Page 84 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 11(2) (2023)

full range of modern exhibition tools and con- national socialist (and communist) pasts and the
sciously avoids too obvious staging. No emotion- practice of and debates about memorial exhibi-
alisation effects are sought. The rooms are sober tions (like the prohibition of overwhelming the
and restrained. They are equipped with sim- visitors), but without adopting their aesthetics.
47
ple table showcases and are mainly animated by This approach is not least due to the curators’
lighting effects. experiences and training with memorial peda-
Particularly significant in this context are gogics and didactics, and to the interim direc-
the wall projections of people that enliven the torship of Uwe Neumarker, the director of the
exhibition. Initially, the idea was to evoke the Memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe, at
great mass of people who suffered the fate of ex- the time the exhibition was drafted (2015/2016)
pulsion by projecting numerous silhouettes be- and stands in stark contrast to the monumental-
hind the showcases. However, this was discarded ity of the architecture and the grand announce-
84 because of its similarity to Holocaust iconogra- ments of a “visible sign” by politics. As Gun-
phy. The scenographic solution that was ulti- dula Bavendamm, director of the foundation,
mately chosen shows the outlines of individual explains in an interview podcast with the Kul- ti
studia universitatis hereditati, letnik 11 (2023), številka 2 / volume 11 (2023), number 2
people or small groups that can be made visible turstiftung der Länder (Möck 2021), in dealing
through the activation of the audio guides. They with the themes of suffering and loss, the gesture
are sketched in the style of the popular genre of of her institution is a “quiet gesture, a withdrawn
the graphic novel. The projected images originate gesture” that makes it possible to remember vio- ta
from the available and exhibited source material lence without feeding the spiral of violence that
and is intended to be comprehensible. No addi- is so typical of population transfers. However, vi-
tions to the images are made. In general, there olence and injustice are neither euphemised nor
is no unreflected adoption of photography, as it avoided. For it is precisely this conscious renun-
is the case in many Heimatstuben and museums. ciation of a striking treatment of suffering and di
For example, pictures of the winter escape from emotionalisation that makes it possible to exhib-
East Prussia, which usually stand for “flight and it and thematise them. This is done directly on
expulsion”, are not to be found. The motif of the the first floor in the areas of “Flight from War”,
trek is even critically examined and deconstruct- “Cleansing, Deportation and Expulsion”, “Sex-
ed by using iconic example pictures to prove that ual Violence” and “Genocidal Violence”. But on
they show something other than what is usual- the one hand these topics are dealt with there in
ly attributed to them. The fact that the iconog- general terms and on the other hand the exhib- here
raphy from the flight left far more powerful trac- its are presented by means of a wall of cabinets
es in the collective memory than the one from whose drawers have to be opened, i.e., which are
the expulsion is mentioned and questioned. Pho- initially concealed. The negative experiences of
tographs are predominantly left in their original the German refugees and expellees are in turn
format (e.g. as passport photos) and not exhib- clearly mentioned in the audio accounts of con-
ited larger than life. The reduction to suffering temporary witnesses on the 2nd floor.
and victims is also avoided, as it is not the prima- In the restraint and care of its permanent
ry aim of the exhibition to emotionalise. exhibition, the Documentation Centre forms a
new approach to the memory of “flight and ex-
A Visible Sign, But With a Quiet Gesture? 47 The tradition and museum practice linked to the Holo-
In summary, it can be said that the way the Docu- caust was certainly the most fertile and productive in the
mentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, realm of reflections on how to exhibit negativity. It had a studiauniversitatis
great influence on the staff of the Documentation Centre,
Reconciliation deals with negativity is strongly who were trained in it. However, one could point to the
influenced by the debates about the means with lack of reflections on what this specific negative past char-
acterized by displacement/movement would require as a
which to present violence and negativity of the museography.