fashioned something resembling a stringed instrument out of a few hand-forged nails, a few meters of wire, a slab of wood (willow, at least 60 years old), and a wooden board. In 1670, precisely 300 years before one of his descendants, the American electric guitar guru Jimi Hendrix gave one of his last live concerts at the Isle of Wight Festival, Johann presented his instrument on the marketplace in Leiden. In front of an handful of listeners, he may have played a few dull tones. At any rate, on the night in question, Keith tried to recreate this instrument, though attaching the strings posed some tough problems.
Carl, for his part, found an old book from the estate of Gotthelf Weissenhofer. Gotthelf, an old veteran of Monte Verità well-practiced in leading a spiritual life, made the acquaintance of the bon vivant and old master of occultism, Aleister Crowley, in the years between 1914 and 1919. Crowley initiated Gotthelf into the controversial secrets of alchemy and supernatural phenomena. He bore him away to the world behind the world. There they jointly wrote this book in secret writing. It informs those able to read it of the futile efforts to turn excrement into gold and of their attempts to rouse dead matter to life. Carl then attempted to breathe life into his childhood rag doll.
Bob, finally, pursued his longstanding vision of discovering previously unknown alternative sources of energy. Mother Josefa’s mother Rosa should be mentioned as the godmother of this experiment. It was doubtless Rosa who passed on her green thumb to her daughter Rosa. She had profound knowledge of plants of all kinds and recorded all her knowledge in vivid detail. Starting with these notes, Bob sought to prove that electricity can be generated from ordinary vegetables.
But the brothers maintain silence to this day about which experiment was successful and who thereby won the contest.

1291 With the Rütli oath emissaries from Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden sealed a protection and shelter alliance that is considered thefoundation of the Swiss Confederation

1326 The furrier Ajtósi Vásárhelyi from the village of Ajtósi in Hungarymoves to Ammern in Valais and has himself registered in the municipal book as Albrecht Waisenhofer.

1423 The spelling „Weissenhofer“ instead of „Waisenhofer“ is recorded
for the first time in the birth register of the community of Ammern.

1550 Giorgio Vasari’s „Lives of the Artist“s is published in Florence(Le vite dei più eccellenti architetti, pittori et scultori italiani).

1562 After the decline of the fur market the Weissenhofer family turns to dairying and sets up the Weissenhof farm in the Valais valley.

1620 On September 6, the Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth and reaches Cape Cod on November 21.

1775 On his journey through the Valais valley Johann Wolfgang Goethe is caught in a thunderstorm and spends the night on theWeissenhof.

1779 Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s „Letters from Switzerland“ is published. „Everything seems to be located close together, and yet one is separa­ted by big ravines and valleys. For the most time we had had the open Valais valley to our right when all of a sudden a beautiful view of the mountains opened before our eyes.“
(J.W. Goethe, Letters from Switzerland, 1779)

1865 The American Civil War between the Southern states that had left the Union and the Northern states under their president AbrahamLincoln ends with the capitulation of the Confederate troops.

1898 Ruedi Weissenhofer crosses the Atlantic as stowaway and tries his luck in America.

1899 Giovanni Segantini dies on the 2700 m high Schafberg in the Engadine while working on the „Alpentriptychon“.

1906 Gotthelf Weissenhofer spends three weeks on Monte Verità, practising the sun prayer and giving crucial impulses to modern ex­pressive dance.

1908 Ferdinand Hodler chooses the motif of the woodcutter for the design of the Swiss National Bank’s new 50 francs note. GotthelfWeissenhofer models for the painter.

1914 Beginning of the First World War. Switzerland remains neutral.

1915 Urs Weissenhofer buys a urinal in Zurich. As the Weissenhof has no water connection he puts it on the kitchen shelf as room decora­tion.

1917 Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin travels from Switzerland to Russia via Germany and Sweden in a sealed railway carriage.
Marcel Duchamp submits a urinal under the title „Fountain“ to the annual exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York. The object is juried out.

1922 Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is pub lished in London.

