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Arthur Malcolm Stace (* 9. Februar 1885 in Redfern; † 30. Juli 1967 in Hammondville, Sydney) war ein australischer Soldat. Er wurde bekannt als Mr Eternity durch seine Eternity-Schriftzüge überall in Sydney.

Schon in jugendlichen Jahren sprach er dem Alkohol zu, bis er in den frühen 1930er Jahren Christ wurde. Da begann er, seine Botschaft zu verbreiten, indem er das Wort "Eternity" (dt. Ewigkeit) ab 1932 bis zu seinem Tod mit gelber Kreide auf die Fußwege in Sydney schrieb. Er wurde eine Legende in der Stadt. Die Geschichte seines Lebens wurde festgehalten in einem Lied, in Büchern, einer Statue, einer Oper und in einem Film.

Grab von Arthur Stace

Frühe Jahre

Stace wurde in Redfern, einem Stadtteil von Sydney, geboren. Er war das fünfte Kind von William Wood Stace aus Mauritius and Laura Stace (geb. Lewis), und wuchs in Armut auf. Um zu überleben stahl er Brot und Milch und suchte im Abfall nach Essensresten. Mit 12 Jahren hatte er nur eine geringe Schulbildung und wurde unter die Obhut des Staates gestellt. Mit 14 arbeitete er in einer Kohlemine. Er kaufte sich Alkohol und wurde schnell Alkoholiker, was ihn immer wieder ins Gefängnis und ins Krankenhaus brachte. In seinen 20er Jahren wurde er ein Kleinkrimineller, lieferte illegal Alkohol an Bordelle und Glückspielstätten und wurde Aufpasser bei einer Einbruchsbande. Im März 1916 schrieb er sich bei der Australian Imperial Force ein und diente im Ersten Weltkrieg in Frankreich und England. Er litt an wiederkehrenden Anfällen von Bronchitis and Pleuritis, was zu seiner Ausmusterung am 2. April 1919 führte. In den folgenden Jahren war er immer wieder betrunken und kam mit dem Gesetz in Konflikt.

Bekehrung zum Christentum

Nachdem Stace am 6. August 1930 das Evangelium von Jesus Christus von Reverend R. B. S. Hammond an der St Barnabas Anglican Church gehört hatte, bekehrte er sich zum Christentum. Zwei Jahre später am 14. November 1932 hörte er eine Predigt von dem beliebten Evangelisten John G. Ridley mit dem Titel "The Echoes of Eternity" (dt. Die Echos der Ewigkeit) über Jes 57,15 :

Denn so spricht der Hohe und Erhabene, er wohnt in Ewigkeit, sein Name ist Der Heilige: Als Heiliger wohne ich in der Höhe, aber ich bin auch bei dem Zerschlagenen und dem im Geist Niedrigen, um den Geist der Niedrigen wieder aufleben zu lassen und das Herz der Zerschlagenen neu zu beleben.

Ridleys Worte am Ende der Predigt

"Eternity! Eternity! I wish that I could sound, or shout that word to everyone on the streets. Eternity! Friends, you have got to meet it. Where will you spend Eternity?"
(dt. Ewigkeit! Ewigkeit! Ich wünschte, ich könnte das Wort jedem auf den Straßen klingen lassen oder zurufen. Ewigkeit! Freunde, Ihr müsst sie erreichen. Wo werdet ihr die Ewigkeit verbringen?)

ergriffen Stace und er fühlte einen Drang vom Herrn, das Wort zu schreiben. Er hatte ein Stück Kreide in der Tasche und begann nach dem Ende des Gottesdienstes das Wort auf die Straße zu schreiben. Zu seinem eigenen Erstaunen kam es korrekt und in schöner Schreibschrift hervor, obwohl er immer Probleme mit dem Lesen und Schreiben gehabt hatte.

Several mornings a week for the next 35 years, Stace woke at 4am to go around the streets of Sydney and chalk the word "Eternity" on footpaths, doorsteps railway station entrances, and anywhere else he could think of. Workers arriving in the city would see the word freshly written, but not the writer, and "The man who writes Eternity" became a legend in Sydney. The Sydney City Council brought him to the attention of the police as they had rules about the defacing of pavements, so much so that he narrowly avoided arrest about twenty-four times. Each time he was caught, he responded with, "But I had permission from a higher source". After eight or nine years, he tried to write something else, "Obey God" and then five years later, "God or Sin" but he could not bring himself to stop writing the word "Eternity".

After a period of homelessness, Stace found work as a caretaker and cleaner at the city offices of the Australian Red Cross and his local church, Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle. He also volunteered for decades as a social worker, assisting the unemployed, addicted, and mentally ill, both through his work for Anglican minister Robert Brodribb Hammond, and later of his own volition. In 1942, at the age of 57, Stace married his partner, Ellen Esther "Pearl" Dawson, after she proposed to him, and the couple moved to 12 Bulwara Road, Pyrmont.

The mystery of "Mr Eternity" was solved after 27 years when Reverend Lisle M. Thompson, who preached at the church where Stace worked as a caretaker, saw him take a piece of chalk from his pocket and write the word on the footpath. Thompson wrote about Stace's life and an interview was published in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph on 21 June 1956.

