This is a story about life in community. It is also the story about life in a gift economy. And it is the story of a tramp abroad in Europe during a time of reconstruction. It is also the story of telling a story. The selected images are telling another story, a story of donation without expectation. This story, too, has an end. And every end has a beginning, and it is good to start there.

I remember a trip to the gas station in an old VW Beetle. That VW was the first car my father had ever owned. I used to sit on the large rear parcel shelf—essentially right above the engine. As always, it reeked of gasoline. My father returned to the car holding the receipt and ranted in a way I had never seen him do before. The price per liter of gasoline—which still contained lead back then to protect engines—had risen to over 50 pfennig (roughly 25 euro cents today). My father was absolutely furious.

As a child, I naturally didn’t grasp the social implications, but I remembered that there was something my father couldn’t control—yet still had to live with the consequences of. A worldview shattered. Parents are just children too—only bigger and stronger, but actually just as helpless. I am grateful to have had this experience.

When looking back at my school days, I recall times when I spent most of the lesson staring out the window because the material didn’t interest me. Yet, there were moments when I was fully present—exactly where the teachers wanted me to be—focused and attentive to the task at hand. I remember one such moment from a handcraft class. The teacher showed us how to make a small tear in a strip of paper with scissors and then fold the paper straight along that line. The flimsy paper took on a stable form; the angle provided support and strength. Using many of these rods, one could construct larger structures. The idea of ​​building a tower quickly took shape, and gaining height brought with it the thrilling sensation of mastering physics. With cross-bracing—much like that found on construction cranes or in the timber framing of houses—the material seemed to know no limits. I went home and built a tower. To give purpose to this quest for height, I incorporated a marble run into the tower’s structure, complete with switches, tunnels, and paddle wheels set in motion by the rolling glass spheres. My father helped me transport the creation—standing over 150 cm tall—to school, where I was invited to present my work to the teaching staff.

The praise I received was considerable, yet it didn’t move me deeply. What truly resonated with me was the realization that I could find technical solutions through experimentation and construction, and that I could confidently shape the material to my will. I trace much of the lifelong passion for building that has fueled me back to that single lesson. I am grateful to have had this experience.

There was a time when television broadcasting didn’t start until the afternoon and ended at midnight. Back then, there were popular science programs covering all sorts of topics, and in retrospect, it seems like a carefree era—a time when science was about generating real knowledge. There was one show I really loved as a child because it appealed more to the intellect than to the emotions. One evening, I soaked up everything there was to learn about cell biology. I pestered my mother into buying me a science book on the subject—a tome of over 600 pages—even though I was only fourteen.

Months later, we were assigned a project in biology class. The topic was open, provided it related to biology; we had to prepare a written report and a short presentation. I chose cell biology—certainly not part of the 10th-grade curriculum at my science-focused secondary school back then. In the end, my report ran to 60 pages, filled with my own sketches and drawings, all typed on my father’s portable typewriter. Fortunately, I had carbon paper on hand—something I knew about from my grandmother, a radio and theater writer—so I had two copies: the original and the carbon copy. I headed to school feeling confident and happy, secure in my mastery of the subject. I handed over the work. I remember the teacher’s skeptical look when she saw the sheer volume of my project. During the next class, she announced in front of everyone that she couldn’t accept my work; she suspected plagiarism—or at least that I’d had massive help from adults in putting it together. I was beside myself. I challenged her to open the manuscript to any page, ask me questions, and compare my spoken answers with the text I had written myself. She was surprised again, but agreed.

In the end, I received one of the strangest grades of my school days: a 0.75—which at the time corresponded roughly to an A-plus, or summa cum laude.
I learned a major life lesson back then: knowing something isn’t enough; it only counts as understood if it can be restated simply and directly at any moment. I am grateful to have had this experience.

Later, in my life as a teacher, I watched many colleagues lugging heavy briefcases, constantly searching for their overhead transparencies, and bringing stacks of books into the classroom. I carried only my packed lunch—and my mind.

Sometimes one asks oneself “why.” This is especially true in old age. And one takes pleasure in painting a flattering picture of one’s life path—or, as is the case here, in writing about it in an idealized way. That is only human; and even though such accounts often distort events—leaving something out here, adding something there—they still reveal something about the person doing the remembering. As a listener, it makes sense to ask oneself why the story is being told in precisely this way. Decide for yourself.

