They look like a reminder of the death penalty, which has long been abolished in Germany – those lonely coats and jackets, dangling on the big-city balconies, where fresh night air is to drive out the tobacco smoke stubbornly clinging to the fabric. From afar, their slack contours and their limp swaying in the wind are unquestionably reminiscent of people hanged. They are silent witnesses of nocturnal escapades, with which one wants nothing more to do on the following day, and so the quarantine for the dark alter ego actually amounts to an execution – an extermination of the dark side of the ego. The fact that these wraiths are no longer as common today as they used to be has to do with the ban on smoking, of course, but by no means only with it. Their absence also indicates a change in lifestyle: one has become attentive to oneself, one goes to bed early, one maintains one’s work-life balance. One hardly allows oneself to be overcome by the inner demons anymore. And that’s why you no longer need to purify yourself with an act of moulting. The new human being is holistic, and it also runs strictly counter to his understanding of design to degrade the balcony to an airing stage. Not just in the waiting room, but also on the balcony there is a taut sense of style: potted plants from the Provence, carefully draped herb hanging baskets and chic wicker furniture tastefully extend the interior to the outside so that there is really no room left for the poor tattered scarecrow as whom one went bar-hopping the previous night. Life has undoubtedly become poorer.

Translated from: Cato Magazin, 1/19.