The peacock fountain in Wolfsburg's Bahnhofpassage at the northern end of the city is one of the best-known sculptures in Wolfsburg's cityscape -__-0000-__- The Dresden painter Paul Kurt Bartzsch was commissioned to create it by Wolfsburg's cultural committee in 1961. Since then, the fountain has had an eventful past, having had to change its location several times. Much less well known, however, is a mural by the artist that adorned the walls of a conference room in the basement of the town hall, which was inaugurated in 1958. The mural was probably commissioned by the city as part of the interior design of the new city council offices. When and how it disappeared can no longer be reconstructed from the surviving files. Apart from a photograph from 1968 documenting the restoration process of the painting (Fig. 1), only one showing a color study of the mural has survived (Fig. 2). The material used can also be clearly identified on the basis of the files in the Wolfsburg city archives. According to a note from the spring of 1967, Bartzsch painted with a synthetic resin paint "or tempera" on a stucco plaster base and decorated the mural with a gold leaf overlay. -__-0001-__- This was probably his earliest work in Wolfsburg. -__-0002-__-

The mural, which was deemed "-__-0000-__-approved" by the Wolfsburger Nachrichten newspaper, shows a stylized
stylized city panorama of Wolfsburg, -__-0001-__- which Bartzsch created in landscape format in the town hall. On
the Dresden painter arranged a purple background - predominantly in white, black, purple
white, black, violet and gold tones - a large number of representative buildings of the young Wolfsburg cityscape.
of the young Wolfsburg cityscape. Viewed from left to right, the
Wolfsburg Castle, the Renaissance palace, can be seen first, closely followed by the VW baths, above which
the facades of the Volkswagen factory and its power station appear - the latter still without the
characteristic chimneys. As the building closest to the horizon, it looks as if
horizon, it is as if Bartzsch had not, as was so often the case on picture postcards of the time, included the plant
of the city's central buildings, as was so often the case on postcards of the time, but instead deliberately focused on the urban buildings. Slightly offset, the mural shows St. Anne's Church, which dates back to the 12th century.
dating back to the 12th century. In the center of the picture, on the other hand, the new town hall
as the urban center and announces that the city has now really become a city.
has now really become a town. -__-0002-__- Below it is Wolfsburg's oldest secondary school, the Ratsgymnasium.
school. At the upper edge of the picture, the narrow radio mast gives a hint of the
Klieversberg. Separated from the center of the picture by Porschestraße, the parish church is located on the right.
the parish church of St. Christopherus, the Christuskirche and the Kreuzkirche, three Christian churches
three Christian places of worship.

The colors convey peace and warmth. The young city spreads out idyllically before the
before the viewer. Bartzsch was presumably trying to capture in his mural what the city meant to him at the time.
city for him at the time: in a similar way to Horus Engels in his mural
Ratsgremium (-->Engels, Ratsgremium), Bartzsch's panorama also depicts a city in which different
different layers of time come together. Whether the palace and the new church buildings
are intended to refer to European high culture and religious traditions can only be
can only speculate, but these buildings also mark important stages in the city's history.
Bartzsch's painting "Eigenwillig" tells nothing other than this.
Before the Schloßstraße 8 artists' group was founded in 1961, -__-0000-__- Paul Kurt Bartzsch had already lived and worked for four years.
Kurt Bartzsch had already lived and worked in the city in Lower Saxony for four years. Together with
together with the married couple Peter and Olga Szaif-Pawlowa, Gustav Kurt Beck, Hans Hirschler and Heinrich
Heidersberger, he was one of the founding members of the collective, which gave the public space of
Wolfsburg in an artistically formative way. The
town hall, inaugurated in 1958, was also part of the space to be designed early on and was to become a true
showcase for art on buildings and thus also in the cityscape: Even today
still today, alongside the bronze wolf by Jochen Kramer or the wooden inlays by Maria Pirwitz-
Brock, the artistically designed city logo by Carl van Dornick can still be seen there today
silent witnesses to the city's early efforts to act as a patron of the arts. From
The mural by Paul Kurt Bartzsch in the town hall cellar also dates from this period.
It had been hanging there for barely ten years before its removal was discussed by Wolfsburg council due to various damages.
its removal was discussed by the Wolfsburg council. -__-0001-__- However, the culture committee quickly vetoed its decision. Obviously, the members had doubts about the statement by the real estate office that Bartzsch
had agreed to the removal. -__-0002-__- Rightly so, as was soon to become apparent, as this
contradicted the statement. -__-0003-__- Only now did the Council seem to remember that with Bartzsch
Bartzsch was a "recognized-__-0004-__- artist", -__-0005-__- and entered into a discussion about how to deal with his work.
how to proceed with his work. They even discussed the seemingly obscure suggestion of replacing the
to have the mural restored by a senior painting class. -__-0006-__- Finally, the artist himself
artist himself offered to take on the restoration. -__-0007-__- Whether he carried it out or the artwork had already
whether he carried it out or the artwork had already disappeared at that time is not clear from the files.
The mural in the town hall is not the only work by Paul Kurt Bartzsch that was once part of Wolfsburg's townscape.
Wolfsburg's townscape but no longer exists today. For example, various mosaics
on the walls of houses in Hochring and Teichbreite share the same fate. However, these are
secured and covered as a result of extensive thermal insulation work on the buildings.
covered over. Nevertheless, the artist's works are still visible in Wolfsburg:
In addition to the Pfauenbrunnen fountain and a mosaic design in the Hallenbad cultural center, there are
other objects by the artist can be found in public spaces, such as mosaics in the
Waldschule in Eichelkamp or a wall design with motifs from a children's primer in the
Peter Pan School in Tiergartenbreite.