In a cafe in Vienna, Andreas Joschka-Sutanto cut up a letter-by-letter edition of Adolf Hitler’s “My Struggle” to compile a cookbook and turn “negative into positive”, to “empty these poisonous words” of their meaning, reported AFP. quoted by BTA.
The graphic designer’s painstaking work on his project began when the copyright to the Austrian-born dictator’s political manifesto, which launched the Nazi ideology when it was printed in 1925, became public domain eight years ago.
“I’m on page one hundred,” the 44-year-old graphic designer told AFP. After nearly 900 hours of work, a quarter of the mammoth project is complete. He works on it several hours a week, and according to his calculations, at this rate, it will take him another 24 years to finish carving the letters from the nearly 800 pages, or 1.57 million vowels and consonants.
After cutting out the letters, the artist sorts and arranges them in an organizer.
His cookbook project already includes about twenty recipes, including his father’s pizza, asparagus salad and even the typical Austrian specialty egg gnocchi. He said he wanted, like a chef mixing ingredients, to “deconstruct and transform” the work that had caused so much harm, “to shed its burden,” he explained.
He leaves the black-and-white portrait of the dictator responsible for the genocide against the Jews on the cover of the issue to show that “bereft of his words” Hitler is reduced to “staring into space”.
Cafe manager Michael Westerkam, 33, applauded the designer’s unique project because it draws attention to a difficult subject for working-class suburbanites. However, not everyone is happy – Andreas Joschka-Sutanto, who has yet to find a publisher for his cookbook, has already apologized to people who do not approve of his idea.
A specialist on this historical period, who wished to remain anonymous, believes that the historical and artistic value of the project is “limited” and defines the initiative as “strange”.
