Two months ago, we ran a story (bit.ly/BarneyZeitz) about Barney Zeitz’s plan to create stained glass windows for a church — once a synagogue — in Flieden, Germany, to memorialize the Jewish history of the town. Valerie Sonnenthal recently checked in to see how it’s going.
I caught up with Barney Zeitz at his studio shortly after his return from his first trip to Flieden, Germany. Also there was Marie Ariel, a woman from Cambridge who was interested in helping to get windows made for the old synagogue (which her father had attended); she had learned about Barney and his glasswork through her friend Pam Goff of Chilmark.
During his five-day stay in Germany, Barney was struck by the number of people who came up to him to share stories. Some were locals whose family had buried Torahs and holy books for the course of the war and returned them when local Jews showed up after its end; others were not so proud, sharing tales of looting.
Dr. Thomas Fendert, head of the church window committee, picked Barney up at the airport, served as his translator, and brought Barney to visit the Jewish cemetery, which was founded in the late 1800s. Barney describes the beauty of the location, with billowing wheat fields leading to a small grove of trees, and in the center the graveyard, still in good shape with a gate surrounding it, for which Dr. Fendert had the key. The biggest surprise for Barney was that every name — whether first or last — was a name he is familiar with: Gottlieb, Levy, Adler, Katz, Katzman. A stone bearing multiple names, he noted, honored those who perished in camps.
On the day Barney presented his ideas to the church committee, a film crew from German TV ZDF showed up (thanks to Islander Angela Andersen, who shared the MVTimes story with them). Barney said the presentation went on for almost three hours; they discussed whether the human figure should be in the windows, whether they should be abstract, or have Hebrew words in them.
He spent a morning drawing inside the church with the local art club’s members, who had been invited to come and draw. Barney said 60 people showed up: “The first was the mayor, with a small bag with a wooden pen and pencil set as a present for me.”
On the last evening, Raimund Henkel, the mayor’s father, was also in attendance. Marie Ariel explained that he became dedicated to preserving the history of the Jews in the town, and “is the person responsible for putting a plaque on the outside of the church that commemorates the fact that the building was a synagogue. His insistence on memorializing the history of the Jews is somewhat remarkable.”
Now that he is back on the Vineyard, Barney will begin doing some studies, starting with thin plywood and the correct measurements, to construct replica windows. He will work on two windows at a time.
We moved from studio to house to look at glass samples he just brought from New York. Barney gets even more animated when he talks about techniques he may employ and ideas he has. He looks forward to experimenting with laminating, under-firing, rolled edges, and how using epoxy on the back adds an ethereal shimmer quality for the viewer. After using German glass for 40 years (they stopped making glass that can be fused two years ago), Barney now must use glass from Portland, Ore. He told me, “The idea for the imagery is to take the Star of David, Hebrew lettering, crosses and Christian symbols and fuse ’em into glass, and then I’m going to crack ’em, some of them; some will be intact. Some will be broken and refired, and there might even be more than one layer, so that they are just askew a little bit. It’s not going to be depressing, it’s all part of a landscape that’s moving and uplifting. So I’m hoping that if I can do some studies, it will show what it feels like to look at.”
Marie asked, “Is the Tree of Life window a definite for the church?” Barney replied, “Yes, it’s the same exact one as at the Hebrew Center here.”
This coming weekend, Barney will be showing his work at the 20th annual Vineyard Artisans Festival, and he plans to share some of his studies then.
Follow Barney’s Flieden project at bzeitz.com, or email him at barneyzeitz@yahoo.com.