Franz Wanner. Eingestellte Gegenwarten

Franz Wanner (*1975, Bad Tölz) is interested in the gap between reality and the self-portrayal of the Federal Republic of Germany. To this end, he researches Germany's history and carefully observes how it is glossed over, adjusted and instrumentalized for the present. The exploitation of labor is the central theme of his exhibition at the Lenbachhaus: under Nazism, the use of forced laborers was widespread in all areas of society. The recruitment agreements with Italy, Turkey, Greece and Yugoslavia were later based on the massive structures of Nazi forced labor. Some of the people who were recruited and moved to Germany from 1955 onwards were housed in former Nazi barracks, which were known as "guest worker camps"; the legal basis for the agreements was based on a Nazi decree from 1938.

Safety goggles made of Plexiglas stand at the beginning of Wanner's exhibition "Eingestellte Gegenwarten". The goggles were recovered during excavations on the site of the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp. To date, there is no traceable information about the prisoner, who was deployed in forced labor in the armaments industry and used the glasses to protect her eyesight. Only her desire to protect herself can still be seen today in this object.

The material from which the glasses are made was introduced in 1933 by the German company Röhm & Haas under the brand name "Plexiglas" and was used almost exclusively in the armaments industry for aircraft windows from 1936 onwards. However, the Nazi state also used the aesthetics of its apparent invisibility for propaganda exhibitions. Today, a wide variety of objects are made of Plexiglas, from police shields to museum display case covers. In Wanner's staging in the exhibition, such objects, detached from their original function, become relics through which Wanner marks the exhibition space as a crime scene. Under Nazism, forced laborers were also used in museums such as the Lenbachhaus in the name of "art protection", for example to evacuate works of art during air raids.

Through his scrutinizing look at today's state institutions such as the secret service and the police, the interlocking of university research and the arms industry, as well as Germany's active role in the European Union's defensive migration policy, Wanner asks where and how the Nazism of the past is perpetuated in today's economic liberalism.

As Artist in Residence at the Harun Farocki Institute, Franz Wanner developed the exhibition "Mind the Memory Gap" for the KINDL - Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin. The exhibition at the Lenbachhaus is based on this earlier presentation.

Curated by Stephanie Weber.