In the lens of the enemy. The German photojournalists in occupied Warsaw 1939-1945
Press release from 04/27/2009
From 28 April to 3 June 2009, the Freundeskreis Willy-Brandt-Haus e.V. is showing an exhibition to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War with the German invasion of Poland. An exhibition organised by the House of Encounters with History (Dom Spotkán z. Historia), the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (bpk picture agency and Museum of European Cultures) with the participation of the Federal Archives.
Venue: Willy-Brandt-Haus, Stresemannstr. 28, 10963 Berlin
Invitation to the opening: 27 April 2009, 7.30 p.m.
Speakers:
Wolfgang Thierse, Vice-President of the German Bundestag
Bogdan Borusewicz, President of the Polish Senate
Piotr Jakubowski, Director of the House of Encounters with History, Warsaw
Norbert Zimmermann, Vice-President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
Eugeniusz Cezary Król, co-curator of the exhibition
About the exhibition:
Around 135 photographs, supplemented by fragments of documents, diaries and memories of Warsaw residents, show the history of Warsaw during the years of the Second World War and the occupation, organised chronologically and thematically. The city, previously full of vibrant life, became a place of harassment, repression and murder with the invasion of German troops. Warsaw lost more than half of its then 1.3 million inhabitants under German occupation, including almost all of the city's Jewish population of around 350,000 people. The individual chapters of the exhibition deal with the "September Campaign" and the destruction of Warsaw, the repression of the city's population, everyday life in occupied Warsaw and the ghetto, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and the destruction of the city between October 1944 and January 1945.
As the title suggests, the exhibition looks at history through the "lens of the enemy". The curators Danuta Jackiewicz and Eugeniusz Cezary Król selected the images from a contingent of photographs taken by the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS propaganda companies in Warsaw in the years 1939-45, most of which come from the holdings of the bpk picture agency of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin. After the exhibition was initially presented in the House of Encounters with History in Warsaw in autumn 2008, most of them are now being shown to the public for the first time in Germany.
There are still few known visual testimonies to Warsaw's wartime past. The pictures are an important contribution to the collective memory on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. The inhuman gaze and propagandistic purpose of the pictures is palpable in the vast majority of the photos. Norbert Zimmermann, Vice President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, said in his speech at the opening: "Whatever the propagandists of the Third Reich had in mind with the pictures, to see them today in Berlin, selected and exhibited by Polish experts in collaboration with German colleagues, is deeply moving. Archives such as those of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation are invaluable for the memory of humanity."
The exhibition is a Polish-German co-operation and research project of the Institute for Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (bpk picture agency and Museum of European Cultures) together with the House of Encounters with History in Warsaw, the Friends of the Willy Brandt House, the Federal Archives in Koblenz and the Herder Institute in Marburg. The patrons of the exhibition are the Mayor of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, and the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit.
Exhibition from 28 April - 3 June 2009
Tuesday to Sunday, 12 to 6 p.m., free admission, ID required
Stresemannstr. 28, 10963 Berlin
Long evening: Sunday, 10 May 2009, 6 p.m. - 2.30 p.m.
The extensive catalogue contains texts by Polish and German academics as well as around twice as many photographs as can be seen in the exhibition.
Danuta Jackiewicz and Eugeniusz Cezary Król (eds.), In the Lens of the Enemy. Die deutschen Bildberichterstatter im besetzten Warschau (1939-1945), Warsaw 2009, Verlag Rytm/Haus der Begegnungen mit der Geschichte, approx. 400 pages, price 35.00 euros.
Museum of European Cultures - National Museums in Berlin
As part of the Dahlem Museums, it deals with issues of everyday life and the living environment in the context of the cultural and contemporary history of Europe. With exhibitions, events and the formation of networks, it has established itself with its European partners as a place for intercultural encounters.
With over 12 million images from the fields of art, culture and history, the bpk picture agency is the point of contact for editorial and commercial image use. It offers images of works of art and culture from many of the world's museums and distributes - in some cases exclusively - images from the estates and archives of renowned photographers, especially on contemporary history.
Website of the picture agency bpk
Contacts:
Gisela Kayser
Artistic Director Freundeskreis Willy-Brandt-Haus e.V.
Stresemannstr. 28
10963 Berlin
Tel 030/259 93 785
Fax 030/259 93 788
E-Mail
Website
Hanns-Peter Frentz
Director of b p k
Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte
Märkisches Ufer 16-18
10179 Berlin
Tel: +49-30-278 792-0
Fax: +49-30-278 792-39
E-Mail
Website