The Frankfurt area has long been a crucible of universally acclaimed poetry. Goethe was born in Frankfurt in 1749, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in Hanau in 1785/86. The Romanticists and siblings Clemens and Bettina Brentano often stayed at the Trages Manor near Gelnhausen where, in 1833, Clemens wrote the fairy tale “Gockel, Hinkel und Gackeleia”. The tale begins: “In Germany, down by the savage forest between Gelnhausen and Hanau, there once lived a honourable, elderly man (…)” *. The Brentanostraße in Gelnhausen is close to where Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen was born in 1621 or 22. Grimmelshausen’s famous “Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch”, the first German Baroque novel, has the subtitle: “The life of an odd vagrant named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchsheim: namely where and in what manner he came into this world, what he saw, learned, experienced, and endured therein; also why he again left it of his own free will.” Thomas Kling (1952–2005), without doubt the most significant poet and connoisseur of German poetry of his generation and an acknowledged Grimmelshausen specialist, publicly recited from the Simplicissimus when formalhaut’s installation “bye-bye Kuhgasse / re-in-carnation” celebrated farewell to the old No.15 Kuhgasse house, the future site of living room. Kling addressed the celebration with his poem “the house is the mouth cave”, which he exclusively dedicated to the new building, and latterly included as part of its ornament.
*„In Deutschland in einem wilden Wald, zwischen Gelnhausen und Hanau, lebte ein ehrenfester bejahrter Mann […]“