Yesterday, my former colleague Ingo Niermann posted a little text that surprised me, since it is full of obvious, verifiable inaccuracies – to put it nicely -, and falls far short of the usual coherent standard of his work. I feel no inclination to further heat up the noticeably strong emotions that made Ingo write this, but will just go through the piece and fact-check the contents.

Ingo for a while already attempts to re-claim the project´s older efforts and achievements for his own, personal merit – practically destroying all its opportunities and spirit.

In a friendly nutshell:
0) Ingo has neither invented, kicked-off nor ran the project – as long as it was running.
1) The old association is positively defunct and has copied content, not the other way around.
2) The project´s domain was always right here, it has never been “hijacked”.
3) Ingo repeatedly lied in order to get control of the project, and then attempted a thing most of us would call blackmailing. I and other core people consequently left the former association, respectively broke up with Ingo´s personality show.

The Pyramids idea is not a vanity show. It´s not a thing you could fair-use to manipulate people into building your own, personal career. It´s too reasonable for these strategies, too sincere, and too challenging as well.

You can stop reading right here, unless you would like to learn about the details below. Ingo Niermann´s complete text is in block quotes.

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Ever since the Great Pyramid project gained international media attention people have accused me of having stolen their idea. Usually I had never heard of them before and their ideas were drastically different. But now there is a new situation.

Actually, that happened only once until autumn 2008. A guy from the Netherlands contacted me and threatened to sue us. I emailed back, then we talked on the phone for thirty minutes. We never heard back from him. I know this, since I actually ran the project while it was still operating.

Founding member and former chairman Jens Thiel is presenting himself as the legitimate heir to our association’s work, copying and modifying the content of our website.

Several inaccuracies in this paragraph:

Founding member and former chairman ..

While I am indeed founding member and chairman of the Friends of the Great Pyramid e.V., my role is better described as actually RUNNING the project right from the start: from our application for funds from the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany (on my name and address), until late summer 2008. 90% of the at times massive day to day workload was mine, which was fine and our common original plan.

In the region of 80% of the total hours that went into the project from the association´s side over this period were mine, compensated far below 10 €/hour I once calculated. When I do consulting work, I charge 500 .. 800 € per day. I was obviously passionate about this difficult and fascinating project we were building, and I was obviously somewhat successful.

Ingo however, was an essential part as well. He pulled some strings to secure our first funding, made the introduction to Rem Koolhaas, had a crucial role in the architecture contest – though he did not write a single line in the 30 pages “Call for Ideas”-document to make it happen -, and fostered a few of our larger press stories. Above all, he wasn´t less passionate than I was.

.. presenting himself as the legitimate heir to our association’s work ..

My impression was – and still is – the supporting association is gone since a year already. The website is being updated every five months or so with non-operative non-content. Recently I called people we used to work with and everybody was much surprised to hear back from the project they all assumed was dead.

I guess, what is happening is quite simple: Ingo, who is a brilliant conceptual thinker when it comes to art, attempts to use the project as a platform to propel his own, only recently launched career as an artist. That would be perfectly ok with me, as long as he sticks to the truth about the project´s past. Just some speculation. Makes one think about the „legitimate heir“ issue though.

Actually, the website he now runs was being stripped and downgraded: Virtually all of the blog posts that would not show the exclusive and tireless efforts of Ingo Niermann but give an idea of what the project was actually all about, what we achieved and how, were deleted after Ingo took over. Makes one think about the „legitimate heir“ issue even more so?

.. copying and modifying the content of our website.

The problem is: This is just not the association´s website. I made it with another guy (he code, me concept and copy; -ish) for a time after the Federal Cultural Foundation funding, and after the association´s days. The association has never acquired any rights to use this site; least not for concept and copy, for which I claim copyright.

Already last year, a gloomy Thiel told me in front of some witnesses: “Ingo, you invented it, but I am the Pyramid.” Drunk and wearing a hood, he resembled a doomed character from a German Expressionist movie.

These are funnily some of the very few bits in Ingo´s text that are half-way accurate. Increasingly suffering from a severe recurring clinical depression and being over-driven by my passion for the project and the ambition to make it real, I found it increasingly hard to cope with the project´s workload. As many in those situations, I started drinking too much. Still, my professional performance was significantly „above expectation“ – the project advanced to become a huge success even throughout those dark days.

It was however only on the next morning after this bizarre 2 am event, that I reassuringly told Ingo, he had invented the Pyramid – and kept telling him that for quite a while ever since. I sensed, that meant a lot to him. In fact, it was a white lie, that fired back as we all have to learn the hard way now. Ingo´s initial idea is the result of a conversation between the both of us back in 2005. More importantly: That idea might get you into the Venice Art Biennale, but in its original form it is unfortunately altogether impractical and unrealistic.

Disclosure: I do wear hoods.

The months that followed did indeed turn out to be horrible, as Thiel wanted the rest of our team to suffer from his personal crisis at least as much as he suffered himself. He considered this to be “just fair,” as in 2007 he had done more than anyone else to make the Great Pyramid happen.

