“Collecting is self-documenting with someone else’s material”

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Whether in the cellar or on the stove, renunciation has been the motto of recent weeks: some have gone into the basement and sorted out things that didn’t have to go to their new place of residence by the move-in date of April 1st; others kept a Christian fast until today, Easter Sunday, and ate or drank less. Both purification and renunciation have a liberating effect. And yet we find it difficult to do both because we humans are hunters and gatherers.

In his new book, the Austrian historian Valentin Gröbner (61) dedicates himself to this difficult topic and chooses the enigmatic title “Repeat, Throw. How to handle beautiful things.” Because the inconspicuous German word “aufhaben” includes removal, storage, throwing away, and collection. In a humorously written essay, Gröbner describes the dilemma that he finds himself over and over again.

“The field of my research is my personal daily life,” writes a professor of general and Swiss history of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, who teaches in Lucerne. He is worried about those useless beautiful things that private individuals acquire and store in their homes. What happens to objects? What do they do with people? And how can this relationship end? “Because,” Gröbner says, “at some point, your own apartment will be full, as well as the basement and attic.”

To fit a lot of things in a small space – these are everyday life in the Far East. And Japanese Marie Kondo (38) puts things in order on the Internet according to the rules of putting things in order. Her compatriot Fumio Sasaki (44) immediately says “Goodbye, business” and announces: “We can do anything on our smartphone.” Gröbner just shakes his head regretfully and writes, “Poor Fumio Sasaki acts like he has no body.” You cannot sleep, eat, love or move on your smartphone.

“Minimalist downsizing is so tempting because, like fasting or not using the Internet, it is, of course, never final,” writes Gröbner. From there you can at any moment return to the world of superfluous things, but purified and adorned with the glamor of your own asceticism. “Void is impossible – it can only be created in limited places and for limited periods of time.”

Gröbner has long since given up on defending things and admitted: “Collecting is self-documenting using someone else’s material.” He sees in the collection not only a reformatory school for the one who creates it and through it turns himself into a more aesthetic person, but also an inner castle, a fortress. Gröbner: “It’s about obligations, obligations towards beautiful things.” And the author of “Economy without a Home” takes on this task with pleasure.

Source: Blick