Ausstellung: »Wiedergutmachung«. Fotografien aus Siebenbürgen von Radu Darvas

Exhibition opening:September 8, 7:00 p.m., with exhibition curator Mira Darvas in attendance

Exhibition dates: September 9 through November 13, 2026

Radu Darvas (born in Romania in 1973, died in Dresden in 2015) grew up in Romania during the Ceaușescu regime. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest and often stayed in Transylvania for family reasons. In the mid-1990s, he moved to Dresden to continue his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. The photographs on display in the exhibition are from Viscri/Deutsch-Weißkirch, an area now characterized by tourism. At the time of the political transition and in the years that followed, it was primarily the older generation of Transylvanian Saxons who remained in the villages. With a sensitive eye, the artist captured the special moments and encounters in these people’s daily lives with his camera. In a house run by the Initiative Rumänien e. V., where association members, travelers, and visitors from Bucharest stayed overnight, gathered in the kitchen, and listened to music together, he came into contact with many young people, particularly from East Germany and Protestant church congregations across Germany, who were interested in the culture, landscape, and people of Transylvania. During the day, they helped the villagers in the fields, in the house, and in the yard, and ran errands for the association and the villagers. People listened intently to their stories. Radu was always there with his camera, capturing moments that, from today’s perspective, seem a hundred years away. Radu Darvas still developed the early black-and-white photographs from Transylvania by hand in the bathroom of his prefab apartment in Bucharest. After his untimely death in 2015, several hundred negatives and dozens of analog black-and-white photographs, particularly from Transylvania and Romania, dating from the late 1980s and early 1990s, remained in his family’s estate. Viscri is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Emigration and tourism development have brought about significant changes in the village. However, the younger generation’s interest in Transylvania has not waned. The exhibition’s title, “Reparation,” refers to making a small peace with oneself.

The accompanying events, including a storytelling café and a reading, promote the region and the culture of the Transylvanian Saxons.

The curator of the “Wiedergutmachung” exhibition in Düsseldorf isMira Darvas, the daughter of Radu. She is a trained wood sculptor and is currently pursuing a graduate program in museum studies at the University of Leipzig. She grew up in Dresden, has close ties to the history of Transylvania, and returns time and again to her family’s roots. A few years ago, she lived and worked for a time in Transylvania as a castle caretaker for the association “Europäisches Jugendbegegnungszentrum Kirchenburg Holzmengen e.V.”

A joint event organized by the Gerhart Hauptmann House Foundation and the Transylvanian Saxon Regional Association of North Rhine-Westphalia