It wasn't that long ago. And now the time has come.

Between 1948 and 1949, Kerckhoff published fictional portraits in the *Berliner Zeitung* under the title *Menschen in unserer Zeit* (*People of Our Time*), which addressed key issues facing early post-war society: guilt, denazification, anti-Semitism and democracy. The exhibition explores this body of work systematically for the first time.

Shortly after the end of the war, Berlin was the setting for Germany’s still-uncertain future – and language itself became the arena for debates about this future and how to come to terms with the past. Kerckhoff’s conviction that change can only be achieved through language lies at the heart of the exhibition.

Kerckhoff’s questions are not historically resolved. Five artistic works created specifically for the exhibition place her texts in dialogue with the present, which is itself characterised by upheavals and unresolved issues. Visual art, composition and a literary intervention engage with Kerckhoff’s language: Jeanno Gaussi, likabari a.k.a. Melika Akbari, Eric Meier, Peter Wawerzinek and Jens-Karsten Stoll have developed their own works for the exhibition. Drawing on their own biographies, experiences, techniques and personal approaches, they bring Kerckhoff’s work into the present.

Curator Heike Albrecht has been engaged with Kerckhoff’s work for some time: in 2023 she curated a series of interviews and readings on her ‘Berlin Letters’, and in 2025 a series of discursive performances at the Theaterdiscounter Berlin.

Biographies of the artists and the curator

Jeanno Gaussi, born in Kabul, Afghanistan, grew up in Kabul, Delhi and Berlin. Drawing on a narrative concept, she creates intimate installations exploring space and memory. Her work encompasses various media, such as video, photography, objects and texts. A central theme of her practice is the exploration of places and the encounters associated with them. Building on this, she engages with questions of memory, the search for identity and the social and cultural processes triggered by these. She has taken part in numerous exhibitions, film festivals and symposia (dOCUMENTA 13, Havana Biennial, TEDx Marrakesh). She was a fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Dis:connectivity in Processes of Globalisation’, received the Ann Wolff Tutsek Foundation scholarship and was awarded the Körber Foundation’s Exile Visual Arts Special Award in 2025.

Eric Meier, born in 1989 in East Berlin, is a photographer and sculptor who grew up in Frankfurt an der Oder and lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, as well as at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Ostkreuz School of Photography in Berlin. Eric Meier’s work explores his family and political experiences in the East German city of Frankfurt an der Oder, on the border with Poland. His photographic work can be understood as a search for the metaphorical potential of images, as well as a form of social critique. His artist’s monograph “Eric Meier – FF” was published in 2021. His works are held, amongst others, in the Dresden State Art Collection, the Federal Art Collection and the Hoffmann Collection.

likabari, also known as Melika Akbari, is a multidisciplinary performance and visual artist. Having studied architecture (BA, Tehran, Iran, 2016) and choreography (MA, HZT, Berlin, 2022), she works as a choreographer, performer, set designer and costume designer. Her conceptual works are site-specific, multi-layered and detail-oriented. She explores the realm of material forms and movement through deconstruction, abstraction and minimalism. In her creative practice, she blurs the boundaries between reality and imagination. Her most recent works include conceptual performances, short films, set designs and costume designs.

Jens-Karsten Stoll, born in 1965 in East Berlin, is a musician and composer. He studied accompaniment and composition at the ‘Hanns Eisler’ Academy of Music in Berlin. As a musical director, composer and pianist, he has worked on numerous theatre productions across the German-speaking world, including at the Berliner Ensemble, the Deutsches Theater Berlin and the Schauspielhaus Hamburg. He has been working continuously with the cabaret artist and director Rainald Grebe at numerous theatres since 2008. Concerts and workshops have taken him to Mexico City, Guadalajara, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Washington, Abidjan, Barcelona, Brussels, Warsaw, Genoa, Zurich and Tashkent, amongst other places.

Peter Wawerzinek was born in Rostock in 1954 under the name Peter Runkel. He grew up in various children’s homes and with foster families on the Baltic Sea coast. He has been a freelance writer, director and radio playwright since 1988. Peter Wawerzinek received the Berlin Critics’ Prize for Literature (1991), the Radio Play Prize from the Berlin Academy of Arts (1993), the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize and the audience prize of the same name (2010), was shortlisted for the German Book Prize (2010), the Honorary Award of the German Schiller Foundation (2024) and numerous grants, including the writers’ fellowship at the German Academy in Rome, Villa Massimo.

Heike Albrecht is a curator and dramaturg in the interdisciplinary performing arts programme. She headed the Performing Arts Programme at LOFFT Leipzig, curated numerous festival formats (including ‘Westend 05 know your rights’ and ‘Tanznacht Berlin’) and was Artistic Director and Managing Director of the Sophiensaele Berlin from 2007 to 2010. For the Goethe-Institut, she curated “As we speak” as part of the European Capital of Culture “Maribor 2012”. At the Academy of the Arts, she worked in 2019 as a curator for the programme series “What the Body Remembers: On the Relevance of Dance Heritage”. In 2023, she curated a series of interviews and readings based on Susanne Kerckhoff’s “Berliner Briefe”, and in 2025, a series of discursive performances at TD Berlin.

Curator: Heike Albrecht

Supported by the Capital City Culture Fund.