I’m not a religious person, but nonetheless I was entrusted with the job of designing this church. I still feel blessed here, though. Churches are closely linked to the great issues of humanity, the big human questions of birth, death and the path we tread between the two. Love, war and the yearning for redemption. The question of how intent we really are on living ever longer lives. It may be that religion is better able to address these issues than an opera is. Language is much closer to the crux of the matter than thinking and feeling. Just like this church with its windows, a requiem or oratorio is more about states of being than about action. The church on Hohenzollernplatz is situated on a pilgrimage route; there is a forward dynamic to everything, with movement towards the altar, towards thinking, towards light. With every step as you walk towards the altar in this church, you embrace the totality of colour. The windows unfold their effect as you progress through the space. You can’t survey them as a collected group. Bathed in this light, though, the totality of human existence reveals itself. Since time immemorial there has been a romanticisation of creative Man made in god’s image, of the dreams of the hereafter. Yet when you are on the Path, in this church, you are getting closer to heaven, to the upper realms, stepping into a heavenly vision. Up there on the plateau, where the altar is, that’s where you could experience the requiem.

For me as an atheist, my interest in churches centres on the light. On the gifts of the natural world, with the sun shining and the colours of the stained-glass windows falling like blossom on the ground. The colours creating light are like the life-giving sun. I was irritated that another artist had already created a window directly above the altar. I would’ve liked to have done that one as well, but from an ethical point of view that would not have been on. When I’m working I make my discoveries, and once they’re made, they’re made; I have no further use for them. I need the void when I’m starting out on a project. The x-axis from which I build. I always hope that I can access that void to allow me to create from a foundation of zero knowledge and make new discoveries with a fresh eye. I don’t want to repeat previous work; that would be awful. Trouble is, the pure void is an illusion. If you’re lucky, you might just achieve a state of consciousness in which you have no specific wish or desire.

Theatre was always a secret refuge for me. I could express the images in my head through the medium of plays and hide away as a painter. My pictures are like a room in which people can tarry for hours. My thought has its roots in visual things, in visions. Many people labour under a misconception of what imagination is. Imagination is hard work and has to be honest and true to itself. It’s not that easy to rigorously follow these precepts, because we are soon seduced into following our urges and cutting corners of authenticity.

I had to get out of my first homeland, the GDR. The state was a persistent, tenacious opponent of my art. I had no place there anymore. But the friends I had back then are still my friends today. Italy is my second home. After getting out of the GDR I discovered Tuscany. It was like – and is like – making a migratory passage from one homeland to another. Actually, though, I can be wherever I want. My place of peace is within me.