The Bell

With The Bell, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen invites us to reflect on faith, power, religion, science and technology. The large bronze bell was cast in the renowned Eifeler Glockengießerei (bell foundry) in Brockscheid. It has a clapper and would therefore be functional – but the artist deliberately forgoes the traditional ringing of the bell. Instead, it is fixed on a brick-built
plinth and presents a clear message: Like traditional bells, an inscription runs around the body of the bell – but here, it is at eye level and directly readable: »God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?« The quotation comes from Friedrich Nietzsche’s book Die fröhliche Wissenschaft from 1882. The inscription is set in the typeface of the Gutenberg Bible from 1454 – the first book to be mass-produced in history. This way, the work refers to human inventiveness and the desire for spiritual autonomy.

The artwork was created for the 2007 exhibition Tatort Paderborn Wordly Power and Divine Might and was directly related to the exhibition site: it stood between the Catholic Cathedral of Paderborn and the Protestant Abdinghof Church – in the tension field of two religious institutions. Since 2017, The Bell has been on display in the courtyard of the city museum, which deals with the question of urban identity. Both in 2007 and when it was reinstalled in 2017, the artwork sparked intense discussions and debates in the city’s society.