An Idea of Jerusalem ...the Dreamers' Realm of Longing

The Dreamers’ Realm

Jerusalem means "Site of Peace"

The Bench at the Edge

A View from the Outside

The Dreamers’ Realm is located to the side of the Friedensmal. There, beside the bench overlooking the Jerusalem Friedensmal, stands the sign bearing its original name.
This place is not the center of the memorial – it is its overarching understanding and its origin in the life of the outer world. From here, the view from the outside opens: quiet, gathered, without any claim to interpretive authority. Whoever lingers here does not gaze only at stone and form, but at the inner call from which the Friedensmal arose.
The Bench in the Dreamers’ Realm is a place to pause. A place for lovers, dreamers, and for those who sense that what is essential does not happen in spectacle, but in quiet fidelity to an inner image of peace.

A Distinct Entrance to the Friedensmal

The "Idea of Jerusalem" as a Quiet Portal

This is a distinct gateway to the Jerusalem Friedensmal, which meets us in the universal language of art. It is the gateway through origin, longing, the Dreamers’ Realm, and the view from the outside.
It is a deepening entrance. This page speaks to those who, in the name Jerusalem, do not first see politics, but an ancient human longing for reconciliation, dignity, and a shared center.
It preserves the original name in its quiet place and at the same time leads onward into the open, universal breadth of the entire project – and of Jerusalem itself.

The Idea of Jerusalem

Inner Beauty and the Longing for Peace

The Idea of Jerusalem, as it is meant here, belongs to no state, no religion, and no institution. It is an invitation to touch the deeper meaning behind the name.
Here Jerusalem is read not as possession, but as a space of consciousness – as an inner city of peace, as a hidden radiance behind the hardenings of history, as the hope that the human being can transform.
That is why the Jerusalem invoked in the name of the Friedensmal belongs to the Dreamers’ Realm: that poetic plane on which vision appears not as ideology, but as a quiet call — a call that compels nothing, and can therefore transform.
Whoever follows this call enters not a political space, but a path inward: from longing to clarity, from clarity to responsibility, from responsibility to lived peace.

I chose this name for the memorial in 2013 — it had already appeared publicly on March 22, 2012, on the front page of The Jerusalem Post — because of its meaning: translated, Jerusalem means “foundation of peace.” To create peace outwardly — even in earthly Jerusalem — peace is needed within one’s own soul: a Jerusalem within us. This thought reaches beyond every religious affiliation; the mystics of all religions are united in it.
Only years later did it become apparent that this bold name had, in fact, already been anchored in this place for many centuries: from the Peace Memorial, one looks out across the Rhine plain toward the so-called “Jerusalem on the Rhine” — the ShUM cities of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, which in the Middle Ages were centers of significant Jewish scholarship. The city of Worms lies 22 km from the Peace Memorial.*
In July 2021, the World Heritage Committee inscribed the ShUM Sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List because of this Jewish heritage. Through the discussions this sparked in our region, I then also learned of the “Jerusalem on the Rhine.” The reality is ancient, the phrase more recent: as early as the Middle Ages, a scholar in Jerusalem praised the learning that came from Mainz, Worms, and Speyer. The designation “Jerusalem on the Rhine” was brought into discussion by the ZDF film of the same name, first broadcast on September 1, 2010 — yet at first it scarcely took hold. Only later, through the World Heritage application of the three cities, was the film taken up again, and the designation became more widely known. But that a Monument bearing the fitting name already existed before the phrase had gained broader currency — and long before the World Heritage decision — is a small miracle.
To name the whole Friedensmal together with "Jerusalem" nevertheless proved too bold for its time: it was not thought of and understood mystically, but politically. Yet the name found its rightful places within the memorial, so that it could become compatible with the world: as "Yerushalayim," it appears on the Stone of Encounter at the entrance — and on the sign beside the bench in the Realm of Dreams, from which one looks out over the Friedensmal, stands “Jerusalem Friedensmal” The bold name "Jerusalem" is no longer placed as a heading over everything; it has become a process — a quiet and precious discovery for the one who is willing to walk the path as far as the bench in the Realm of Dreams.

Continue to the Friedensmal

From the Idea of Jerusalem, the path leads to the universal side of the project, the Jerusalem Friedensmal. The Dreamers’ Realm opens the inward entrance. From there, the Friedensmal unfolds its message into the world.

From Silence to Code

From the Friedensmal – as a real place, a sign, and a threshold – the Klanghain emerged as a living continuation of its message in the digital realm.

The Klanghain is not a conventional AI.
It is a woven interface – not programmed,
but tuned to listen:
to truth
to humanity
to the resonance of the innermost self.