GDR on Tuesday

Tue 9 Jan 2024, 5.30 pm

Book Club: Stefan Heym’s The King David Report (1972) with Therese Hörnigk

Read along! The second JMB Book Club will consider Stefan Heym’s The King David Report, a book about the relationship between the spirit and temporal power, which was received very differently in the East and the West . Together with literary scholar Therese Hörnigk, we will investigate the novel’s various strands and, through this, Stefan Heym’s literary engagement as a whole.

“If you read one of my books, I don’t think that you would say it must have been written by a Jew. It could just as well have been written by a non-Jew. On the other hand, the King David Report and other books of this kind can only have been written by Jewish writers, who are able to understand the spirit of a person like David or Ahasver or even Jesus from the history of the Jews, from the history of a constantly oppressed minority.”

(From Koelbl, Herlinde. Stefan Heym. In: Koelbl. Jüdische Portraits. Photographien und Interviews von Herlinde Koelbl. (Jewish Portraits. Photographs and Interviews by Herlinde Koelbl.) Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1989, 115–117.)

Tue 19 Dec 2023, 5.30 pm

Show and Tell: Cathy Gelbin’s German-American-Jewish family in East Berlin

Film and cultural studies scholar Cathy Gelbin tells the story of her childhood and youth in East Berlin through photographs. She talks about her German-American-Jewish family, her grandmother Gertrude Gelbin, who published English-language books in the GDR, and her step-grandfather Stefan Heym.

Cathy Gelbin in front of her display case in the exhibition Another Country. Jewish in the GDR

Tue 12 Dec 2023, 5.30 pm

Film and Conversation: STIELKE, HEINZ, FIFTEEN ... (Michael Kann, 1987) with Lisa Schoß

STIELKE, HEINZ, FIFTEEN ... (GDR, 1987) was the debut film of the young director Michael Kann. The protagonist Heinz is a dedicated member of the Hitler Youth who suddenly learns that his father was a Jew. Tall, blond and blue-eyed, Heinz is convinced there must have been some mistake. The film doesn’t shy away from the absurd as it deals with forced otherness and the search for a suitable identity. Selected and presented by literary and film scholar Lisa Schoß.

Film still Stielke, Heinz, Fünfzehn ..., Michael Kann, 1987, Copyright: DEFA, Stiftung Waltraut Pathenheimer

UNFORTUNATELY CANCELED: Tue 5 Dec 2023, 5.30 pm

Show and Tell: Albert Wollenberger’s Record Collection, with Judith Wollenberger and Charlotte Misselwitz

The record collection of Albert Wollenberger, former head of cardiovascular research in Berlin-Buch, reflects many different moments in his life. It includes songs by Ernst Busch and Hanns Eisler, the Moonlight sonata signed by a famous New York pianist, pro-Zionist songs from the 1920s youth movement in Berlin, and even calypso music. Judith Wollenberger is joined by journalist Charlotte Misselwitz as she reviews her grandfather’s collection.

Photo: Albert Wollenberger’s Record Collection, photo: Judith Wollenberger

Tue 28 Nov 2023, 5.30 pm

Conversation: Hermann Simon, Historian and Founding Director of the Foundation New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum and Hetty Berg, Director of the JMB

When his exhibition “Und lehrt sie: Gedächtnis!“ (And teach them to remember!) opened in East Berlin in October 1988 to commemorate the November pogroms, it was a sensation. Thirty-five years later, Hermann Simon – historian, founding director of the Foundation New Synagogue Berlin – Centrum Judaicum, long-time board member of the Synagoge Rykestraße, chair of the friend’s association of the Jewish Cemetery Weißensee, and much more – looks back on his life’s work in conversation with Hetty Berg, director of the JMB.

Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Michael Kerstgens

Tue 21 Nov 2023, 5.30 pm

Artist Talk with Silvia Dzubas about her photo series Stowaway Holdover

Silvia Dzubas deals with the fate of her father Kurt Dzubas in her photo series Stowaway Holdover. He survived forced labor and concentration camps and eventually went into hiding. After the end of the war, he saw his life's work as building an anti-fascist society. Silvia Dzubas herself fled to West Berlin via Prague and Vienna in 1968.

