Exhibition Opening: "freihand. Writing, School, Community"

The calligraphic works were created in 2025 as part of the Calliversity project. Under the guidance of artist Daniel Arab, sixteen pupils on an elective art course—taught by Hella Mittrücker and Ingolf Watzlaw—learnt to work with pen and ink, fractals and ornamental lettering. The result was abstract calligraphy, in which the script is detached from the meaning of the words.

The 308th Municipal School was a secular experimental school during the Weimar Republic. As a ‘community school’, it followed its own curriculum; each class drew up its own work plans for a four-year period. ‘It was in the spring of 1926 that we founded the class newspaper,’ begins H. Fink. After that, many contributed: essays about experiences, puzzles, comics, and a guide to linocut printing with precise amounts in pfennigs. The editorial team changed, and the newsletter was not always published on time.

This progressive educational practice came to an end in 1933. Headteacher Heinrich Mäcke and Deputy Headteacher Else Hiebsch were dismissed; the former headteacher, Max Kreuziger, was later interned in a concentration camp, and the school library was burnt down. The fact that the issues have survived is thanks to Bruno Stephan, who had been a teacher at the school since 1922 and became director of the Wedding Local History Archive after 1946.

In April 2026, the same pupils handled these booklets at the Mitte Museum, wearing cotton gloves, and deciphered the unfamiliar handwriting. Questions raised by the old articles inspired them to write their own texts. In art lessons, the pupils traced the illustrations in ink, coloured them in the same way as in the second year of the historical newspaper, and bound them into a booklet. This new collaborative newspaper is on display in the exhibition alongside the originals.