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Jeden Monat nähern sich unsere Kolumnisten, die Berliner Filmemacher Dominik und Benjamin Reding, dem jeweiligen Heftthema
auf ihre ganz eigene Art und Weise. Geboren wurden die Zwillinge am 3. Ja nuar 1969 in Dortmund. Während Dominik Architektur
in Aachen und Film in Hamburg studierte, absolvierte Benjamin ein Schauspielstudium in Stuttgart. 1997 begann die Arbeit an ihrem
ersten gemeinsamen Kinofilm „Oi! Warning“. Seitdem arbeiten sie für Fernseh- und Kinofilmprojekte zusammen.

Each month our columnists, Berlin-based filmmakers Dominik and Benjamin Reding, approach the respective issue-specific theme
in their very personal way. The twins were born on January 3, 1969 in Dortmund. Whilst Dominik studied architecture in Aachen
and film in Hamburg, Benjamin graduated in acting studies in Stuttgart. They started working on their first joint motion picture “Oi!
Warning“ in 1997. Since then they have tightly collaborated for TV and cinema film projects.

T he voice doesn’t sound panicked, but determined: “There’s a fire!” Someone architectural magazines! They have to be brought along as well! The one issue of
Bruno Taut’s Frühlicht that I was lucky enough to get hold of in Amsterdam, the one
shouts it. Loudly. Outside, in front of the house. What might the voice refer
to? Ukraine? Israel? Donald Trump? Madame Le Pen? Yemen, Sudan, Taiwan, North original Bauhaus magazine (“junge menschen, kommt ans bauhaus!”) with Lotte
Korea? The entire world situation? Or “just” a burning rubbish bin in the town square Beese’s photo of the laughing students on the cover and the famous 1927 special
beneath my balcony? I don’t want to be disturbed, I’m leafing through the current issue of Innen-Dekoration focussed on the Stuttgart Weissenhofsiedlung. Oh, and the
issue of AIT, marvelling at the sometimes exotic, sometimes bizarre bars located in architecture books! At least the signed copies, by Bauhaus architect Gustav Hassen-
Melbourne, Poznan and Madrid, imagining the smell of the wine cellar in Esslingen pflug, by the “post-modernist” Robert Vorhoelzer, by the architectural eccentric Otto
and the Naked & Famous Bar in Seville. Speaking of smells. Now it actually smells a Bartning and the theatre book from 1904 with that distinctive office stamp on page 1:
bit strong in my flat. Unfortunately, not of wine, or wood or leather, more like melted Bauatelier Poelzig, Potsdam, Neues Palais and Poelzig’s red-chalk thumbprint, thick
plastic and burnt paper. Aha, so it probably is a public rubbish bin after all, outside on one of Semper’s printed theatre designs. All once snapped up on eBay. Anyway,
in the square. I turn another page and relax. “There’s a fire!” The call again. I go on the unique pieces, the irretrievable things, I have to save them! Such as the remains
turning pages. Now again: “Fire!” Okay, I put the magazine aside, get up out of the of the ancient Roman column which I found in the sand of the beach in Ostia, such
chair, stroll to the balcony door and don’t see a smoking rubbish bin outside, but as the small, square wooden sculpture in black and white, typical, angular 1970s
lots of passers-by looking strangely shocked art, converted by us children into a wooden
in the direction of the block of flats where I building block and, yes, such as the chair.
live. I run to the front door and open it wide: It HAD to come along. Found on the street,
Smoke! Smoke from a fire, definitely! Not dragged onto the underground, then carried
yet very thick, but unmistakable, hard not to on my shoulders all the way to Hamburg-
notice the smell. And, down in the courtyard, Billstedt. A genuine tubular-steel cantilever
behind the stairwell windows: a reddish flik- chair from the 1930s. But not just any old
ker can be seen. “Uh, yes, there’s a fire...”, I cantilever chair. A Bauhaus design? Maybe.
say to myself, close the front door and think: But, much more important, who has sat in
What are you going to take with you? The it: Alfred Hitchcock himself! Credibly docu-
most important documents, of course! ID mented by an old press photo: Sir Alfred
card, tenancy agreement, tax assessment. lost in thought in 1963 on the Reeperbahn
The usual “emergency kit” that everyone has. in the Lausen café, on that very chair. I run
But I’m no doomsday apologist, no “prep- into the kitchen and grab the bulky, slightly
per”, I’ve never thought about the occasion rusty thing. And wait, of course there’s the
actually arising – or more honestly: wanted vase! Ceramic, square, fiery red, dated on
to think about it – nothing prepared for “Day the bottom: Italy, 1958. Also discovered at a
X”. Such actions seemed to me to challen- flea market and bought for the mere price
ge fate rather than to appease it. At least I of a kebab. If it’s not by Ettore Sottsass, who
remember where my passport is, despite else is it by? A coughing fit shakes me. The
panic now rising in me: In the old silver box books, photographs, the cantilever chair,
in the study! That’s where I run to. The small, Foto: Benjamin Reding everything crashes to the floor. The smoke!
sleek Art Deco cigarette box. Bought at a flea The fire! The danger! I hastily wipe the
market as a teenager for five deutschmarks sweat from my forehead and pause. “So, it
of hard-earned pocket money. Three cigarettes, almost as old as the box, were still would be better if nothing came of it”. Goethe’s Mephisto says it cynically to Dr
in the silver-plated rectangle. “But don’t smoke them,” the seller had warned me. Faust and I, here, to myself. Maybe it’s better not to take anything with you. Better
No, I didn’t, they really looked too scruffy for that. Many years later, I saw such a to simply let it go. You lose everything and come out of the purgatory naked, as if
box again, in London, in a museum, exhibited as an example of English home decor reborn, without the burden of the past. Your own zero hour, an act of liberation. Or
from the early 1930s. I should actually take the box with me. So beautiful, so rare... of obliteration? Of everything, including the self. Whew, the self! I have to save it,
My mind wanders. There’ a fire! Stick to the important things! As I open the box, the self, I have to... Bam! Bam! Bam! It thunders roughly against the front door. The
I notice the ID card and two faded family photos. The author of this column, one already collapsing stairwell? Or the roof? Or is it even the Knight, Death and the Fire
year old, with a Steiff cuddly toy and a tin rattle in his crib and his parents, young Devil in person and all three of them? I tear the door open: A fireman, in massive
and proud, in front of the shell of their single-family home. Oh, all the other family gear. I look at him in horror. “A garage has caught fire in the courtyard. The fire is
photos, of course they have to be taken along too! I run into the adjoining room, now out. Only the smoke remains. Stay in your flat, close the windows!” he orders.
search, find and grab the dusty cardboard box. And the more recent pictures, saved And then, perhaps noticing my trembling: “It’s nice to have a place like this if it’s
on my USB sticks and hard drives? Wrong thinking. Little will remain of the nough- still there, isn’t it?“ Without waiting for an answer, he turns around and disappears
ties, perhaps not just for me. And what’s in the cardboard box next to it? Ah, the rare into the smoky stairwell.

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