#7 Re: Obdach – Shelter?

In the beginning was protection. As vulnerable beings, humans need shelter. The “ob” in this old word, Obdach, originally meant “over” or “above”. In Old High German, obadah or obdah denoted a covered space, a protective roof.¹ Later the meaning shifted and it came to signify the space beneath it: a lodging, dwelling or home. But a roof alone does not make a home. Etymologically, the German verb wohnen (to live, to dwell) means to remain, to sojourn, to stay in a place. It is related to Gewohnheit (habit) and gewohnt (accustomed). In this sense, a place only becomes a home through duration. To dwell is to screen oneself off, to withdraw.

Philosopher Florian Rötzer has formulated an anthropological thesis relating to this: the first shelter not only brought protection from the weather and from enemies but also created an interior space that removed people from the constant gaze of the community. This retreat made deviance possible – that is, deviation from the norm. People could think and speak, try things out and act without immediately being seen, heard, judged or sanctioned by the collective. Accordingly, the emergence of individuality is tied to the existence of an opaque wall. In other words, if one wants to escape social control, one needs “a room of one’s own”.² However, as sensors, cameras, AI and digital assistants now reach into this interior space, into our private lives and even into our thought processes, the possibility of developing unobserved is at stake.

Privacy thus becomes very much a material and architectural question as well: What spatial conditions are needed in order to enable retreat, self-determination and dwelling? The question grows all the more urgent as housing becomes scarcer and less affordable. What is the minimum a space must offer for a person to be able to live there?

In this issue’s interview, Akademie member Arno Brandlhuber reminds us that the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) has recognised the right to adequate housing since the 1970s. A roof over one’s head is not enough. People must be able to live there securely and in a culturally congruent way, have access to basic services and be protected from arbitrary displacement. This right can be understood as a spatial expression of human dignity. While German Basic Law protects human dignity and the inviolability of the home, it does not recognise any such right to housing. That is why the European Citizens’ Initiative “Right to Housing! Now and Forever”, which Brandlhuber co-initiated, aims to enshrine it at European level. Among other things, it calls for permanently affordable housing, the reactivation of vacant buildings and the repurposing of existing stock.

There are already a vast number of buildings in Germany, including around 13 million single-family homes. Many of them were built for the classic nuclear family and, decades later, are home to only one or two people. Rooms or entire floors go unused. Meanwhile, in Berlin alone, more than two million square metres of office space stand empty. The fixation on new construction blinds us to a spatial resource that has long been available. How can we use it differently and make it accessible?

If, as Brandlhuber maintains, there is enough space, why then does homelessness exist? Evidently, what matters is not quantity alone, but access. We accept that people have no place where they are permitted to stay. Even public space is not unconditionally available to everyone. This brings the housing question back to where this Akademie-Brief began. The word Obdach does not primarily denote property, comfort or a particular form of housing but rather a protected place where a person can be and develop.

Art, too, needs a space of this kind, although in a very different way. Protection, after all, is a precondition not only of privacy but of artistic freedom as well. Artistic work needs places where something can come into being without anyone having to immediately justify themselves or please an audience. It needs the chance to try things out, to discard them and to fail.

Here Rötzer’s idea returns in another form. Just as the opaque wall opens up a space for the individual that is removed from the constant gaze of the community, art, too, needs spaces that are not wholly subject to the expectations of the public. For good reason, then, the Akademie der Künste is not a museum geared purely to presentation. It is also a place where thoughts can be developed, ideas tested and formats discarded.

Therein lies the broader meaning of Obdach: it not only protects us from the world but also creates a space from which we can confront it with a stance of our own. For the individual, it opens up the possibility of deviation. For art, it is a precondition for its freedom.

Translated by Peter Rigney

Manos Tsangaris
President of the Akademie der Künste

Anh-Linh Ngo
Vice President of the Akademie der Künste

1. See the entry “oba”, in Rosemarie Luhr, ed., Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, vol. 6, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017.
2. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, London: Hogarth Press, 1929.