EDEN began as a communal project founded by a group of vegetarians seeking to grow their own food and live outside the rhythms of urban industrial life. They belonged to the Reformbewegung (Reform Movement) of early 20th-century Germany and adopted a symbol of three pine trees, representing their three pillars:
Reform of Life (vegetarianism, nudism, gender equality, and anti-smoking—radical for their time).
Reform of the Land (collective ownership; no individual could own Eden’s soil).
Reform of the Economy (communal labor producing natural goods from their harvests).
Eden survived two World Wars, the Nazi regime (which banned its pacifist and anti-capitalist ideals), and the division of Germany under the DDR’s communist government. Yet it could not withstand the neoliberalism of the 1990s: bankrupt, they sold their factory under the condition it would never again be used for industry. With this loss, the community dissolved—its economic nucleus gone.
Eden was also home to Silvio Gesell, the economist who proposed “rotting money” (a currency that loses value over time to prevent hoarding). His ideas, like Eden’s, sought alternatives to exploitation—echoes of which resurfaced in Argentina, where he helped found Villa Gesell, a small town in the coast of the Argentine Sea.
Even though it went through many difficult periods, Eden’s spirit endured strong, specially in its theater, founded in 1921. This small stage, built for and by land-workers, became a refuge. Persecuted artists and dissidents hid in its attic during the Nazi era, and generations of Edeners performed there, weaving their stories into its walls. This is where the exhibition “Eden’s Memories” took place—a homage to the space as a living archive.
The exhibition was crafted from a selection of objects from the EDEN Museum, an archive brimming with artifacts that trace the project’s entire history. The goal was to distill this vast narrative into a more intimate, readable format through three lenses: first, the economic theories behind EDEN—highlighting Silvio Gesell’s radical ideas and the communal practices that put them into action; second, the products Edeners made and sold, elevated here as artworks; and third, the puppets and props from their storied theater, which became a site of resistance and refuge. A television screen played footage of Comuna Yerbas del Paraíso, a project run by Elizabeth Pirker in El Soberbio, Misiones—her family’s ties to EDEN stretching its legacy across the globe. Nearby, Pirker’s book Ficciones de la Economía (which explores these very themes) was displayed, serving as both theoretical groundwork and a bridge between past and present experiments in living otherwise.
Eden is not a relic. It’s a node in a vast, unbroken chain of experiments in living differently. Its failures and adaptations—from land reform to collective art—mirror today’s struggles against displacement and disconnection. By revisiting its theater, I wanted to ask: What rots, and what endures? The stories shared by Edeners who attended the opening were proof: their utopia still breathes.
