Veranstaltungen

How were concentration camp memorials exhibited under state socialism, and what role did antifascism play in shaping them?

The history of the exhibitions at the GDR’s three National Memorial Sites in Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, and Sachsenhausen has been scarcely researched to date. Our workshop Exhibiting Antifascism: The National Memorials of the GDR in a Comparative Perspective brings these sites together for the first time in an interdisciplinary comparison. We will look at the narratives these exhibitions told, the people who shaped them, and the ways objects, photographs, and art were put to use.

Two days of papers, discussion, a workshop in the former cell building (“Zellenbau”), and a closing roundtable on how to deal with antifascist exhibitions and architectural remains today.

Organized by Ella Falldorf, Daniel Schuch, Hannah Sprute, and Aliena Stürzer.

Registration is open until November 8 via stuerzeraravensbrueckode

This workshop will be held in English. No translation will be provided.
We look forward to welcoming you in Ravensbrück.

Costs
Participation in the workshop is free. Please note that the organisers cannot cover the costs of travel, accommodation & lunch. Participants are asked to register individually for lunch (8 Euro per Meal) with the youth hostel via DJH Jugendherberge Ravensbrück - Angebote + mehr | Brandenburg.

Accommodation
Please notice that the accommodation in the youth hostel is unfortunately already booked out. 

Programm

Thursday, 19 November 2026

• 10:00 to 11:00
  Arrival and Welcome Remarks: The Exhibitions at the National Memorials in the GDR
  Ella Falldorf, Daniel Schuch, Hannah Sprute, and Aliena Stürzer

  
  Panel I Visualisations
  Chair: Hannah Sprute

• 11:00 to 11:30
  Postcards from the National Memorials in the GDR
  Lukas Riedl (University of Cologne)
   
• 11:30 to 12:00
  Evidence of Resistance and Antifascist Art: Exhibiting Inmates’ Images in the GDR Buchenwald Memorial, 1954 to 1990
  Ella Falldorf (Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris/Vienna Wiesenthal Institute)
   
• 12:00 to 12:30
  Exhibition Views in Comparison, a discussion with Mareike Otters (Universität Siegen)
   

• 12:30 to 14:00
  Lunch break
   

  Panel II Objects
  Chair: Daniel Schuch

• 14:00 to 14:30
  Objects as Evidence? Tracing the Holocaust in Ravensbrück’s “Camp Museum,” 1959
  Hannah Sprute (Ravensbrück Memorial Museum)
   
• 14:30 to 15:00
  Putting Yourself in Their Shoes? Prisoners’ Objects in Early Exhibitions in Buchenwald, Auschwitz, and Majdanek
  Corinna Bittner (DIZ Emslandlager)
   
• 15:00 to 15:30
  Concluding discussion of the first day, chaired by Daniel Schuch and Hannah Sprute
   
• 15:30 to 16:00
  Coffee break
   

• 16:00 to 18:00
  Workshop in the former cell building (“Zellenbau”)
  Aliena Stürzer (Ravensbrück Memorial Museum)

   

Friday, 20 November 2026

Panel III Politics and the Political in the GDR Camp Memorials
Chair: Aliena Stürzer

• 9:00 to 9:30
  The Annotated “Traditionskabinett”: Early Discussions of Antifascism in the GDR in 1991
  Annette Leo (Berlin)
   
• 9:30 to 10:00
  The National Memorials as an Instrument of GDR Nation Building
  Henrike Schellong and Lena Uhl (Kassel University)
   

• 10:00 to 10:30
  Coffee break
   

  Panel IV Antifascism and the Holocaust
  Chair: Ella Falldorf

• 10:30 to 11:00
  Early Exhibitions in Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen: Ambivalent Representations of the Holocaust during the Cold War
  Daniel Schuch (Vienna Wiesenthal Institute/Jena University)
   
• 11:00 to 11:30
  Exhibiting Antifascism and the Hungarian Holocaust: Budapest, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen (1958 to 1961)
  Daniel Véri (Central European Research Institute for Art History, Budapest)
   
• 11:30 to 12:00
  Concluding discussion of the second day, chaired by Aliena Stürzer and Ella Falldorf
   
• 12:00 to 13:30
  Lunch break
   
• 13:30 to 15:00
  Roundtable: How to Deal with Antifascist Exhibitions and Architectural Remains?
  Chair: Andrea Genest
  With Agata Pietrasik (FU Berlin), Alexandra Klei (TU Braunschweig), and Stephanie Herold (TU Berlin)
   
• 15:00 to 15:15
  Coffee break
   
• 15:15 to 16:00
  Concluding discussion and next steps
  
  
   

Veranstaltungsort

Veranstaltungssaal
Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück
Straße der Nationen
16798 Fürstenberg/Havel