German Historical Museum in Berlin: The dark side of the first Nazi exhibitions

Round dates regularly provide an opportunity for remembrance, warnings, and exhibitions. Hardly any other date shapes the museum and memorial landscape as strongly as “1945” – not only in Berlin, but also in Paris, London, and Warsaw. Around 80 years ago, exhibitions at these sites addressed German crimes. But how can or should one depict violence, let alone the Holocaust? As old as the question, so numerous are the attempts to deal with it and classify it. If Adorno ’s now famous and later partially revised postulate for poetry after Auschwitz seems to be pressing, then Ruth Klüger , author and Holocaust survivor, must also be held up as a counter to it. In 1944, while a concentration camp prisoner, she wrote two poems about Auschwitz and in her later memoirs emphasized how the inmates found solace in reciting verses they had once learned. The exhibitions from 1945–1948 presented at the DHM also demonstrate unequal perspectives on the violence emanating from Germany. The complementary aspect simultaneously reflects how the respective countries and victim groups were affected by the World War and what historical policies they pursued after 1945.