Jerusalem Syndrome/type 3

Artist: Ulrike Steinke

There is tension in the air. / The city is saturated with holiness / and thick with significance.

Every year / visitors temporarily lose / their sanity.

On certain days / the team of the clinic/is on high alert.

The persons concerned/become restless / and dress up in strange costumes.

They proclaim the arrival of the Messiah. / Want to save the world. / Succumb from delusions of redemption.

After a short stay in the ward that has been especially set up for them…/ they return to their ordinary lives / as if nothing had happened.

Every year flocks of self-proclaimed saints of all varieties descend on Jerusalem: for some of them their pilgrimage ends in the Kfar-Shaul-Hospital where there is a special ward reserved for them.


Ulrike Steinke
Ulrike Steinke was born in 1975 in Mecklenburg. She studied illustration at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig under Volker Pfüller. She taught at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle. She lives and works in Leipzig and Munich.
ulrike-steinke.de