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BAR HOTEL RESTAURANT INNERE WERTE • INNER VALUES

Die einfache Gestaltung passt zur ländlichen Idylle. • The simple design goes well with the rural idyll. Trotz seiner Schmucklosigkeit, wirkt das Haus herrschaftlich. • The house looks stately despite having no frills.

Alle Zimmer besitzen Badewannen aus der Zeit um 1900. • All the rooms contain bathtubs from around 1900. Das Museum in der Beletage hat immer wochenends geöffnet. • The museum on the bel etage opens at weekends.

H essenburg, a village of 120 halfway between Rostock and Stralsund, is an idyllic spot ted by dry rot as well as the neighbouring carriage house habitable again. For more
than ten years, the new manor owner has been supported by the New York architect
surrounded by fertile farmland and arched over by a mostly immaculate blue sky.
th
It has been settled since the 13 century which is indicated by a hill with a medieval and artist Alex Schweder. The two happened to meet in Berlin at the beginning of the
th
tower. In the late 18 century, the von Hesse family purchased the manor and the sur- 2010s. Schweder actually works at the interface of architecture and performance and
rounding lands. With the new owners, the village was given its present name in 1840. At regularly develops large-scale installations which he also “inhabits” in the context of
the same time, the manor in the middle of the village was also built and a large park exhibitions and happenings (see AIT 3/2020). He is rather rarely in charge of “tangible
with four and a half hectares. Until the end of the Second World War, the family lived in architecture” such as Hessenburg. The task has all the same been fascinating him until
the manor, which was unpretentious, faced with bricks yet “refined” due to its classic today! Upon Schweder’s initiative, at first the so-called Kranich Museum (“crane mu-
forms. Then came occupation, expropriation and expulsion. At the time of the GDR, the seum”) was designed on the bel etage of the manor house in 2011. It is exclusively de-
building was used as a kindergarten by the village community until a time of standing dicated to the migratory birds which by the thousands populate the Baltic Sea land-
vacant and decaying followed until the 1990s. scape in late summer and early autumn and displays artistic works specifically created
for the venue – among them also experimental photographs, videos, projections and
The museum in the manor’s bel etage opens in 2011 room installations. Two artists-in-residence are for this purpose invited to Hessenburg
each year. Schweder designed the museum premises themselves as raw shells. After
Due to a series of “biographical coincidences”, around the turn of the millennium the the dry-rot renovation, he did not have the exposed brick walls re-plastered and left
estate became the property of the graduated art historian Dr Bettina Klein who was the newly installed ceiling beams visible. The new, light-stained floorboards were in-
originally from Hessen. With scant financial resources but with all the more personal stalled away from the historic walls. Luminaires concealed in the gaps provide indirect
commitment – she awakened Hessenburg manor from its long slumber. In the middle light and enliven the floor and wall washers the brick walls. The avant-garde museum
of the noughties, the first step was the opening of a small restaurant in the building of in the locality otherwise rather unaccustomed to art meets with a strong response, not
the old forge somewhat away from the manor as well as the reconstruction of the least because the Berlin culture vultures have long discovered the Baltic Sea as a week-
grounds. Only gradually are the means sufficient to also make the main building affec- end destination. For their sensitive handling of the building stock, Klein and Schweder

114 • AIT 6.2020