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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 hat has been some dry summer, plenty of sun, no rain, almost brutal. Now it is his villa, a castle in Franconia, was said to be furnished in a quite similar way. But
what was unique, yes, indescribable about the porcelain shop was the smell which
over. And we bring them home. In our suitcases, our cameras, even in our clothes:
the holiday memories! In the suitcase as mussels from the Baltic Sea beach, as a snow here, no doubt, was a scent. It firmly anchored itself in my childlike subconscious.
globe with the Kremlin and St Basil’s Cathedral, as an entrance ticket to the Milan fur- Whenever I sniff wax candles, I am back there once more. If I smell sandalwood, I am
niture fair; always too many in the cameras, kept for all time and never looked at there again, if I smell leather, I am back there. Flower shops smell of flowers, clothing
again; and in our clothes as a smell, maybe as a scent, maybe also as a stink. We only stores of cotton, pharmacies of isopropyl alcohol and perfumeries of perfume.
have to take a deep breath and we’re there again: among the diesel fumes of Karachi, Rosenthal sold glass and porcelain, that doesn’t smell of anything. So he had to do
in the eucalyptus forests behind Sydney, on the pier on Samos, by the sea wherever. something. And he knew all about smells. Those who have fled from the Nazis know
The memory oozes to the surface like thick suntan oil. How does the sea smell? Of sea- how fear smells; those who have been threatened know how violence stinks and those
weed? Of fish? Of H2O? Salty, it smells salty. But how does salt smell? It is hard to who have survived the flight know how the first morning smells in the country that
describe smells. How does cinnamon smell? How does lavender smell? How does soil has welcomed and saved them. Mr Rosenthal knew the power of smells. He made use
smell? And yet once the smell molecules reach your nostrils, you find yourself in of it. Never again did I encounter such a perfect olfactory creation of a shop. But was
places again which are located thousands of kilometres away; you can enter rooms it like that? Did that really exist? Settings of smells planned for promoting sales? Or
that no longer exist and encounter people who have long since disappeared. A towel was the Rosenthal scent epiphany only a coincidence after all? Are the rumours about
smells of washing powder and it takes you smells in shop design perhaps all fake news?
back to mom’s into baby bathtub; the smell of You hear all kinds of things about it. That
recently installed linoleum and you once again there are cars that, due to the emissions of the
practice leapfrogging during gym class in pri- varieties of plastic, make you push the right
mary school; the smell of cigar smoke and eau buttons and that hidden nozzles in the food
de Cologne and you are once again sitting at departments of supermarkets turn even the
the coffee table in grandpa’s old flat. But it most wilted heads of lettuce into a delicacy.
isn’t only places, rooms, people which come Here, it smelt of concrete. Maybe just another
back with smell molecules. It is the feelings. of those tricks. Fresh concrete, that smells of
As strongly as if they were not safe, inexpen- construction, awakening, the future, that’s to
sive souvenirs but a kind of powerful, almost communicate dynamism, power and confi-
threatening reality. The childhood happiness dence. But it wasn’t all that tricky. The office
when wrapped in the bath towel, the fear of building from the 70s was being converted,
failing during the sports lesson, the uneasiness two floors were added. I rush up the stairs in
at grandpa’s stern coffee table. Smells are the a staircase tiled orange, up to the office door
ambers of the cerebellum, clearly visible and of UNIT. The trendsetter in shop design of
hermetically sealed; the effervescent tablets of Berlin! Projects in Germany and abroad, from
the subconscious, they froth up briefly and the optician’s shop to the hotel, all unique
vehemently and then disintegrate without designs and everything absolutely up-to-date.
leaving any residues. If only one could get to They will know what it is about smells and
them, to make use of the dark powers. If one Foto: Benjamin Reding designing them. And perhaps even tell me the
could paint smells, it would be a picture of must-have colour and the smell of the coming
frenzy, of bliss, of ecstasy. And if you could fur- design season.
nish shops with smells, then … I expect a laboratory behind the door, antiseptic like a space station, full of employees
Driving snow in the city centre. The cold swallowed up the stink of diesel. And my in white coats who, concentrated and busy, are handling test tubes and Erlenmeyer
shoes were making funny noises in the snow: “crk, crk, crk”. I came home from pri- flasks full of highly effective olfactory substances; I expect test persons who, with the
mary school, had learnt that you write nass with double s but Fuß with ß and I was help of smell samples, are animated to buy two left socks or raincoats full of holes; I
cold. Bitterly. The streetcar home wasn’t running. I felt like the Little Match Girl, I was expect rigorous material controls so that no sales counter would ever emit an odour of
looking for warmth and shelter. And there I saw them: glowing, shining, glittering! blue cheese or jellied eel. At the entrance, the bosses, Mrs Dertmann and Mr Dedecke,
Spheres, stars, figurines of paper-thin glass floating on invisible wires in the rectangle greet me not in white coats but relaxed and in a summer mood. They quickly agree on
of a shop window. My breath steamed, steamed up the window. And here already I the trend colour. Mid-century shades are coming back, mustard yellow, for example.
imagined smelling it. Delicate, sweet, woody, enticing. I went in. “Wow”, I said. The And the trend scents in shop design? They ponder, they debate. Then the answer:
floor of midnight-blue slate, the ceiling a firmament of light bulbs, the stairs a frame- “Neutral as to the olfactory effect. If anything, the products are to smell, not the walls.”
work of aluminium and Plexiglas, the walls of bog oak, chairs of tubular steel and At first, I am baffled, almost disappointed. No secret nozzles with the scent of jasmine
leather, a gallery extending over three levels, surrounded by glass and porcelain, pre- blossoms behind the store shelves after all. But already in the tiled staircase my spirits
cious, noble, fragile. The shop looked like the living room of a multimillionaire and, in lift again. Mom’s towel, the floor of the gym, grandpa’s eau de Cologne, the smells of
fact, that’s what it was since its owner, Philip Rosenthal, was a multimillionaire and childhood, the scents and odours of our life, they belong to us. And to us only.

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