“If you walk past the Evangelical Academy in Tutzing down to the lake, on the left-hand side you will see a gilded Madonna. She stands not on a pedestal or an altar but on a pillar, like a stylite.

There are two more columns in the grounds of the Academy, but they have nothing atop them. I would like to return one of them to its original function of supporting something. The idea is that it would only be possible for one visitor at a time to climb up the column, someone who feels the need to be alone.

While the Academy offers plenty of opportunity for social contact and pleasant get-togethers, there is little provision for mavericks or loners.

On the right-hand pillar, viewed from the entrance, a delicate metal prosthesis would be mounted. The colour of the structure would be white, to key in with existing architectural structures. This would counterbalance the fact that it is, in essence, an alien body from the functional world of shipbuilding, railways and industry, intruding into the neoclassical idyll of the parkland. The area around the Academy is full of decorative features and sculptures and calls for a homeopathic intervention in the spirit of iconographic ecology.

The concept of the Stirner prosthesis encompasses the rejection of a one-dimensional way of using and looking at things, just as Stirner’s individualism includes anarchic behaviour and a refusal to submit to any control.

The “solitary one” can retreat to the pillar with a book, sit on the platform and prevent anyone else from coming up, but it must always be accepted that the prosthesis will be misused: a pastor can use it for preaching, a professor can use it as a lectern for a lecture, children can use it for basketball practice when the Academy welcomes holidaymakers in the summer, and for sports fans it can serve as a referee’s seat… ”

Bert Theis, May 2000