In 1963, photographer Trevor Dallen cornered Stace and asked to take a few pictures of him writing his famous phrase. After four photos, Dallen ran out of film and asked Stace to stay put while he got more, but upon his return, Stace had gone.

It is estimated that he wrote the word "Eternity" over half a million times over the 35 years.

Death

After his wife Pearl died in 1961, Stace left the Sydney suburb of Pyrmont in 1965 and moved to a nursing home in Hammondville in Sydney's south, where he died of a stroke on the 30 July 1967 at the age of 82. He bequeathed his body to the University of Sydney; subsequently, his remains were buried with those of his wife at Botany Cemetery in the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park (General 15, Row 20, no. 729) about two years later.

Eternity script

Aluminium replica Eternity at Town Hall Square, Sydney

The National Museum of Australia in Canberra holds one of only two existing original 'Eternity' inscriptions by Stace. He chalked it on a piece of cardboard for a fellow parishioner. The museum also had an Eternity gallery, inspired by Stace's story. The gallery features 50 personal stories from ordinary and extraordinary Australians. Each individual feature tells a separate story, anchored by a significant object. The stories are tied together by emotional themes including joy, hope, passion, mystery, thrill, loneliness, fear, devotion, separation and chance, which are all elements of Stace's story.

In Sydney the word "Eternity" can be seen written in a few places, of which only one is original:

• Inside the bell in the Sydney General Post Office clock tower, which had been dismantled during World War II. When the clock tower was rebuilt in the 1960s, the bell was brought out of storage and as the workmen were installing it they noticed, inside, the word "Eternity" in Stace's chalk. This is the only surviving "Eternity" by Stace's own hand in Sydney. How Stace had been able to get to the bell, which had been sealed up, remains unclear.
• On Stace's grave in Botany Cemetery.
• Eternity Cafe (In Town Hall Square between St Andrew's Cathedral and the Sydney Town Hall) was named after Stace's one word sermon. When the area was redeveloped in the 1970s, a wrought aluminium replica of the word in Stace's original copperplate handwriting was embedded in the footpath near a waterfall as a memorial to Stace.
• The Eternity Playhouse, a theatre named in Stace's honour, at Darlinghurst, the former Burton Street Tabernacle.
• Above the entrance to the Eternity Cafe in the old Booking Hall in Central railway station, Sydney, which was also named in his honour.

Legacy

Eternity Playhouse in Darlinghurst.

After Stace's death, the NSW government moved to permit the use of chalk on all public pavements in the state, passing a law known colloquially as 'Arthur's Law'.

The heritage-listed Burton Street Tabernacle was restored by the City of Sydney and transformed into a theatre. It was named the Eternity Playhouse on 5 December 2011 in tribute to Arthur Stace. His famous "Eternity" script is replicated on the marquee and throughout the theatre.

As a tribute to the man known as Mr Eternity, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was lit up with the word "Eternity" as part of the celebrations for the beginning of the year 2000 Sydney New Year's Eve celebrations, as well as part of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, at the celebration of the XXVII Olympiad. This was done to not only celebrate Arthur Stace's achievements, but to celebrate the new millennium.

A screen print homage of Stace's copperplate "Eternity" was made by Martin Sharp in 1990, and is now at the National Gallery of Australia.

The Eternity Man is an opera based on Stace's life, written by the Australian composer Jonathan Mills to a libretto by Dorothy Porter. This was adapted in 2008 into a film directed by Julien Temple.

Sydney-based Australian non-denominational publication Eternity, founded in 2009, was named after the tag.

Four known photographs of Stace were taken by Trevor Dallen for Sydney's The Sun newspaper. Dallen took the pictures in the former Fairfax building on Broadway. A photo of Arthur Stace, at his desk in the Hammond Hotel in Chippendale is in the archives of the HammondCare charity and was published in "Faith in Action: HammondCare", a 2013 history of the charity.

Weblinks

• "Mr Eternity: The Story of Arthur Stace" written by Roy Williams with Elizabeth Meyers, Acorn Press, 2017.
• "How an illiterate alcoholic impacted a whole city for eternity" by Tim Costello, Eternity News, 20 July 2017
• "From the battlefield to saving souls" by Pauline Conolly, The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 November 2009
• "The Life & Legacy of Mr Eternity", resources by Peter Rahme
• "Mr Eternity: Arthur Stace" by Jim Low, simplyaustralia.net
• Mr Eternity, an interview with Arthur Stace at www.mreternity.info

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[[Category:1885 births]] [[Category:1967 deaths]] [[Category:Converts to Christianity]] [[Category:Australian graffiti artists]] [[Category:Australian Baptist missionaries]] [[Category:Artists from Sydney]] [[Category:History of Sydney]] [[Category:Australian Baptists]] [[Category:Australian people of Mauritian descent]] [[Category:20th-century Australian painters]] [[Category:20th-century Australian male artists]] [[Category:Burials at Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park]] [[Category:20th-century Baptists]] [[Category:Australian male painters]]