1925 Ruedi Weissenhofer’s memoirs „I like America and America likes me“ are published by the Blockhead Press, New York.

1939 Beginning of the Second World War. Switzerland remains neutral.

1941Wilhelm Reich experiments with the Orgon-Accumulator(ORAC) which concentrates the primordial cosmic energy from the atmosphere (called Orgon) and supplies it to the organism.

1961 The wedding of Gustl Weissenhofer and Josefa Zwingli takes place in the church Maria Sieben Freuden in Bellwald.

1963 Gustl and Josefa announce the birth of Schorsch Weissen hofer, soon just called Käs by everybody.
John F. Kennedy is assassinated.

1965 Robert Weissenhofer sees the light of day. The couple finds a wicker basket with a strong boy in front of their door, and they give him the name Karl.

1966 Bob Dylan is regularly booed by the supporters of acoustic folk music on his European tour, on which he performs amplified and with support band like he had done at the Newport Folk Festival in1965. Dylan thereupon instructs his musicians to play extra loud.  

1967 Jacques Tati levels criticism at modernism in his film „Playtime“.

 
1968    Watchdog Harras dies.    

1970 Käs, Robert and Carl contribute tot he meagre living of the family by carving spoons and painting small tree disks with Alpinemotifs. Family music is cultivated too (Robert: wandering guitar, Käs: dulcimer, Karl: vocals).

1972 Robert connects his guitar to the kitchen radio. When cousin Elliott pees on the open cable, he suffers an electric shock. The Weissenhofer’s song „A, C, D, C“ describes the arduous relearning of articulation. An Australian band later takes its name from this song, the melody of which becomes the basis of the song „Highway to Hell“.

1974 Mick Taylor, who had replaced Brian Jones in 1969, leaves the Rolling Stones.

1976 A fight breaks out when the big farmer Brechtbühl tries to talk Gustl into selling the Weissenhof. On August 14 the Weissenhof burns down. Käs, Robert and Karl have a hard time saving the milkcows Mona & Lisa from the flames.
The photographer, filmmaker, painter and object artist Emmanuel Rudnitzky (Man Ray) dies in Paris.

1977 With the money from the sale of the premises Gustl, Josefa, Käs, Robert and Karl manage to grab a place on the lower deck of the ship Liberty. After four and a half weeks they reach New York. Uncle Ruedi, who sells Alpenhorns in Chinatown, gets them work.

1979 The family moves to Texas. Bob, Keith und Carl work as cowboys and Americanize their names. Robert becomes Bob, Käs calls himself Keith and Karl now writes his name with a capital C.

1981 Ronald Reagan becomes the 40th President of the UnitedStates of Amerika.

1982 The Weissenhofer Ranch is built.
Joseph Beuys sings the polit song „Sonne statt Reagan“ („MenschKnitterface, der Film ist aus / nimm’ die Raketen mit nach Haus“)(Gosh, wrinkle face, the film is over / take your missiles and go home)

1984 The Weissenhofer draw, paint and carve. Rich collectors be­come aware of them.

1990 The canton Appenzell Innerrhoden introduces women’s suffrage.

1991 The idea of founding an artist group is dismissed because other things are more important at the moment.

1995 The brothers found the artist group Die Weissenhofer. Frank and Joe take part until 2001 and 2003 respectively. With their parentswell provided for now, the brothers decide to return to the Old World.

1996 The Weissenhofer have their first exhibition in the gallery peripherie in the Sudhaus Tübingen. Subke makes music.

1997 The jubilee event of the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg in the State Theatre Stuttgart with a live rock appearance by the Weis­senhofer is recorded by the SWR.
In their exhibition  „Nichts geht mehr“ in the Gesellschaft der Freunde junger Kunst, Baden-Baden, the Weissenhofer deal with Game theory.
The Galerie im Heppächer in Esslingen shows the overview exhibition
„Die Weissenhofer kündigen sich an“.
The Alpine capricorn (Capra ibex) is animal of the year.

1998 An extensive monography of the Weissenhofer is published on the occasion of their exhibition in the Kunsthaus Richterswil on the Lake of Zurich.
In the same year they show the exhibitions „un peu de tout“ in the Galerie Klenk in Heilbronn and „Bessere Aussicht“ in the Ulmer Kunst­stiftung pro arte.
Keith Richards falls from a ladder in his  domestic library when trying to take a book from the shelf.

