The Abbey in Tholey and Sustainability

Learning Culture

On Day 2

When we first arrived in Saarland, at the academie, often Mr. Matern talked about sustainability and its value. At first I though the academie valued sustainability in relation to the movements it seemed to be influenced on (or what I believed it to be from observation) mainly from the Bauhaus movement by Walter Gropius from the Weimar Republic era, which focused on creating a space focused on function and simple designs. When our group visited the Benedictine Abbey in Tholey though and had a tour led by a resident monk I realized that sustainability is actually a German cultural value on the whole. I realized this particularly with all the talk on conserving heat during Vespers by holding it in the small Baroque room to the side, with how the lights soon turn off after people left, and with the talk of the gold leaf bulbs on an art structure at the top of the side tower for the stairs that reflected the light from inside. Apparently people often would mistake the bulbs for light bulb and would receive some questioning and some judgement as a result. It was quite the revelation on how central the value on sustainability is here. This was only accentuated with additional habits mentioned by the professors later. I find it quite interesting how the importance of the subject is not just in relation to the recent movement with "green", as in against global warming and climate change. Instead sustainability can be traced to after WWII apparently and with the need to conserve and reuse sparse resources. I wonder if the value of sustainability goes back even further?