Out of the Box – 75 Years of the Archives of the Akademie der Künste

© Akademie der Künste

When literary scholar and journalist Alfred Kantorowicz (1899–1979) was appointed director of the Heinrich Mann Archive at the newly established Deutsche Akademie der Künste in East Berlin, there was no way of knowing that Mann’s estate would become the nucleus of a pan-German “Archive of the Arts”. Today, the Archives of the Akademie der Künste are considered the most important interdisciplinary collection of modern art and culture in the German-speaking world, with over 1,400 archives of artists from all disciplines as well as numerous collections from art institutions and art associations.

The exhibition Out of the Box takes a look behind the scenes of the archives and shows what is involved with “memory work”, the kinds of tasks and challenges connected with it and the fruit that it yields. The 75 stories presented cover iconic works, such as Walter Benjamin's essay “Was ist Aura?” (What Is Aura?), Anna Seghers’s novel The Seventh Cross, Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, John Heartfield’s collages, Käthe Kollwitz’s Mahnmal für den Frieden and Mary Wigman’s expressionist dances. They speak of the aura of objects, the order of things and the power of archives to define the canon that will frame the memory work of future generations. At the same time, they show that in an age of “alternative facts”, it is becoming more and more important for archives to act as a guarantor of authentic, reliable information.

Every Artist Must Take Sides – Resonances of Eslanda and Paul Robeson

With “Every Artist Must Take Sides – Resonances of Eslanda and Paul Robeson”, the Akademie der Künste explores the legacy of two extraordinary figures of the 20th century. The political and artistic endeavors of Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson (1895 – 1965) and Paul Robeson (1898 – 1976) were an expression of a way of thinking that understood the world in relations and of an uncompromising resistance to all forms of oppression. An exhibition and a festival both present contributions by contemporary artists and musicians, as well as materials from the Paul Robeson Archives of the Akademie der Künste.

“Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. He has no alternative. [...] The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery.” This urgent appeal was made by Paul Robeson on 24 June 1937, during a solidarity concert at the sold-out Royal Albert Hall in London, in support of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. The African American singer, actor, trained lawyer, and activist reached a global audience through numerous films, theater and concert performances, political rallies, radio broadcasts, records, and newspapers. African American author, anthropologist, UN correspondent, artist manager, and activist Eslanda Robeson wrote about her travels to Southern, Eastern, and Central Africa and was actively involved in reconstituting the “world community” after World War II, focusing on internationalist women's organizations. Together, the couple linked the anti-racist struggle for civil and human rights in the United States with anti-fascist freedom movements in Europe, international labor movements, and anti-colonial liberation struggles in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean in the spirit of socialist internationalism.

Paul Robeson’s concerts and engagements, alongside Eslanda Robeson’s research, allowed both to engage with the Black diaspora worldwide, seeing themselves both as part of this diaspora and as global citizens. Eslanda Robeson regarded her writing, and Paul Robeson his voice and keen ear (which likely enabled him to sing in over 20 languages), as “weapons” they strategically deployed. Their stage performances, films, recordings, publications (such as the newspaper Freedom, founded with W.E.B. Du Bois in 1950), as well as postal services and telephone lines, became vital media for their transnational activism and tireless, creative resistance – even against the anti-communist repression, surveillance, and intimidation by the U.S. government during the 1940s and 1950s.

In 1965, in the midst of the Cold War, the Paul Robeson Archives was founded at the former Academy of Arts of the GDR as the first systematic collection of material on the life and work of a Black American artist and on the work of a Black activist and intellectual. Today, the Paul Robeson Archives represent a productive interface of current post-socialist and post-colonial discourses. On the occasion of the archive's 60th anniversary, the project “Every Artist Must Take Sides” opens up a resonance space to relate the legacy of the Robesons and their struggles to the pressing questions of our present.

Contributions by Heiner Goebbels, George E. Lewis, Robert Machiri, Neo Muyanga, Shana L. Redmond, Kirsten Reese, Matana Roberts, and many more.

“Every Artist Must Take Sides – Resonances of Eslanda and Paul Robeson” is a project by the Akademie der Künste in collaboration with the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, and the Haus für Poesie, Berlin.

Funded by the German                      Funded by the Federal Government
Federal Cultural Foundation             Commissioner for Culture
                                                             and the Media