1999 The firm of solicitors, Lichtenstein, Körner and Partner, pro­tects their good name: © Die Weissenhofer.

2000 The Weissenhofer present the exhibition „stimulate me simulta­neously“ in the Simultanhalle Cologne, which has been built as a si­mulation of the architecture of the Museum Ludwig.

2001 The Weissenhofer exhibit in Berlin – „Barely arrived - already a super idea in mind“, Galerie Beck + Priess.

2002 Switzerland is admitted as the 190th member of the UNO.
The Weissenhofer set up model places in the Hospitalhof Stuttgart and ask their friends for texts for a book. (Die Weissenhofer, quattro stazioni – Ein Lesebuch zum Thema Orte, Edition Hospitalhof Stuttgart 2002)
A pool with swimming objects dominates the exhibition „looppool“ in the Kunsthalle Erfurt and the Municipal Gallery Albstadt. Whereas the video­loop „Healing I“ shows a collective Kneipp walk (see Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Fountain of Youth, 1546), the Weissenhofer report on the cure in „Healing II“ („I thought it was great“, „Well, it did me good“, „We should do that more often“). The editless camera technique remindsof Alfred Hitchcock’s classic „The Rope“ (1948).
Keith Weissenhofer parks in the parking space reserved for Mick Taylor in front of the Sudhaus Tübingen. Taylor’s concert can take place anyhow, with Keith in the audience.

2003 The visitors of the exhibition „Bretter im Goldenen Schnitt“ in the Brühler Kunstverein bring along boards which the Weissenhofer saw up according to the classical golden ratio. Public and private space are interlinked as the visitors put up the short parts of the boards at home while the longer ones remain on the spot.
The exhibition „Der Text, der Fries, die Kammer (drei Bretter)2 in the Galerie Gruppe Grün in Bremen confronts a text from Jonathan Swift’s novel „Gulliver’s Travels“ (1726) with a wall frieze of objects (the Weissenhofer’s collective vocabulary: house, car, pistol, urinal etc.), a chamber with the Weissenhofer Archive and boards from Brühl.

2004 For the Stuttgarter Kunstnotizen „Sonnendeck“ the Weissenhofer create the double page „Kunst als Krankheit“ (art as sickness).
Bob Dylan’s memoirs „Chronicles“ are published in New York.

2005 The Weissenhofer play at the opening of the group show „The red carpet in myth, power and everyday life“ in the courtyard of Unter­gröningen castle. The brothers stage themselves photographically as the KISS-Band and create a self-referential multimedia installation.
For the exhibition mobile immobile in the Mannheimer Kunstverein the Weissenhofer build a space-filling mobile with finds from their rural neighbourhood.
In December the Weissenhofer invite to the gala „10 Jahre Weissenhofer“ in the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. After the slide show „The artist group as a strategic collective“, the premiere of the performance „Computer Hacker Club“ and the appearance of the Weissenhofer-Revival-Band (Frankplays drums), there are good conversations, light snack food fun and a stand with fan articles.

2006 The Weissenhofer set up the installation „Die Weissenhofer sagen Danke“ in the choir of the convent church in Oberndorf a. N.: a tent with votive donations by 68 artist friends as a contribution to the exhibition „Vier im Kreis – Künstlergruppen des Künstlerbundes Baden-Württemberg“.
The Gallery for Art and Technique in Schorndorf presents „Die Weissen­hofer–τέχνη (techne)“. The mobile, under which the Weissenhofer make music, carries a Bauknecht washing-machine and a metal hospital bed.

