Camp Vogelsang

Camp Vogelsang 2.0
by Andreas Magdanz

Description

Camp Vogelsang - by Andreas Magdanz
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TV MOVIE INCLUDED, ANDREAS MAGDANZ WITH AN INTERVIEW AND A STATEMENT AGAINST FASCISM IN GERMANY
..... As Andreas Magdanz learned of the planned closure of the Camp Vogelsang troop training area in 2003, he directed his request to document “The Belgian Period” of this place in pictures to the supervising commander’s office. Upon request, he reported that a gradual insight was connected with the nearly unlimited permission to move about the military terrain, even during military exercises, that the “reality” of Vogelsang should be comprehended as much more than its track record under the Third Reich. This work is then also the result of an alternative exploration of the site, which attempts to unlock the complex existence of the area in three dimensions. One would like to understand them as a triad: Architecture, Military and Nature. In their reciprocal permeation, they form a visual matrix, which is more even-handed with the conditions of Vogelsang than a tunnel view to the National Socialist period.......

...... Already at the time of the first reading of this book, it becomes unmistakably clear that it is not possible to explore the site by a simple, linear means of story telling. Much more, the heterogeneity of the selected perspectives, periods and spaces of the specific foundational structure of the photographs, which are interlocked with each other for Magdanz in the manifest montage technique. In the prologue, the inspection of the property still seems to be designed as a narrative. One colour picture with a view of the Avenue Albert access road devoid of people provides a direct view in the direction of the historical core of the military area, where the sky emptied of clouds may appear all at once serenely blue. However, it really isn’t. The subsequent pictorial confrontation with the residential barracks, which have been strung together as miserable provisional solutions, as well as with the sequential photographic record of a tank ride disappearing to one side of the visual field, creates a high degree of disorientation right from the start and raises the question, at what period and on what terrain is one actually moving?.....


"The Castle" extract from "Camp Vogelsang" by Dr. Christoph Schaden

...... The monumental Vogelsang estate established in the gray of the Eifel quarry stone in the Nordeifel mountain range does not simply lie geographically in the middle of Europe. Its continuously changing contents mirror well nigh the history of the continent, ultimately even the worldwide power politics of the last century. From 1934, Vogelsang initially stood for the aggressive nationalism and murderous racism of the National Socialist country. In 1945, the debris of the fragments of a National Socialist architectural marvel entwined at that time by myths towered over the Nordeifel landscape scarred by Hitler’s World War. In 1946, a new world-encircling confrontation emerged. The military powers of the East and West stared down their guns at each other. Vogelsang served the Western military from then on as a training area for the conjectured war scenarios, going so far as the apocalypse of nuclear missile exchanges between the East and West. .....

"Vogelsang – A Mirror of the History of Europe in the 20th Century" extract from "Camp Vogelsang" by F. A. Heinen

However, a prerequisite is that one properly knows and interprets the history of Vogelsang. The negative aspects: so that they will never be forgotten and never be repeated. The positive aspects: so that our belief in a better world and future worth living will remain alive, always and everywhere. And, in addition to the future, the fact that these are our children, our youth! They should know and never forget!

Victor Neels, Kommandant a. D.