Page 78 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 11(2) (2023)

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studia universitatis hereditati, letnik 11 (2023), številka 2 / volume 11 (2023), number 2

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Figure 5: In the area of ‘Loss and new beginnings’ on the first floor of the permanent exhibition, life-size portraits
of people who fled and settled in Germany are shown. Their memories can be heard in the audio guide
(photo: Catherine Perron, 2015)

39
almost life-size. They have different regions of mans. As the director explains, the idea was to here
origin (Vietnam, former Yugoslavia and the for- make history become concrete through human
mer German Reich and settlement areas). In the destinies, not to present one history but “a mul-
short audio sequences that accompany the pic- titude of histories, as diverse and complex as the
tures, the visitor discovers that what links these subject”, depending on the age at which flight
seemingly very different people is the fact that and expulsion have been experienced, wheth-
they all had to leave their homeland involuntari- er male or female, from where to where, if one
ly and that they settled in Germany. has experienced violence or not, and how inte-
This individualising approach is a conscious gration functioned (Möck 2021). This diversity
choice of the curators. It runs through the entire is encapsulated in the numerous green biogra-
exhibition (Möck 2021) and is taken up again in phy flaps that accompany each historical episode
38
the second part (2nd floor), which deals specif- and exposed object on the second floor. Once
ically with the “flight and expulsion” of the Ger- 39 This approach is echoing the one of the “Information cen- studiauniversitatis
tre under the field of stelae” that is underneath the neigh-
38 In contrast to the first floor, the second floor works in a bouring Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, where
chronological way, starting with the “German Expansion after a scientific introduction the exhibition works with bi-
policy and World War II”. ographical perspectives.