2007 On the occasion of the exhibition in the Municipal GalleryReutlingen the picture book „Der Weissenhof liegt im Wallistal“ is pub­lished, telling the story of the Weissenhofer („Wir sind mittags meist schon voll / Wir machen Kunst und Rock ’n’ Roll“) (we are usually drunk by noon / we make art and rock ’n’ roll). In the exhibition the brothers present three models for the reconstruction of the burntdown Weissenhof.
Jean Baudrillard’s essay on terrorism „Cool Memories V“ is published.
Bob, Keith and Carl arrange an „Evening with the Weissenhofer“ (music, performance, videos, conversations and alcohol) in the Office for postpostmodern Communication WestGermany, Berlin
For the exhibition „Die Weissenhofer vergeben einen Sendeplatz“ in the SWR-Gallery the Weissenhofer and their cousin Elliot park their own broadcast vehicle in front of the broadcasting centre. Elliott interviews the Weissenhofer in the SWR 2 Journal from Baden-Württemberg and invites them to take part in his radio programme „Bär on Air“ on the Free Radio for Stuttgart.
For the first time since 17 years no new cases of BSE are registered in Switzerland.

2008 The Künstlerhaus Dortmund, the Museum am Ostwall, the Dortmunder Kunstverein and the Protestant City Church St. Petri cooperate for the exhibition „Die Weissenhofer: SATELLITEN“. While the outstations (satellites) present one artist’s work each, the brothers show the objects saved from the burnt down Weissenhof and largesize photos with scenes from their youth in the Künstlerhaus.

Fowl bank credits in the United States lead to a global bank crisis, heavy losses and a fall of  stock exchange all over the world. Only the promissory notes oft he Brothers B., C. & K. Weissenhofer are safe. The Weissenhofer signed them before leaving the roulette tables of Baden-Baden.

2009 The discovery oft a diary documenting the Weissenhofer`s journey to Egypt (many years before Klee, Macke and friends went to Tunis) lets us see the rise of modern art in a different way and makes German museums search for the three aged artists. The Flottmann Hallen in Herne und the E-Werk Feiburg show the exhibition „Die Weissenhofer – Die Ägyptenreise“ with the original water colours and writings oft the diary, souvenirs of the journey and historic photos a German photographer named K. Mellenthin had taken of  Bob, Carl and Keith.
Paleontologists announce the discovery of an Ardipithecus ramidus fossil skeleton, deeming it the oldest remains of a human ancestor yet found.

2010 When all three brothers are members of the famous German artists association „Deutscher Künstlerbund“, they install a „Bureau de Change“, where the artist members exchange objects and  services.
The sculpture „L’Homme qui marche“ by Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti, a bronze after the juvenile model R. Weissenhofer, sells in London for 103.7 million Dollars. Giacomettis work is well known to he owners of 100 Swiss francs bank notes.

2011 In a small cinema in Berlin a sailcloth bag is discovered with manuscripts, film programs and old still photos – the last witnesses of a once legendary silent movie about a family of unscrupulous scientists – the forefathers of B., C. and K. Weissenhofer. The reconstruction of the laboratory is the centre of the exhibition „The Weissenhofer: Radical Research – The Roots of Science“ in the Ulmer Museum.
Jane Russell dies in Santa Maria, California.  

2012 The Weissehofer look back without anger. They have seen good old times and they are still open to modern times. Once they constructed the Weisenhofer Ranch in Texas. Now they build their own website. Adventures can be found worldwide.

1995    Founding of the artists’ group “ Die Weissenhofer”, today consisting of Uwe Schäfer, Jörg Mandernach and Matthias Beckmann


