About RHEIN!ROMANTIK?
RHEIN!ROMANTIK? is a long-term collaborative art project in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley, Germany.
Since 2021, artists and photographers have been working together along the Rhine between Bingen and Koblenz, exploring the river as landscape, memory space, and place of human intervention.
The project grows through exhibitions, books, and shared discussions and will continue until 2029, the year of the Federal Garden Show (BUGA) in the region.
This book is part of that ongoing journey.
Page 2
The Rhine is a landscape full of images.
Hardly any place in Europe has been told, painted, or photographed as often as this river.
Historical Romanticism shaped these images – and they still resonate today.
Even when we believe we see anew, we do not see without assumptions.
Ideas of landscape, nature, sublimity, or idyll accompany our gaze, often unnoticed.
This book asks about these images.
Not about Romanticism as a historical period,
but about its afterlife.
RHEIN!ROMANTIK? understands itself as an open project.
Since 2021, we have been working together to collect, question, and see the images of the Rhine anew.
It offers no final answers,
but invites us to notice and question our own images.
Romanticism is not an opponent,
but a resonance space.
Its images remain –
as traces.
Page 20
The river carries images.
It carries stories.
It carries attributions.
What we see is not the river,
but what we place into it.
Gold.
Signs.
Order.
Stones are found.
Stones are laid.
Stones are shifted.
Stones are piled.
Stones are arranged into spirals.
Stones become towers.
Humans seek form.
The river seeks a path.
Some things remain.
Some are scattered again.
In the end, a surface remains.
Temporary.
Until water or ice returns.
Not the image disappears,
but the movement.
Water moves.
Humans arrange.
Time transforms.
And what remains
is material –
shaped by hands,
carried by stories.
Page 34 – Material
Material is shaped.
Wood becomes posts.
Iron becomes ships.
Stone becomes quay.
Work becomes part of the landscape.
Hands draw lines.
Tools leave marks.
What is built remains visible –
even when its purpose fades.
And the landscape carries the material onward –
carried by the river,
carried by stories.
Page 50 – Vineyard
In the vineyard, work becomes order.
Rows appear.
Forms hold.
Hands place stakes.
Wires stretch lines.
Stones secure the earth.
Humans arrange the slope.
Yet in the end, climate works.
Sun and light of the Rhine valley,
rain and frost.
Not without humans.
Not without the sun.
Winter moves what seemed still.
Ice loosens order.
A new cycle begins.
Page 72 – Movement
Movement returns.
Humans draw lines.
Rails follow the river.
Roads follow the rails.
Trains cut through rock.
Tunnels open the mountain.
The Rhine carries the sound.
It reflects movement
in curves and light.
Not everything remains.
Yet every trace changes the gaze.
Movement writes new images.
Page 86 – Ways to the Rhine
Ways lead to the Rhine.
On foot.
By bicycle.
By ship and airplane.
Everyone arrives differently –
yet many seek an image.
Glasses are filled.
Bottles are ready.
Promises wait.
Not always the Rhine itself.
Often only
what we expect from it.
A place of memory.
A place of expectation.
A place that keeps changing.
Page 88 – Memory
Images remain.
Memories shape the gaze.
Landscape becomes expectation.
Names become longing.
We do not see the place –
but the image that stayed.
Page 100 – Towers / Memory
No longer water arranges the stones.
Humans do.
And their history.
Towers rise.
Walls endure.
Names remain.
Later come new walls.
New lines.
New interventions.
Visitors arrive.
Images form again.
And what remains
are walls –
and their traces.
Page 103 – Fish
Stones held fast.
The water moved on.
Something has changed.
The river knows it.
A fish remembers.
Page 106 – Thanks
This working book grew from many viewpoints –
from walks along the Rhine, conversations, and patience.
Our quiet thanks go to all who gave images, texts, time, and trust.
RHEIN!ROMANTIK? continues its journey –
toward our shared goal in 2029.
The image and accompanying texts of this working book are also available in English.
Please scan the QR code or visit:
https://rheinromantik.org/rheinromantik-traces-of-the-rhine/
(Working status 2026 – further contributors will follow until 2029.)
Editor: Walter Nussbaum
Project coordination: RHEIN!ROMANTIK?