Happy Birthday GG

REALISATION

(04/24)

Happy Birthday GG is a work that illustrates the development of the Basic Law / Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany in the 75 years from May 1945 to May 2014, showing the changes to the text by the 67 amending laws to date. Both the length of validity of the respective variations of the law and the respective composition of the parties of the governments that passed them are visually depicted.

Picture size

The bound first edition of the Basic Law has the dimensions 35 * 24 cm. The work is enlarged 3.5 times and measures 122.5 x 84 cm.

RULEBOOK

(03/24)

Data source

Source for the legal texts of the respective versions of the Basic Law I use the rtf download from DocPatch at https://gg.docpatch.org/#herunterladen for the amendments up to and including the amending law of April 2019 (many thanks for your effort, would have expected the same from bundestag.de, but there you can view pdf scans that look like being faxed). To determine the amended articles compared to the previous version, I use the list of amendments according to Änderungsgesetze Grundgesetze. The texts linked here were used for the amendment laws 64 to 67. (Of course, this is not a scientific, but an artistic work, so I, as well as DocPatch, take no responsibility for the accuracy of the texts).

Font

The work is designed in the font Baskerville Display PT regular. The font size is 8.747 pt for the legal texts (line spacing 8.747 pt). The section headings are defined in Bold and font size 13 pt, line spacing 13 pt, the articles in Bold with font size 12 pt and line spacing 12.4 pt.

Time component

Transparency

The temporal component of the development of the Basic Law is represented by the fact that the degree of coverage of the print colour of the respective version of the text corresponds to the proportion of the validity of the corresponding text in the total age of the Basic Law. The Basic Law will be 28,855 days old on 23 May 2024. The original version of 23 May 1945 was amended for the first time on 30 August 1951, i.e. after 2,291 days, which means that Article 143, which was amended by the first amending act of 30 August 1951, is shown with a coverage of 7.94%. Transparency is determined for each variant for the period until the next amendment of the article or the birthday of the Basic Law.

Text colour

The text colour is determined by the government in office at the time of the corresponding change. For this purpose, colour values are assigned to the governments involved. The starting point for the colour values is the CMYK value (the CDU/CSU is shown in black, as this corresponds to the language usage, and in the RGB colour space black is the absence of colour, which can be avoided by the computer translation of CMYK 0-0-0-100 into RGB 34-34-33).

This results in the following colour values for the parties in the RGB colour space:

• CDU/CSU: #222221
• FDP: #FFED00
• DP: #8B1E2E
• GB/BHP: #72520
• SPD: #C20E1A
• Grüne: #5E9F43

To determine the respective "government colour", the election results of the parties involved in the government under review are used. The government colour is calculated by determining the percentage share of each governing party in the government and multiplying the party's colour values for R, G, B by this. This is used to create the changes to the laws of the active government.

Regierungsfarben

Inserts and deletions

At the beginning of the merging of the legal texts, it was determined which variant of the article or paragraph of an article is the optically longest variant in the period of validity of the law. An attempt was also made to do justice to the insertion of paragraphs so that the numbering follows the content of the overall history, so that an earlier 2nd paragraph in the work can also be in the place of the 3rd paragraph at the beginning if the content of the 2nd paragraph is moved.

Size

The original edition of the Basic Law measured 35 * 24 cm. The work is enlarged 3.5 times and realised in the dimensions 122.5 x 84 cm.

CONCEPT

(01/24)

The development of the Basic Law is documented by summarising the various versions of the Basic Law in chronological order in one document. The period of validity of each text is shown, as well as the government (coalition) that passed it.

TASKS

(01/24)

• Define source for editing (probably Federal Law Gazette)
• Define font
• Define the representation of the temporal component
• Define the representation of insertions and deletions
• Dimension of the work

IDEA

(01/24)

On 23 May 2024, the Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland will be 75 years old. To mark this date, I want to present the development of the Basic Law from the first version to the present day.

The work is intended to visualise all 67 amendments, additions and deletions and also bring the temporal component to life.

The work does not have to make it possible to read the Basic Law, but should make it possible to visually experience the process of change in the chronological sequence and durability, as well as the change in the length of the body of rules.

Happy Birthday, GG » diese Seite auf Deutsch