Athanor

…only by going into the past can you go into the future.

Anselm Kiefer has used his art to confront the wounds left to his homeland, Germany, by Hitler’s regime. The Honor Courtyard of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, seat of the Nazi government, is the setting for this monumental and powerful image. The title, Athanor, is the name of the legendary self-feeding furnace said to have been used by medieval alchemists to transform base metals into gold. Although the goal of the alchemist was physical, the alchemical process was sometimes used in the Middle Ages to describe the spiritual quest by which the soul seeks perfection in heaven and becomes one with God.

The partly obliterated “athanor” over the doors at the center of the painting also alludes to the doors of the ovens where millions of Jews, Roma, LGBTQ+ people, and others were incinerated at Hitler’s order. The black grid lines on the paving, which lead the eye to the rear of the courtyard, suggest the railroads that transported Holocaust victims to their deaths. As if utilizing the alchemical approach, Hitler and other Nazis pathologically believed that they were “purifying” society by such destruction.

With his art, Kiefer uses the alchemists’ symbolic “secret fire” to purify and transform the terrible legacy of Nazi Germany into hope for the future of humanity. He becomes the alchemist himself, literally using fire (a blowtorch) to scorch parts of the painting—and to scorch the symbols of evil and tragedy in order to change them into something new.