14 August 2018
Kinder im Exil (Children in Exile)
The Akademie der Künste’s successful documentary exhibition is on view at Berlin’s Abgeordnetenhaus beginning on 6 September
Following venues in Ludwigshafen am Rhein (Rhineland-Palatinate) and in Linz, Austria, this year the documentary exhibition Children in Exile can be seen at the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin (House of Representatives) from 6–28 September 2018. Akademie President Jeanine Meerapfel will open the exhibition on 5 September at 6 pm.
Children in Exile opened at the Akademie in June 2016, attracting a high level of visitor and media interest. Since then, the documentary exhibition – a collaboration between the KUNSTWELTEN educational programme and the Archives of the Akademie der Künste – has been shown at a number of other locations. In 2017 the project was included among nominations for the BKM Cultural Education Prize, an award presented by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Due to the continued success of the exhibition, a related booklet on the subject was published earlier this year.
Little attention has previously been devoted to the views and perspectives of children who, for whatever reasons, have fled their homelands along with their families. Children in Exile is addressed to schoolchildren and adults. It deals with migration as both a challenge and enrichment. Facsimiles of photographs, letters and work manuscripts from the archives at the Akademie der Künste are displayed, largely from the estates of artists who had to go into exile with their children between 1933 and 1945. The show focuses on the stories of 26 children who fled with their parents – the daughters and sons of Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel, Paul Dessau, George Grosz, Wieland Herzfelde, Alfred Kerr, Anna Seghers, Friedrich Wolf, Arnold Zweig and others. The exhibition's current installation also features KUNSTWELTEN projects about exile – contributed to by children, Akademie members and fellows – that have taken place at the Akademie or in the Akademie archives since autumn 2015.
The realisation of the exhibition was supported by the Helga und Edzard Reuter-Stiftung and the Ministerium für Bildung, Jugend und Sport des Landes Brandenburg (MBJS, Brandenburg Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports).
The publication accompanying the exhibition portrays nine girls and boys as examples, augmenting their stories through photographs, letters, documents and excerpts from memoirs.
Event Information
Children in Exile
6–28 September 2018, Opening on 5 September, 6 pm
With Ralf Wieland, Gesine Bey, Jeanine Meerapfel, Werner Heegewaldt, Moritz
Nitsche, Helmut Zapf and schoolchildren of the Paul-Dessau-Schule in Zeuthen
Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin, Niederkirchnerstr. 5, 10117 Berlin
Next venue:
27 October – 25 November 2018, Opening on 26 October, 6 pm
Schleswig-Holstein-Haus, Kulturforum der Landeshauptstadt Schwerin, Puschkinstraße 12, 19055 Schwerin
Further venues are planned.
Further information: www.adk.de/kunstwelten
kunstwelten@adk.de, + 49 (0)30 200 57 1511/-1564
Press Contact:
Sabine Kolb, T + 49 (0)30 200 57-15 13, kolb@adk.de