Opening of the new special exhibition on Susanne Kerckhoff—featuring a reading by Peter Wawerzinek and music by Rex Joswig
Between 1948 and 1949, Susanne Kerckhoff published a series of fictional portraits in the *Berliner Zeitung*: ‘People of Our Time’. In these, she explored the issues that were weighing heavily on the young post-war society – guilt, denazification, anti-Semitism, and the question of how democracy was even supposed to work. In 1950, Kerckhoff took her own life. She was subsequently forgotten in both East and West.
Image gallery
Susanne Kerckhoff
This exhibition systematically explores this series for the first time. In doing so, it follows Kerckhoff’s own conviction that change could only be achieved through language: shortly after the end of the war, Berlin was the setting for a future that was still open, and language was the arena in which this future – and how to deal with the past – was debated.
Five artists have created works especially for the exhibition: Jeanno Gaussi, likabari a.k.a. Melika Akbari, Eric Meier, Peter Wawerzinek and Jens-Karsten Stoll.
Visual art, composition and a literary intervention engage with Kerckhoff’s texts – each drawing on their own biographies, experiences and techniques.
At the opening, Peter Wawerzinek will read from *Schreibarbeit*, the text he wrote about his engagement with Kerckhoff’s epistolary novel *Berliner Briefe*.
Like her, he explores the question of how to bear witness without holding back. Rex Joswig, singer with Herbst in Peking since the late 1980s, will provide the evening’s soundtrack.
- Curated by Heike Albrecht, who has been exploring Kerckhoff’s work since 2023.
- Curatorial collaboration: Camille Compere.
- Supported by the Capital Culture Fund.
Dates
September 2026
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