During my final years of school, I really enjoyed my history teacher’s classes. She was clear, direct, and not talking any nonsense, always getting straight to the point. She didn’t just dwell on the facts; instead, she taught us to evaluate them and examine our differing interpretations. She taught us a unique form of media literacy, making it clear that history is always written by the victors—and written in a way that legitimizes their actions, making them appear logical and consistent. That teacher was amazing.

One day, she assigned a major project: we had to prepare and teach a lesson ourselves. The topic was up to us. At the time, I was enjoying my philosophy classes and had read some Plato. I decided to make Plato the subject of my lesson. At home, I insisted to my mother that I wanted to read Plato’s books—all of them. My mother’s arguments were to no avail; I persisted tirelessly until I won and got permission to order a complete paperback set. My local bookseller took it in stride—he already knew me well.

I devoured all of Plato’s works in two months, taking notes along the way. While planning the lesson, I realized I was going to be pressed for time. Forty-five minutes go by quickly, and I had so much to share. Before the big day, I asked for more time and was granted a double period for my presentation. I reassured the teacher that it wouldn’t just be a standard lecture; I had planned a quiz (with immediate results) and intended to introduce many of the topics through opening questions posed to the class. She smiled.

Since I knew the subject matter so well, I was able to observe myself while actually teaching the double period. What I love most as an instructor is having the time, while standing before a group, to think about something entirely different—because the material is so firmly ingrained and readily available to me that I don’t need to worry about the next sentences I’m going to speak. It becomes more of a performance then. I have time to look at the audience and gauge the impact of my pointed delivery. After all, there is always room for improvement when you have the chance to observe both yourself and your audience.

Everything went according to plan during that double period. But things would never be the same again afterward. The mystique of the teacher’s role had vanished for me. Whoever dictates the topic and holds the answer is, quite simply, the teacher in the room. The difference between student and teacher is that slight. Anyone can be a teacher; the student’s perception is, in reality, an illusion. I was horrified by the realization. I understood that I could have abused my position. I could have spouted utter nonsense, and no one would have objected. I could have even tested them on that nonsense and graded it, and it would have been etched into the students’ academic records. I am so grateful to that history teacher for the experience. She went on to have a well-deserved successful career, becoming the first principal of the European School in Cologne, Germany. Thanks to Plato, I hadn’t just stepped out of the cave; I had arrived in the world of scholarship and pedagogy—all during a single double period in the tenth grade. I am grateful to have had this experience.

Upon reaching the upper level of Gymnasium (academic high school), I chose Art as my primary advanced course. What many perceived as an act of laziness was actually a calculated move. I enjoyed using my brain, but I also took pleasure in working with my hands. I imagined art class would offer the chance to do anything—using any material or technique I pleased. Well, that didn’t quite turn out to be the case, but it was the motivation behind my choice. And things got off to a good start right away. We were tasked with writing a treatment and, later, a screenplay for an original short film. The best draft in the class was to be produced as an actual film project. I went home and gave it some thought. There were about twenty of us students. I weighed the odds of my particular draft finding favor over all the others. It didn’t seem likely. So, what to do? One thing I really dislike is having to motivate myself to do something I see no point in. A teacher assigning homework is merely making an offer—nothing more.

I decided to write a screenplay about a student who is given the assignment to write a film script—and who expects the project will never actually be produced. The plot was based on reality: the rejection of the idea and the young director’s flights of fancy into his own cinematic world. I was aware of the scope of the work involved, so I drew up a one-page concept and dashed off the synopsis over a single weekend. I worked late into the night—much to my parents’ dismay; you’ll recall the loud clacking of my father’s portable typewriter echoing through the night.

My film was indeed “performed”—everyone took part—yet it was never actually shot; thus, I realized it 100% without any cost or effort. Later, during my advanced art course, I sketched elderly women in the Roman Forum in Rome using charcoal, and in Italica I discovered traces of Hadrian—whose villa I was already familiar with. Something took root in my mind: life is like a film. The question is: “Who is the director?” I am grateful to have had this experience.

Studying art led me to conceptual art. I discovered Dada and Fluxus much later, but having taken both art and physics as advanced courses, I was always concerned with factoring the impact of my work into the creative act itself. Painting a picture was not enough for me; carving a sculpture from stone seemed insufficient. It was essential to verify what would happen on the recipient’s end when confronted with these artworks. The true artwork was the audience’s reaction, while the artist’s creation served merely as the catalyst. At the same time, I was intrigued by the social lives of Warhol and Beuys within their artistic circles. I gained my first experiences with communal living when I left my parents’ home—at the age of seventeen!

