Translations:Manfred Klett: Von der Agrartechnologie zur Landbaukunst/191/en

heritage of the pre-Christian cultural epochs appears in a transformed form and on a higher level. In the middle of the village bounds stands the church with its tower and nave, rising high above the gabled roofs of the village, a work of art in a twofold sense: the tower strives vertically upward, a sculptural image of inner I-experience formed externally; the nave extends horizontally, a projection of communal soul-experience. This establishment of a centre is a building achievement of the entire village community. What arises there, as a kind of baptismal act for a place on earth in the midst of wild nature, is the complete eversion of the perfected work of art from pre-Christian times, the Greek temple. Just as the latter presents its high aesthetic externally, pre-eminently in the composition of its columns, while its interior, the cella, the dwelling place of the deity, was withdrawn from the profane gaze in almost hermetic enclosure, so in the Romanesque basilica the exterior is solidly walled, the columns are taken inside, and the interior space is opened to the congregation. The artistic power of the mind soul of each individual in the village community was permeated by the pictorial experience of the esoterically working folk Christianity acting from below, and was supported and borne by the institutional-exoteric Christianity that was active pre-eminently in monasticism and the nobility. Both modes of experience united and concentrated themselves inwardly upon the centre of the village bounds and, in artistic configuration, created a formative sheath for the congregation and the cultic event at the altar.