A rectangular area made of gravel, lined with trees and hedges. Adjacent is a bare area of sand, with some seemingly lost benches. Tilly-Edinger-Platz in the Bockenheim district of Frankfurt, still known in the city as Adorno-Platz, does not exactly invite you to linger. The local advisory council calls it “wasteland” and has been calling for the city administration to redesign the unadorned and often littered square for several years. After all, it is the only green space in this southern part of Bockenheim on the old university campus between Adalbertstrasse, Schloßstrasse and Gräfstrasse.
The old desk of Theodor W. Adorno once stood in a cube under armored glass on the square - in memory of the famous sociologist and co-founder of the Frankfurt School, who is an icon of the Goethe University.
When the university moved to Westend a few years ago, Adorno's furniture also moved to the new campus.
In 2014, the square in Bockenheim was named after Tilly Edinger, a Jewish scientist from Frankfurt who is hardly known.
With her research into the fossil brains of extinct vertebrates, she is considered the founder of paleoneurology.
Magistrate stood crosswise
The scientist comes from a renowned Frankfurt family. Her father was a pioneer in brain research. Tilly Edinger was the custodian at the Senckenberg Museum before she fled Nazi Germany practically at the last minute in May 1939. She later worked at the elite American university Harvard until her accidental death in 1967. The American evolutionary biologist and bestselling author Steven Jay Gould described her as "one of the most extraordinary natural scientists of the 20th century".
A résumé that deserves to be known in the city. This is what the local advisory board thought and in 2015 suggested setting up a themed playground for children on the area named after Edinger. As a special form of remembrance culture, Tilly Edinger's research on prehistoric bats and horses should be included. After all, the Senckenberg Museum, her former place of work, is only a few meters away.
It took three years for the magistrate to reject the proposal.
Also for a redesign of the square there are no plans at the Green Spaces Office because of its “high occupancy”, it said succinctly.
The request of the local advisory council to set up at least some play equipment for children then also petered out.
And there is not even a blackboard on the square providing information about Tilly Edinger's life, who has achieved similar groundbreaking achievements as Adorno in her field.
Citizens' initiative puts pressure on
Now Corona has caused a break.
Residents in the neighborhood, suddenly locked up at home with their children for months, no longer wanted to put up with the sadness of the square.
Last winter they founded the citizens' initiative “Bockenheim outside the home”, which promotes a more child-friendly and livable area.
With a survey and a painting campaign, all households in the neighborhood were asked for suggestions on how to redesign the square.
With over 150 responses, the response was overwhelming.