The idea of ​​living a privileged life as an artist was appealing, yet it was closely tied to the need to be of some demonstrable use to the community that made such a life possible. But how was one to achieve this when, from the minarets of the “ivory tower” of art education, any form of practical utility was vehemently frowned upon and rejected? Well, art history and economics share one thing in common: neither qualifies as a true science.

At various stages along the way, it became increasingly clear to me that there could be no distinction between my life as an artist and the creation of my art. To be authentic, my artistic statement and my life had to align perfectly. Establishing this stance required careful preparation, set against the backdrop of the waning “economic miracle” and a world dominated by the baby-boom generation. I worked hard as a computer science lecturer, programmer, and management consultant so that I could opt out of the rat race as soon as possible. At the age of 41, the time finally came.

I now devote myself entirely to social sculpture. I draw upon all my knowledge for my work, yet I remain enthusiastic about exploring new fields—areas I must first master before I can incorporate them into my artistic practice. While I have not yet found a way to provide value to society as a whole in return for the privilege of living the life I do, I can—embedded within a small community—at least create added value for the people around me: those who support me and allow me to pursue what I love—creating social art.

The topic here is life within a gift economy. I didn’t label the economic dynamic between my long-term partner and myself that way at the time, but in a sense, that is how we always lived. The ideal form of partnership is one that ensures the other person constantly increases their degree of independence—even from the partnership itself. If they choose to stay regardless, one can rightly assume they are staying because they want to, not because they feel compelled to.

Getting up in the morning and leaving one’s ego behind in bed is a daily challenge. I don’t always succeed at it—something that becomes apparent during the day—but it is, at the very least, a worthy task to take on each morning.

In today’s world, so much is defined by money. Unfortunately, even within relationships, one often sees business people negotiating terms rather than lovers exchanging gifts without ulterior motives.

The misguided path that Western civilization—insofar as that term even applies to this form of human organization—systematically pursues is the appeal to the ego. The goal is to prove something to oneself, to achieve personal success, to be the master of one’s own life; and it is not just the Calvinist who measures success by the balance in one’s bank account.

Yet, as social beings, we are bound to fail on this path, for it leads to isolation. But perhaps that is the very intention. Through the study of philosophy—and specifically by engaging with the two main schools of organized spirituality, religion and science—one can arrive at the realization that, as is so often the case in biology, the pragmatic middle ground lies in systems that seek relative equilibrium and endure over time.

This often has far more to do with fuzzy logic than with mathematical truth. It is always helpful to question one’s own opinions and moral values ​​and to investigate their origins. As a constructivist, you travel light; it brings to mind the story about teachers and their bulky briefcases. You remember.

As a computer scientist, I was never really interested in hardware or software. My interest lay in the impact on the people who would be surrounded by this technology. As an artist working in the field of social art, I have facilitated numerous educational projects with young people and adults. Time and again, I was confronted with questions regarding feasibility. This brought the realization that “the good” does not automatically triumph. Innovation exists in a market driven by displacement and must assert itself against the egos of protagonists on the opposing side. For an instructor, then, it is not merely a matter of what he considers to be good. The audience constantly tests the claim—examining the extent to which what is asserted actually reflects the instructor’s own daily reality. And that is a good thing.
I always wanted to live a life I didn’t need a vacation from. I wanted the good to be part of everyday life, and for satisfaction to arise from the banality of the everyday. Well, I haven’t taken a vacation in years—so far, so good.

In the community where I live, we do not assign roles to one another. Roles are collections of rights and obligations, typically linked to expectations regarding the predictability of the behavior of the person assuming that role. Anyone who takes on more than one role will sooner or later experience conflicts of interest. These lead to cognitive dissonance and all manner of mental contortions. The collateral damage is high.
Within the community, we perceive each other as human beings, not as “persons” (for “person” is itself a role—one that is rarely recognized as such, and indeed isn’t meant to be!).

When we stop thinking in terms of roles, we successfully curb our ego’s interference in how we evaluate situations during our interactions with others in the community.
What should I expect from someone who has assumed no role? Ideally, nothing; that way, I certainly cannot be disappointed. And that is a good thing.

