ABOUT THIS BOOK

A layered and lyrical collaboration between two great artists—Anselm Kiefer and Alexander Kluge—that explores what it means to remain faithful amid the shifting forces of power, love, truth, and money.

What holds us together in times of uncertainty? For decades, artist Anselm Kiefer and filmmaker-writer Alexander Kluge have explored this question—both as friends and collaborators. This latest volume is a bold and poetic exchange of images and texts in which they delve into the idea of reliability and its relationship to the four great forces that shape our lives: power, love, truth, and money.

Moving across history, myth, and the present day, Kiefer and Kluge ask: What is time? In a world of endless change, how do we hold on to what endures? Inspired by Hölderlin’s call “to remain faithful under shifting circumstances,” they use art to keep memory alive, invite the past into the present, and welcome the future before it arrives. Layered, provocative, and profoundly human, this new collaboration is a powerful meditation on what connects us—and what makes us endure.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Alexander Kluge is one of the major German fiction writers of the late twentieth century and an important social critic. As a filmmaker, he is credited with the launch of the New German Cinema movement. Anselm Kiefer, born in 1945 in Donaueschingen, studied law and Romance languages before turning to painting. A student of Horst Antes and Joseph Beuys, he is known for major works such as Parsifal, Zweistromland, and Mohn und Gedächtnis. In 2015, the Centre Pompidou in Paris dedicated a major retrospective to his work. Alexander Booth is a poet and translator based in Berlin.

REVIEWS

Praise for the original German edition:
“Kluge and Kiefer shake up our thinking in the best possible way. It’s productive, because they show what it means to not lose one’s mind in complex situations—and what situation isn’t complex?—and how the mind may strive for precision, yet still knows how to navigate the vague.”—Jörg Magenau, taz.de

Praise for the original German edition:
“A unique visual journey . . . a skilful guide leading readers through intricate paths—perhaps even a rich exploration of knowledge spanning eras, genres, and layers of authorial identity.”—Ulrich Klappstein, literaturkritik.de

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword
STATION 1: Tractate on Money, Love, Power and Truth / Four Currencies that Rule Our Lifespans
STATION 2: The House of Whispers / Anselm Kiefer’s Paintings Accompany Maurice Genevoix into the Panthéon, the Memorial of the Immortals / ‘Dedicated to Paul Celan’
STATION 3: Two Very Young Arts: Photography and Film
STATION 4: Stories of Exodus
STATION 5: Finnegans Wake and the Construction Site of Words
STATION 6: 30 Films for Anselm Kiefer
STATION 7: ‘Something that wants to be born already lives amongst us’ / Stories on the Occasion of Anselm Kiefer’s Block of Work / ‘The unborn. Les non-nès’
STATION 8: A as in Antaeus / D as in Daphne / ‘I’m going to paint someone from Altdorf’ / ‘Superstrings’
STATION 9: Hortus philosophorum / Dr Robert Fludd, Oxford
STATION 10: ‘Building a house of trust’ / Hölderlin’s Pindar Fragments / ‘Time tumbles down from the stars’
Acknowledgements
Image Credits