Katharina Sieverding
born 1944 in Prague, lives in Düsseldorf and Berlin.
In the delegate lobby Sieverding installed a memorial for Members of the Reichstag in the Weimar Republic who became victims of persecution and was created by the Düsseldorf artist yet in 1992. The five- part photo-painting with its background motif of a blazing solar corona recalls not only the Reichstag fire and the global conflagration unleashed by the National Socialists but also the rebirth of a purified democratic Germany, rising like a phoenix out of the ashes.
A yellow X-ray image is set before the sea of flame, revealing in the centre a human spinal column and on the left a cancer tumour. The X-ray appears as an ominous doorway leading into a fiery furnace, a portent of the mortal nature of organic life. Yet the central motif of the spine also alludes to the Members of the Reichstag who literally showed that they had backbone and did not yield to the terror of National Socialism.
The commemorative books which honour their sacrifice are displayed on three wooden tables in front of the memorial.