The photo series Burned Books by Annette Kelm portrays selected examples of books proscribed by the Nazis as “un-German” and publicly burned in 1933. They represent the cultural diversity of their time and the modernist authors and designers whose works and ideas the Nazi dictatorship sought to destroy. The photographer Annette Kelm drwas our attention to the significance of objects for the collective memory, especially now that the last contemporary witnesses are disappearing.
The photographs exhibited at the Munich Documentation Center are just four of a total of 24 photographs created for the 2019 exhibition Tell me about yesterday tomorrow. Alongside authors such as Else Lasker-Schüler, Erich Kästner and Stefan Zweig, Kelm’s 24 images also highlight lesser-known authors.