The massive devastation and the unthinkable horrors and consequences of war evoked this 24-piece series for which I am making miniature representations of war-torn houses. Each house is holding a specific “tiny piece of humanity” as a hopeful reminder to protect the most basic yet most precious human needs. 

I decided to make the houses flat instead of constructing three-dimensional buildings: Houses are torn and flattened, the lives are being squeezed out. The houses have windows with shutters which can be opened and closed; however, there are no doors - no exits to escape the agonies of war. 

I am creating the walls from the reverse sides of old album covers to bring in an indirect musical component; music being a universal language that connects us all. 

For the windows I am using old postage stamps from my extensive collections. I started with particular German red postage stamps because there is a meaningful building on it: It is the "Nordertor," a 400 year old town gate in Flensburg, which is the most Northern city in Germany and close to the place where I grew up. A plaque on the Nordertor says "Friede ernährt, Unfrieden verzehrt" (Peace nurtures, strife devours). 

When I ran out of the Nordertor stamps I switched to the green ones from the same postage series. It shows "Lorsch Abbey" which is part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, so I learned. Lorsch is a small town in mid/South Germany. I was never there, and honestly never heard about this building. But its significance is not only because it is about 1200 years old and parts of it are still in very good shape. I have learned that Lorsch Abbey held one of the largest libraries of the Middle Ages, especially focusing on medicine, based on herbs and folk remedies. In the 9th century, Lorsch Abbey was a renowned place of healing. That is a good message to frame my windows with, I find.

One of the windows of each house opens to one specific aspect of humanity which is represented by a tiny illustration clipped from a vintage dictionary. 

I am placing the war-torn houses, one by one, in quiet settings to create peace around them - cocoons for the humanities so-to-speak. 

For the first four “Tiny Pieces” I have composed calm winter nights. The houses are resting in a frozen landscape with no sounds and no lights around them, just silence and the smell of snow.

The remaining twenty pieces are in progress.