Exhibitions

2012    Die Weissenhofer (The Weissenhofer), Municipal Gallery Backnang
2011    Radical Research, Die Wurzeln der Wissenschaft (Roots of Science), Ulmer Museum
2010    Wechselstube (Bureau de Change), Project in cooperation with Deutscher Künstlerbund (Association of German Artists), Project Space Deutscher Künstlerbund, Berlin
    Pantheon, Neues Problem, Berlin
2009    Die Weissenhofer: Die Ägyptenreise (The Weissenhofer: A Journey to Egypt), E-Werk, Freiburg
    Die Weissenhofer: Die Ägyptenreise (The Weissenhofer: A Journey to Egypt), Flottmann Hallen, Herne (Katalog)
    Die Weissenhofer: Relikte (The Weisenhofer: Relics), Allgemeiner Konsumverein, Braunschweig
2008    Die Weissenhofer – Satelliten (The Weissenhofer – Satellites), Künstlerhaus Dortmund (Artists’ House Dortmund) in cooperation with Museum am Ostwall, Dortmunder Kunstverein, Protestant Municipal Church St. Petri
    Legenden statt Manifeste (Legends versus Manifestos), KunstWerk, Köln
2007    Der Weissenhof liegt im Wallistal (The Weissenhof lies in the Valley of Wallis), Städtische Galerie Reutlingen (Municipal Gallery Reutlingen)
Ein Abend mit den Weissenhofern (An Evening with the Weissenhofer), music, performance und party, WestGermany, Bureau for postpostmodern communication, Berlin
Die Weissenhofer vergeben einen Sendeplatz (The Weissenhofer install a Radio Channel), SWR, Stuttgart    Die Weissenhofer Radio Show (The Weissenhofer Radio Show), guests in the  radio program „Bär on Air“ (“Bear on Air”), Freies Radio für Stuttgart (Free Radio for Stuttgart)
    Slörrrrr wip wop wop, Spor Klübü, Berlin (group exhibition)
2006   Vier im Kreis – Künstlergruppen (Four in a Circle – Artists Groups), Künstlerbund Baden-Württemberg (Artists Association Baden-Wurttemberg), Klosterkirche Oberdorf a.N., (a participative project as part of a group exhibition)
    Techne, Galerie für Kunst und Technik, Schorndorf
2005    Der rote Teppich in Mythos, Macht und Alltag (The Red Carpet in Myth, Power and Everyday Life), KISS Kunstverein e.V., Untergröningen (group exhibition)         mobile immobile, Mannheimer Kunstverein
    10 Years the Weissenhofer, Celebration and Party, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart
    ARThaus (Art House), Town Hall Ditzingen
2003    Bretter im Goldenen Schnitt (Wooden Boards in the Golden Section), Brühler Kunstverein    Der Text, der Fries, die Kammer (drei Bretter) (The Text, the Frieze, the Chamber (Three Wooden Boards)), Galerie Gruppe Grün, Bremen
2002    quattro stazioni, Hospitalhof Stuttgart     looppool, Kunsthalle Erfurt, Municipal Gallery Albstadt
2001    Kaum da, schon ‘ne super Idee (Barely arrived already a super idea in mind),     Gallery Beck + Priess, Berlin
2000    stimulate me simultaneously, Simultanhalle, Köln
1998    un peu de tout (A Little Bit of Everything), Gallery Ingrid Klenk, Heilbronn
Die Weissenhofer – Hüter der Moderne (The Weissenhofer – Guardians of the Modern Age), Galerie Hüter, Willich/Anrath     Bessere Aussicht (A Better View), pro arte ulmer kunststiftung, Galerie im Kornhauskeller, Ulm    Die Weissenhofer (The Weissenhofer), Kunsthaus Richterswil, Museum für neue Kunst, Richterswil, Switzerland (CH)
1999    © Die Weissenhofer (© The Weissenhofer, Kuratorium für Kunst - Lichtenstein und Körner, Stuttgart
1997    Nichts geht mehr (No More Bets), Gesellschaft der Freunde junger Kunst e.V., Baden-Baden     Die Weissenhofer kündigen sich an (The Weissenhofer Announce Themselves), Galerie im Heppächer, Esslingen     Die Weissenhofer live (The Weissenhofer Live), music performance, Staatstheater Stuttgart (National Theatre Stuttgart)1996    Die Weissenhofer (The Weissenhofer), peripherie, Sudhaus Tübingen

Die Weissenhofer (The Weissenhofer)

Matthias Beckmann
Urbanstr. 116
10967 Berlin
Germany
phone: 0049 (0)30 - 61 62 54 04
cell: 0049 (0)173 - 70 59 788
info(ad)matthiasbeckmann.com
www.matthiasbeckmann.com

Jörg Mandernach
phone: 0049 (0)7141 - 25 96 16
mail(ad)joergmandernach.de
www.joergmandernach.de

Uwe Schäfer
Seyfferstr. 73/1
70197 Stuttgart
Germany
phone: 0049 (0)711 - 61 52 388
cell: 0049 (0)174 - 95 49 556
mail(ad)uweschaefer-kunst.de
www.uweschaefer-kunst.de