Close to people | Stories from Bethel
As if his hands were speaking
It's Thursday morning and work has begun in the creative workshop in Lobetal. Heinz-Jürgen Heinze has just arrived. His carer walks close behind him and holds him. After a few steps, Heinz-Jürgen Heinze moves away from him, feels his way to the table, then to the chair and sits down. The senior is as good as blind.
His work table in the creative workshop has already been prepared. Heinz-Jürgen Heinze picks up the objects lying on the table in front of him one by one and feels them. Three blocks of reddish-brown clay lie in front of him. He pulls a wooden base towards him, selects the appropriate tool from the container in front of him and begins to work the clay. Heinz-Jürgen Heinze is completely at one with himself.
The artist smoothes a piece of clay with a rolling pin; he checks it with his fingers, rolls it even thinner, then cuts out a triangle and forms spheres. It looks as if he is working directly from his innermost being, from his soul, as if his hands are talking to the material. His fingers are his eyes. They are long and sensitive. Forms emerge. Heinz-Jürgen Heinze has a precise image in his head of what he wants to create. What effect might his finished work have on future viewers? That doesn't seem to matter to him. Only one thing counts: What he creates is his happiness in life. After all, it is also his unique means of expression, through which he also communicates.
The first clay works are finished and the astonished looks of those present are directed towards him. Heinz-Jürgen Heinze has modelled a traffic sign with an accompanying pedestrian crossing. With the help of sounds and movements, he shows that his work is intended to represent the view of a car driver at the wheel. While everyone puzzles over how he could even perceive it in this way, the artist continues to work. Under his skilful hands, the traffic lights are being created. The 72-year-old then also comments on it with sounds and finger movements that represent the flashing of the traffic lights.
Heinz-Jürgen Heinze is visually impaired and has been deaf since birth. He has lived in Lobetal for 56 years. He initially lived in the Birkenhof residential centre, where he worked in the stables on the farm. In 1973, he moved to the Bethel residential centre. He has been a pensioner since 2015.
Heinz-Jürgen Heinze has always been artistically active in his free time. He can look back on a broad spectrum of artistic work. His works have been shown in numerous exhibitions, for example at the Federal Congress for the Disabled in Duisburg in 1994 and at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden from 2000 to 2002. From 2014 to 2017, his works had a permanent place in the travelling exhibitions "Kunst trotz(t) Handicap" and "Kunst trotz(t) Ausgrenzung".
Text and image: Wolfgang Kern
This story simply told
Heinz-Jürgen Heinze has been visually impaired and deaf since birth. He has lived in Lobetal for 56 years. The pensioner regularly visits the creative workshop there. His favourite thing to do is work with clay. His fingers are his eyes.
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Kreative Werkstatt Lobetal
Bethelweg 4
16321 Bernau bei Berlin
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The "Kreative Werkstatt" as part of the "Treffpunkt Teilhabe" is a studio community for artists and creative people who need support in certain areas of life due to an intellectual impairment or mental illness and sometimes with additional physical limitations.