There´s some truth in this. I had been suffering a lot, being depressed, measly paid – but above all running this project in an environment, where everybody was eager to get a piece of the cake – for free, with the least possible effort or commitment. Thus I increasingly burned out, made lots of wrong decision these days, that luckily had not damaged the project, and hurt a few people. Speaking of free riders, I of course have to acknowledge, that Ingo most of the time tried his best to support the project, not very actively though, and to little avail unfortunately.

But when the project funding from the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany was gone and Thiel’s salary ended, his enthusiasm faded.

That claim takes quite some chuzpe, or despair. I am afraid, the latter is true but feel unable to rejoice about that thought.

First: I once made a quick estimate and came up with a combined compensation I received of significantly below 10 € per hour across the entire project time. When I do consulting work, I charge 500 € min. a day.

Second and much more relevant: The actual reason why I withdrew was that Ingo schemed a clever coup to get rid of me and succeeded, since in mid 2008 I was completely burned out from the last one and a half years. I would still have done everything to further advance the project – but Ingo after his coup had immediately frozen any communication.

If I wouldn´t know Ingo well and be convinced (yes, still) of his integrity, I might speculate: He had what he wanted: a global publicity sensation none of us would have dreamed of with his and my name in all the media; an idea successfully pitched that obviously stroke a chord with many, many people; a brilliant book; all that for relatively nothing and up for grabs – if one would just get rid of this other guy. But that´s not Ingo as I got to know him as a friend over several years. Frankly: I have no idea, why he went so mad and started acting so unreasonably. Reminds me bit of myself in my darkest days.

He created a decent financial mess, left our association, and hijacked the association’s original web address, thegreatpyramid.org.

All verifiably untrue.

The books are perfectly ok, and our then sponsor did not find fault with a single line. Yes, I got slightly more money than we had planned initially (cf. above, what „more“ means) but I worked considerably more for it; Ingo got significantly less money. Yes, after I sensed that Ingo would take the project and turn it into his own, unmerited conceptual art work, I didn´t feel much inclined to sit down for another week and finalize the accounts, reports, massive press clippings etc. for the Federal Cultural Foundation. Yes, I said: „I better burn all this stuff..“ and I was somewhat right as we see now. In the end, however, reason is what drives me and all accounts etc. were rendered immaculately.

I have not „hijacked“ anything. I always owned the domain thegreatpyramid.org and never attempted to conceal that fact. The domain was registered by me weeks before the supporting association had been established in autumn 2006. I registered it – actually I bought it in an auction using my own private funds -, since I had come up with the project´s name in the first place. Before we started the project, Ingo was using the odd name „Deutsches Weltwunder“. He btw also strongly opposed my suggestion, to have „Friends“ in the association´s name.

In March 2009 Ingo outright blackmailed me, and not the other way around as he keeps on misinforming the public: Either you give me the domain, or I´ll throw you out of the association. I offered Ingo to keep on using the domain without transferring it, which he wouldn´t accept. I felt, it was high time to eventually leave the association. We had a simple deal: We´re both together in this, and the project is neither a clever media stunt nor conceptual art. Ingo just broke that deal manifold.

It cost us some money and a lot of time to put things back in order and to move our content to the new web address www.thegreatpyramid.de earlier this year.

I have no idea, why Ingo is making this so obviously silly claim: He played tricks with the hoster and got all the data that was on the domain. It´s just an hours work to install that data somewhere else – which he obviously did, since his rip-off website is 100% what I had left; typos and crooked alignments included. The current www.thegreatpyramid.org website btw. had cost me 100 € and two long days of work. Maybe, this is just a competence issue.

But Thiel has not ceased to bother us now that his “nasty breakdowns” have apparently subsided. At the old association’s web address, he claimed that our website is just a “hype”. In October he launched his own “The Great Pyramid” website onto which he is copying our content, falsely asserting that it has existed “since 2006” (a couple of days later it’s „since 2005“) and that our “supporting association Friends of the Great Pyramid e.V. (…) is now defunct” while an anonymous “core part of the original team” – obviously just him – ”carries on with the project”.
Thiel is far from following his own “indispensable” guideline: “Be true!”

I and the Friends of the Great Pyramid claim no copyright on the idea of the Great Pyramid. If Thiel or anyone else should be successful in making it happen, we would only be happy. But stealing content from our website and telling lies about our association is another matter. Until now, almost 1600 people have made an unbinding reservation for a Pyramid stone and we have the utmost respect their trust.

We are currently developing different strategies to make the Great Pyramid actually happen. We are far from defunct.

Mostly reiterations of the points further above in these paragraphs, or stuff I don´t need to comment on. All the wrong assertions should be clearly invalidated by now. The thief is obviously not me, and neither the blackmailer.

This is just it. Comments are closed, I wont waste any more time with this weird stuff. Have a good day everybody.
Jens Thiel

Image on top from the book Ingo and I made back in the old times. Ingo nowadays prefers to claim that work for himself alone, although I and many more contributed most of the concepts and contents. – I still think, it´s a valid/unevitable guideline for what we introduced.