Women's appeal 2025

On December 18, 2025, "FrauenAnklang" invites you to an evening that makes this contradictory mood audible, visible and tangible: the cautious steps towards a new life as well as the painful traces of the war.

For the first holidays after 1945 were characterized by a deep ambivalence. While some tried to find forms of community again, others had only just returned from camps, hiding places or flight. Many searched for relatives, hoping against all odds - and often had to learn that no one would return. Alongside the desire for community was the search for relatives, the emptiness left behind by the Shoah and the difficult coexistence of survivors and those who had remained silent or looked the other way - or who had been perpetrators.

The choir "La voix mixte" under the direction of Uta Schlegel opens up a space in which these complex experiences resonate musically. Heinrich Schütz's "Verleih uns Frieden", Schlegel's "Hope and History" and Benjamin Britten's "Concord" combine historical experiences from 1945 with questions of our present day. The pieces tell of fragility and confidence, of the power of common voices and of the need to find orientation despite everything.

Nathan Friedenberg's conversation with members of the Jewish community Ahawas Achim and the Protestant church community at Gesundbrunnen creates historical perspectives that bring this contradiction to life: How religious communities found their spaces, rituals and relationships again - and how difficult it was to find a foothold between loss, searching and new beginnings. The everyday itself became an expression of survival, a provisional form of hope.

Musically, Ines Paschke, Markus Wenz and Annette Goldbeck-Löwe interweave Berlin songs and a portrait of a contemporary witness with this narrative. Sounds, personal voices and historical images create a cityscape in which memories and new beginnings are inextricably intertwined.

At the end, Maxim Heller and the "Chor für alle" invite the audience to become part of this multi-layered evening - a shared moment that conveys the polyphony of that time and its experiences.


The evening is a cooperation between the Mitte Museum, the Fanny Hensel Music School and the adult education center Berlin Mitte.