Die Gesellschaft
der Stadtwanderer:
Völklingen’s Activity Report,
2024
Art & Place Journal
Issue X, 2025

The slag heaps were named after the owners of the plant. The importance
of the industry for the town’s history was manifested in the naming of streets
and squares. But what about the history of the people of Völklingen?

The town seemed to have no history because there was no museum
to remember it by. When the ironworks, which was to be demolished,
was saved and preserved at the last minute, it was like the end of a curse.
To be able to think about the future, you have to know your past.

If you change the way you look at things
the things you look at change

Since history was not recorded, it could be rewritten. The people of Völklingen began to tell local urban legends related to famous personalities.
In doing so, they played the parts of their parents and grandparents.

From her second-floor window, she sends a handful
of breadcrumbs to the pigeons on the other side of the sidewalk.

After the first church burnt down, a new one was built on a different site.
The remains of the building were left untouched for several decades until a group decided to use the land as a garden: So the old stones and the building’s footprint were used to give structure to the plots for cultivation.

There were shells of sunflower seeds on the floor around the benches.
The presence of çekirdek was a sign of the cultural integration of Turks
in Germany: where there were shells, you could be sure that you were
welcome and that rents would not rise.

To Erostratus*
*Cowboy, whose name was cursed by the Ephesians

Foreigner                                                                             Völklinger

The church and the art school created places of refuge by offering
church asylum and artistic asylum. Hospitality was a key to anti-fascism.

The Society of Urban Wanderers.
We are excavating the lost memories of the neighbourhoods.

Die Gesellschaft der Stadtwanderer is an informal group of anonymous urban wanderers. as part of urban art biennale 2024, they perfomed a series of 70 furtive intervention without permission within the city of völklingen. these were based on local microhistory, indexed and narrated
on open source map available online.