still here! at the Breitenau Memorial: History that Remains Visible
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An exhibition about suppressed biographies, memory, and the right to visibility
With "still here!" the Breitenau Memorial in Guxhagen opens a space for a long-overlooked history: children who resulted from forbidden relationships between Germans and prisoners of war or forced laborers. The traveling exhibition makes personal memories, documents, and photographs visible and connects individual life paths with Nazi persecution, the stigma after 1945, and the question of how memory culture takes responsibility today.
Memory as an Art Experience in the Space of the Memorial
The exhibition unfolds its impact not through decorative staging but through concentration, language, and historical precision. This is where its strength lies: in the exhibition atmosphere of Breitenau, biographical witnesses meet the historical site where the early concentration camp and later the labor education camp were established during the Nazi era. This creates an expanded interpretation of the work – an aesthetic experience that does not distance but leads into history.
Biographies that Work Against Silence
The starting point of the project were more than 20 contemporary witnesses whose memories formed the basis for the exhibition. Their stories illustrate how closely private relationships, social exclusion, and state violence were intertwined during National Socialism. The exhibition makes clear that the consequences did not end in 1945: many of the affected women and children continued to experience discrimination, especially in rural areas. For art and history-interested visitors, the central educational value lies here: memory becomes tangible as a living process.
Historical Site, Political Education, Contemporary Relevance
Breitenau is more than an exhibition space. The memorial commemorates a historical site that has been an educational place against forgetting since 1984. The cooperative project with the historical site Adlerwerke in Frankfurt am Main links regional memory with supra-regional research on forced labor, persecution, and post-history. Accompanying lectures, guided tours, and educational formats deepen access and strengthen cultural education with clear historical contextualization.
Supporting Program with Tours and Lectures
The exhibition includes several dates with exhibition tours and lectures, including the opening with a lecture by Dr. Katherine Lukat as well as thematic events on prohibited relationships, Nazi forced labor, and city tours in Kassel. This makes "still here!" a place of dialogue: not only for seeing but for understanding, questioning, and further thinking.
Visitor Information for a Focused Exhibition Visit
The Breitenau Memorial is open Tuesday to Friday from 9 AM to 4 PM and Sundays from 1 PM to 5 PM. Admission is free, donations are welcome. Due to limited access for people with disabilities, prior consultation with the team is especially recommended for mobility-impaired individuals. Those seeking an immersive, historically grounded exhibition will find here an art experience marked by responsibility, empathy, and enlightenment.
This exhibition touches, clarifies, and remains in memory. Anyone interested in memory culture, Nazi history, and biographical exhibition formats should definitely visit "still here!" live in Breitenau.
Official Channels of the Breitenau Memorial:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gedenkstaettebreitenau
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/breitenauerinnern
- YouTube: No official profile found
- Website: https://gedenkstaette-breitenau.de/
