Aby Warburg, the important Hamburg art historian, had designed a didactic exhibition for the opening of the Planetarium Hamburg in 1930 entitled Image Collection on the History of Astrology and Astronomy, which was finally dismantled many years after the Second World War and had been considered lost ever since. It was not until 1987 that Uwe Fleckner, then a student of art history, discovered the “hidden treasure” in the planetarium; 66 picture panels and artifacts that were waiting to be disposed of in a pile of bulky waste. This historical and still contemporary exhibition is now being shown for the first time in the spectacular Kesselsaal, which has been specially opened for the occasion. The Image Collection on the History of Astrology and Astronomy visually explores the necessity of the orientation points in life and the everlasting human need to look up to the sky to make sense of our place on Earth.

It shows us “how mankind has tried to interpret and explain the stars and their mysterious movements to this day” – as Gertrud Bing and Fritz Saxl wrote, who, as the closest collaborators of Warburg, who died in 1929, set up his exhibition. Today, an exhibition architecture designed by José Délano on the outline of an ellipse evokes how our understanding of the universe oscillates between pictorial-mythical and symbolic-mathematical concepts.

The historical exhibition is accompanied by a series of contemporary art positions, which are presented in the Kesselsaal. Together with other artworks spread throughout the Stadtpark, they continue Warburg’s train of thought. They ask questions about the necessary connections between the magical and the rational, the spiritual and the factual, about the planetary as a social and political category. They reflect on how we living beings inhabit our planet today. And how we can create a common and respectful planetary value system.