Nach Hitler
In the organizer's words:
Between repression and preoccupation, consternation and indifference: people in Germany have been coming to terms with National Socialism for almost 80 years. How people deal with this history, how they react to it and how they behave towards it changes with each generation. Society, politics and culture influence the respective relationship to the National Socialist past. Personal experience, the TV series "Holocaust" or the accounts of contemporary witnesses can change the views of generations.
In our exhibition "After Hitler. The German Confrontation with National Socialism", we shed light on the different perspectives of the generations on National Socialist rule.
We start with the people who consciously lived through the dictatorship and the war. For example, a bust of Adolf Hitler shows how people repressed and denied their former enthusiasm: The German sculptor Hedwig Maria Ley sympathizes with the National Socialist movement and produces the first authorized depiction of Hitler. It becomes a bestseller. After the end of the war, Ley buries the bust in her garden. However, it did not remain there - a relative of her gardener placed it in his living room until the 1980s.
The exhibition explores what lies behind the often alleged silence of this generation and how widespread the accusations of members of the next generation - the so-called '68ers - are.
Each chapter of the exhibition focuses on a new generation, while at the same time the voices of previous generations remain relevant. This reveals continuities in the confrontation with National Socialist history; generational conflicts emerge clearly.
Dealing with National Socialism is still relevant more than 90 years after Hitler came to power. The number of anti-Semitic crimes has risen sharply in Germany in recent months, and more and more people in this country are voting for right-wing populist or extremist parties. A vandalized phone booth illustrates just how deep the hatred runs. In August 2023, a telephone box converted into a book box with a listening station goes up in flames near the "Gleis 17" Holocaust memorial in Berlin. It was set on fire by a 63-year-old man. He wanted to destroy the works inside - books about the Holocaust.
The objects and stories in the exhibition prove that dealing with the National Socialist past is still of great importance for our democracy.
This content has been machine translated.Location
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