The Raddush hotel and the spoon

Recently, a spoon over three meters tall was erected on the grounds of the Radduscher Hafenhotel, right at the entrance to the natural harbour. A gastronomic establishment and a spoon, even if oversized, do not initially create a contradiction – as we know, the two belong together. Hotel manager Torsten Seidel had it placed there and explains the reasons behind it: “The spoon has little to do with my hotel, but all the more with the Spreewald, with nature and especially with the environmental impact that cannot be overlooked – and could ultimately have an effect on the hotel.”

Torsten Seidel is also chairman of the Raddusch Tourism Association, which brings together the interests of tourism service providers and the needs of holidaymakers. The latter are generally interested in everything that makes the Spreewald so special, especially the water quality. The periodic discoloration of the water, caused by ochre deposits, occasionally raises questions. Torsten Seidel: “If thousands of holidaymakers take barge and canoe trips from Raddusch every year, then we see it as our duty to raise awareness.”

An information board, set up in the harbor years ago by Vetschau water expert Helmut Ziehe, explains the scientific background to the ochre formation. Works of art, such as the spoon, tend to take a different path. The artist Gregor Krampitz, who was living in Berlin at the time, installed this spoon as part of the Aquamediale 2017 in Lübben. His intention: “An oversized spoon – suitable for everyday use in form, monumental in effect – seems to lie on or in the Spreewald river. The gesture of creation thus becomes a silent disturbance: one recognizes the spoon immediately – and it is precisely this familiarity that overturns certainty. We have to spoon up the soup we have made for ourselves. The work does not formulate a comfortable moral, but an uneasy insight into responsibility and consequences. At the same time, the motif remains deliberately open: Is the spoon a trace of human action, commentary or coincidence that looks too good to be coincidental?”

The former Raddusch Art Association took over the Löffel artwork after the end of the Aquamediale 2018 because it fits in with the current water situation in Raddusch. Torsten Seidel financed the artwork privately and thus added it to his collection. The district’s Office for the Environment and Construction Supervision – Lower Water Authority had approved the installation for two years in the bank area of the Radduscher Kahnfahrt in terms of flood protection. An application for an extension was rejected and the artwork had to be removed.

The “spoon” is now on private property, but its message remains unchanged: “We are spooning out what we have brought on ourselves, because our hunger for energy has led to the destruction of the groundwater-bearing layers!”

Thanks to Torsten Seidel’s initiative, this work of art has been preserved and will continue to reach many people as a reminder and food for thought.

Peter Becker, 10.06.26