Walter Pall and the early days of bonsai in Germany
Author: Walter Pall
Collaborator: J.P. Arzivenko
It was in the very early 80’s that I started to do bonsai, and at that
time it was very difficult to you get information and find books. I had
found out that there is was guy in Hannover, Germany, who still exists,
and then there was what is called Bonsai Center Heidelberg, which later
on became quite famous. I ordered two or three books from them, and from
these books I learned everything.
So I found from these books that apparently in the old days the Japanese
and the Chinese would go to the wilderness and collect trees. I grew up
in the Austrian mountains, so I said “I know where these trees are” and I
was very naive with no clue of anything, but I knew where the trees
were. I was living in Hamburg at that time, but my parents lived in
Austria, so we went there on vacation all the time. During the
vacation I went up to the mountains and brought back a larch, I did
this several times, and after a while I had a nice collection of
collected trees.
Then I found that these trees didn't fit with what the books told me. The
books told me that there must be a nice trunk, up on one third the first
branch, and there must be triangular crown. The trees that I had found
would not conform to that; so I was clueless, and then I somehow tried
to do something which looked like what I had hoped it should look like. I
tried to make a bonsai look out of that. Which now I know was futile,
one shouldn't do that, but I didn’t know. So I thought “I must be very
careful when selecting material”, because most of the material seemed
worthless to me at that time. Nowadays this is exactly the material we
want.
So I wasn’t the only one in Germany, but I was certainly one of the
pioneers of collecting trees. In Switzerland at the same time, in parallel a man called Pius
Notter was doing the same but then I didn’t know him. Well, anyway one
day I thought “I am creating something which somehow looks nice but I must learn to create a bonsai properly”. So I
went to the Bonsai Center Heidelberg in Germany and I was deeply
impressed by the trees they show, all Japanese imported trees, some
Chinese.To me, at that time, the trees were brilliant, extraordinary.And
there were the employees and there were masters. Horst Krekeler was one
of them, later on a famous name. And I asked them questions like “what
do you do with this collected material?”, and from the answers I must
say, I found out that they had just as little clue as I had - they
didn’t know. They knew exactly what to do with well prepared material -
if the tree is already prepared for becoming a bonsai and you just finish
that, then you have a good bonsai. They knew that this is the way bonsai
is done in Japan from material, they did not know what I was really
interested in “what do you do with collected material which is totally
wild, and does not at all conform to the bonsai rules”, I found that I
had to experiment myself.
And then we had the first exhibit in Düsseldorf, Germany which was in 1985
or so, and I found that I had much bigger trees compared to the rest -
much bigger, much more wild, much more exciting to me, and at that time
already I found that some people didn’t like them, because they didn’t
conform, they didn’t look like bonsai.
Well anyway, at one point I was considered an expert, I knew about the art
of converting these trees into something that looks like a bonsai or
even a real tree, and I also had learned how to not kill the trees. In
the beginning if you have no clue you kill just about every single tree,
and so did I. Then I learned how to keep them alive, and I found that
even trained gardeners wouldn’t know. I thought “oh, gardeners can give
me the answers”, and then I found this is not what they are learning in
gardening education.
And then I thought I had to deal with real experts; I went to the research
lab of a really large chemical company. I went to the top chemist, who
was an expert in feeding, and I asked him “how do you feed bonsai?”, and
the man gave me some feed which they still have, which is worthless, it
is a feed which makes trees not grow, there is no nitrogen in there,
because he was under the impression that thats really bonsai, you feed
them so that they are somehow happy but they don't grow. Now we know
exactly the opposite is true - you only can develop a tree if it grows,
you need a lot of nitrogen.
You see, the top expert, the chemical expert would give me the totally
wrong answer. I found the hard way that there were no experts, and then
we had this Japanese master coming into Heidelberg and doing a
performance in the stage and he impressed me deeply, the way he pulled
out the bark, creating dead wood.
Now I know, the kind of tree they offered to him was so silly, so nothing,
it was just a stick. The only thing he could do was a dramatic jin and
shari to show some action there. But that deeply impressed me, and of
course when I came home I started to rip and break trees apart, again
there was nobody to show me what to do. And then I found that these
Japanese people show you something, but I didn’t really get my answers
to the questions I had. Even if you asked him a question, maybe you get
an answer, but was not the answer you wanted, so you have to find out
yourself, and this is the way Japanese teach anyway, they will never
tell you what to do, you have to find out.
So I found out and one day I was considered a top expert in the major part
of Europe - so that is how that happened. And
around that the Bonsai Scene started, Bonsai Club Germany and the
exhibits with everything, and now its one of the most developed in the
world, and its only happened in thirty years, and I went through these
thirty years.