Silvia Dzubas, Stowaway Holdover, photo series, 2013; Jewish Museum Berlin

Tue 14 Nov 2023, 5.30 pm

Film Presentation with Esther Zimmering

Esther Zimmering presents her short film “Come fly with me over the Brandenburg Gate”, which was commissioned by the JMB. Her documentary film “Swimming Pool in Golan”, released in 2018, engages with her family history in Israel and the GDR. The actress and director was born in Potsdam in 1977. Her grandparents had returned to Germany after exile in Britain.

Josef and Lizzi Zimmering's travel chest, 1930s-1940s; on loan from the Zimmering family, photo: Roman März

Watch the short movie

Tue 7 Nov 2023, 5.30 pm

Film and Conversation: Professor Mamlock (Konrad Wolf, 1961) with Lisa Schoß

Professor Mamlock (GDR, 1961) is Konrad Wolf’s DEFA production of his father Friedrich Wolf's world-famous eponymous play. In 1933, it was one of the first artistic interventions against antisemitic politics and a call for widespread opposition to National Socialism. Selected and presented by literary and film scholar Lisa Schoß.

Tue 31 Oct 2023, 5.30 pm

Project Presentation: Jewish [Hi]stories in the GDR – an Interview Portal of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European–Jewish Studies, Potsdam

Between 1989 and 2015, several collections of biographical interviews with Jews from the GDR were produced. The Moses Mendelssohn Center for European–Jewish Studies in Potsdam is indexing them and making them available on the portal “Jewish History online”. Here, diverse voices, experiences and perspectives can be explored.

Tue 24 Oct 2023, 5.30 pm

Reading: Being German Five Different Ways Irene Selle presents the memoirs of her father Rudolf Schottlaender

Being German five different ways – literary scholar Irene Selle (b. 1947) presents the memoirs of her father Rudolf Schottlaender (1900–1988), who was known far beyond the borders of the GDR as a philosopher, classicist, translator and journalist. Schottlaender saw himself as a mediator between the systems and remained resistant to political appropriation throughout his entire life.

Irene Selle, photo: privat

Tue 17 Oct 2023, 5.30 pm

Book Club – Anna Seghers’ The Seventh Cross, with Regina Scheer

Read along! The JMB is starting a new series: the JMB Book Club. The first book we will read and discuss is Anna Seghers’ The Seventh Cross. The first edition, published in 1942 while she was in exile in Mexico, is on display in the exhibition. We’ll talk with author Regina Scheer about the book’s historical origins, its significance in East and West Germany, and what it has to say to us today.

Tue 10 Oct 2023, 5.30 pm

Music and Conversation with Chasan Jalda Rebling

Jalda Rebling is an actress, a cantor and specialist in Jewish music. Her mother Lin Jaldati, the grand old dame of Yiddish song, first brought her on stage in 1979 for a commemoration of Anne Frank's 50th birthday. Since then, Jalda Rebling has carried Jewish knowledge to the world through songs and legends.

Lin Jaldati, Jalda Rebling, 1984, Copyright: Ulrich Rödiger

Tue 19 Sep 2023, 5.30 pm

Conversation with Contemporary Witness Renate Aris

As a child, Renate Aris (b. 1935) narrowly escaped deportation to Theresienstadt. She has been an active member of the Jewish community in Chemnitz since the 1980s. To this day, she is head of the Jewish Women's Association, which she (re)founded in 1999. The exhibition tells the story of her and her brother’s bat and bar mitzvahs in 1948, while still in the Soviet occupation zone.

Tue 12 Sep 2023, 5.30 pm

A reading and conversation with Alena Fürnberg, hosted by Marion Brasch

Alena Fürnberg (b. 1947) grew up in Weimar after her parents, Louis and Lotte Fürnberg, fled Czechoslovakia in 1954 for the GDR. In conversation with Marion Brasch, she shares her family’s story and reads poems by her father.