Memorias del Edén / Memories of Eden / Erinnerungen an Eden
26.03.2022 - Eden, Oranienburg, Deutschland
On March 26th 2022 was the show Memorias del Edén / Memories of Eden / Erinnerungen an Eden
at Eden, Oranienburg, a 130 year old project north of Berlin (since 1893).
This project was started by a group of vegetarians who wanted to grow their own food and live outside the rhythm of the city. They were part of the Reformbewegung or reform movement, and used a symbol of 3 pine trees for: 🌲. the reform of life, 🌲 the reform of the land and 🌲. the reform of the economy.
The reform of life was vegetarianism, nudism, gender equality, anti-smoking in the early 20th century.
Land reform is that no one owns the land in Eden, but the cooperative maintains ownership.
The economic reform was that everyone worked together in the apple juice and natural products factory that they made with the fruits and vegetables produced in Eden.
This project survived the 2 wars, the Nazis, the separation of Germany and the communism of the DDR. But it did not survive the neoliberalism of the 90s, where they had to sell the factory because they were bankrupt and as part of the sale they had to commit not to use it again for industrial purposes. With the closing of the factory, the community was dismantled because it was a nucleus that united them.
But another important point of the community was the Eden Theater, founded 100 years ago in 1921. That is where this Saturday's show took place, a small theater for a community of workers of the land. Many Edeners participated in this theater and also people persecuted by the Nazi regime had refuge in the attic. Many Edeners came to the exhibition and told their stories there.
Also Silvio Gesell, a very important economist for alternative economic thinking who proposed, among other things, a money that rots like apples to avoid infinite accumulation, lived in Eden and in Argentina. Silvio is the father of the founder of Villa Gesell.
Eden is only a point in a very long history of projects of people who got together to live better and that continues to be updated always with new forms and new results.