With my 60-page biology paper under my arm, I had to stand my ground in the face of an unjustified accusation of plagiarism. Life repeatedly demanded this kind of resolve. Yet, upon closer reflection, the success of that attempt at self-assertion was always rooted in something that had preceded the act itself: the act of empowering myself.
I had once asked a math teacher—who constantly bullied a female classmate of mine—by what right he assigned grades in the first place. He stared at me in stunned silence, unable to offer an answer. That was when it became clear to me: school is a scam. I was thirteen years old. From then on, it would be entirely up to me to decide whom I would grant the authority to grade me. I reserved that choice for myself with all my teachers, and I put many of them in their place.
And it wasn’t always the ones who gave bad grades.

Let’s consider two transactions. In the classical economic model, a merchant purchases goods, stores them, and sells them to customers in smaller units. He adds no value to the goods during this process, yet the customer receives only a fraction of the product in exchange for the money spent. Taxes accumulate along the supply chain; there are costs for transport and storage; and—at the very end of the analysis—there are production costs, which in the industrial sector often amount to no more than 5% of the final retail price.
The customer pays a high price and receives very little. The situation becomes even more unsettling when one considers how the customer obtained the money to make the purchase in the first place. As an employee, for instance, the customer invested their time, health, body, and mind to earn money—only to receive a mere portion of what was actually generated. My own experience as an entrepreneur was not much different: I would issue an invoice for one hundred euros, actually receive about twenty-five euros of that, and then use those funds to buy a product that cost less than five euros to produce. It involves a great deal of effort for a very meager result, yet that is simply the reality. A different kind of transaction occurs when I pick an apple from a tree in my garden and give it to a neighbor. Aside from the cost of growing it, the process involves no exchange of money. The apple passes from my hand to the hand—and stomach—of my neighbor. 100% is handed over, and 100% reaches the stomach. We assume, of course, that the apple wasn’t wormy.

When living in a group of people who give freely to one another, we make each other prosperous. We do not create added value, but neither do we lose anything along the way. All tax systems, however much they may be cloaked in social rhetoric, serve the purpose of warfare. What begins as a raid within one’s own ranks gains momentum through the colonization of others. After all, the natural resources are ours anyway; they just happen to be in the ground… in another country.

Thus, we live in a world where a few line their pockets while talking about the common good, and where citizens volunteer to keep a fragile society alive. A Berlin pastor once described this succinctly: “Look out the window, look at this society; 50% of what you see has not been paid for. It has nothing to do with money or business.” – So what?

“Predictions are difficult, especially when they concern the future”—or so Carl Valentin is said to have remarked. Thus, writing about a time that lies in the future remains, time and again, a challenging endeavor. Few people gain true orientation from the past, as they underestimate the extent of the source material unavailable to them. Even fewer find their way in the present; it is too contradictory, and the mainstream is, unfortunately, not synonymous with the truth. Yet, if one desires a specific outcome, it helps to begin preparations today; the clearer one’s approach, the more likely that outcome becomes—which is, in itself, a form of prediction. The biologist searches for the solution; the physicist begins with it.

Those who march off to war will leave the recalcitrant behind; such people simply refuse to be dragged into conflict. Anyone seeking total control will succumb to an illusion, surrounded by obsequious lackeys who explain away reality so the emperor fails to notice he is essentially standing naked.

The more people allow themselves to be ensnared by the dictates of modern macroeconomics, the more will realize it fails to yield the promised returns—and will consequently turn away.

For a human being, the greatest challenge is surely to remain human. In the legal system, the intent to commit an act is often punished more severely than the act itself. What would a world look like if we honored the harm one person refrained from inflicting upon another, even though they could have done so?

Many are familiar with the dialogue between Diogenes—living in his tub—and Alexander the Great. Few know what Alexander learned from this encounter and what he stipulated in his final will: “When you carry my coffin to the grave, let my arms hang out. People should see that I am departing with nothing in my hands!”

We accumulate a great deal over the course of our lives; we ought to make things easier for our pallbearers and let go of it as soon as we can. If we tell ourselves that we gathered it all to give our descendants a head start, then we should put it to use for that very purpose while we are still alive.

When I was studying art as a young man, I used to sit in Rome’s Trastevere district and look into the faces of the elderly. Eighteen-year-old eyes looked into eighty-year-old eyes. The older people in Trastevere often wore a smile. I took that as a good sign. Whenever I visited places on my travels, I would always look for that same expression among the elderly. If I saw them smiling, I knew it was a good place to grow old and to be old.

But I also know that if you smile at the world, it smiles back.