A hat, a puppet, a tablet tube, a beer mug. What memories are associated with these things, what stories do they tell? What do we want to learn from them? For one year, 22 objects will complement the permanent exhibition Munich and National Socialism. Large and small, everyday and more unusual objects will add a new dimension to the content of the permanent exhibition, serving as commentaries and supplementing the information there. They will allow us to access history through our senses, providing starting points for individual and collective memories.
Each object is accompanied by a commentary, written and spoken by contemporary witnesses, heirs, activists, artists, and scholars. They approach the object in question from their own personal perspective, providing background and placing it in a broader context.
On nsdoku‘s tenth anniversary Memory is … invites visitors to reflect collectively on our relationship to the past: How do we remember? What do we remember? And how can painful and distressing experiences be portrayed and communicated today?
Booklet
The accompanying booklet contains brief information about each of the 22 objects on display followed by a commentary. With contributions by Laura Altmann, Frank Bajohr, Sandra Chatterjee, Edmund de Waal, Hamado Dipama, Ayala Drori, Miriam Gebhardt, Lena Gorelik, Ernst Grube, Lydia Grün, Almut Jöde, Constanze Köpl, Olga Mannheimer, Heike Catherina Mertens, München OEZ erinnern!, Sikko Neupert, Thomas Schuhbauer, Theresa Seraphin, Katrina Recker, Monika Sommer, Eric Otieno Sumba, and Paul Maria Wittmann.
Brief impressum
Memory is … Intervention with objects and their stories
An exhibition of the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism, 2025
Director: Mirjam Zadoff
Curators: Karolina Kühn, Ulla-Britta Vollhardt
Assistant curator: Chris Reitz
Lenders: DOMiD-Archiv, Cologne, the Voorn-Bueninck family, Forum Queeres Archiv München e.V., Ernst Grube, Almut Jöde, Olga Mannheimer, KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, Barbara Murken, Münchner Stadtmuseum, Museum and Memorial Site Fort IX, Kaunas, Lithuania, Thomas Schuhbauer, Stadtarchiv München, TOFT Studio, Rugby, UK, Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e.V., Bürgerstiftung für verfolgte Künste im Zentrum für verfolgte Künste, Solingen
Accompanying program
The intervention Memory is … will be accompanied by a series of events, addressing, for example, the question of “difficult“ or “special“ memories of a material or immaterial nature and how we should treat them. Public tours of the intervention will take place every Sunday at 3 pm. A guided tour by the curators will take place once a month on Tuesday at 5.30 pm.
Other fixed dates in our calendar until fall 2025 are:
May 8, 2025, 3 pm and 5 pm, guided tours by the curators with guests
Memory is …
With Karolina Kühn and Ulla-Britta Vollhardt
May 11, 2025, 11 am, talk
“Just remembering is not enough” (in German)
With Ernst Grube and Friedbert Mühldorfer
June 4, 2025, 7 pm, talk
What we inherit. On difficult mementos (in German)
With Olga Mannheimer and Thomas Schuhbauer
July 2, 2025, 7 pm, reading and discussion
Personal things. What clothing from Nazi camps can tell us today (in German)
In cooperation with the Literaturhaus Munich
With Karolina Sulej
July 19, September 20, 2025, 10 am-3 pm, workshop
Memory is … A personal approach to mementos and their stories (in German)
For individual visitors and groups
