<span class="tytul">The Archive of Sibylle Bergemann. Questions of Memorialisation and Reinterpretation</span>

Title
The Archive of Sibylle Bergemann. Questions of Memorialisation and Reinterpretation

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DOI
https://www.doi.org/10.48285/ASPWAW.24501611.MCE.2021.7.7
URL
http://miejsce.asp.waw.pl/en/the-archive-of-sibylle-bergemann-questions-of-memorialisation-and-reinterpretation/
Abstract

This article discusses the memorialisation and reinterpretation of Sibylle Bergemann’s photographs through the archive which is administered by her daughter, Frieda von Wild, and granddaughter, Lily von Wild. Bergemann was a renowned German photographer in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and one of the few photographers to quickly rise to prominence after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Her photographs form part of museum collections worldwide, among-st others, Tate Modern, London, or MoMA, New York. Nevertheless, Bergemann’s photographs are treated almost exclusively in the context of ‘dissident’ photography, thus being confined to a recently concluded German past. Frieda and Lily von Wild are trying to change that narrative, releasing the photographer from this art historical prerogative of interpretation. Through the archive, the two women are trying to shift the emphasis from the GDR to Germany, yet the question arises of whether a change is indeed necessary? With being excluded from Western art historiography, would a removal from a Central and Eastern European background not turn Bergemann into a ‘lost’ woman artist, reinforcing the marginalisation of her work? Thereby, issues of respective strategies of memory emerge, of questioning the role of archivist, art historian and the broader political and social context the photographic œuvre is embedded in. How can the discussion of Bergemann as an East German photographer contribute to a feminist (re)reading of women artists in Central and Eastern Europe?

The Archive of Sibylle Bergemann. Questions of Memorialisation and Reinterpretation

Introduction

Sibylle Bergemann (1941–2010) is one of the best known (East) German photographers, whose ‘belletristic gaze’ 1 captured the nuances of life in a sensitive and reflective manner. Her heterogeneous images, sometimes other-worldly, sometimes trenchant, were devoted to the people she depicted and their environment. She was interested in the ‘edge of the world […], the non-exchangeable, the not quite right’ and her laconic style found its expression in fashion, portrait, architecture or street photography. For Bergemann’s photographic practice, the experiences made under communism were as formative as the transformations the German reunification process entailed. Yet her photographs are interpreted as distinct from West German photography and discussed almost exclusively in the context of ‘dissident’ 2
photography in the GDR. This is quite surprising as, despite being one of the most acclaimed East German photographers, Bergemann’s
career gained momentum after the turnaround – she worked for esteemed magazines, such as GEO, DIE ZEIT, Stern or the New York Times Magazine.

The predominant focus of scholars on the photographer’s East German images renders them historic documents, bringing the notion of memory to the scene. 3 Still, the question arises of whose memory the photographs are depicting and whether this narrowing confines Bergemann to a ‘closed chapter’ of German history. Her daughter, Frieda von Wild, and granddaughter, Lily von Wild, who are in possession of Bergemann’s estate, are trying to re-frame that narrative. I analyse the holding onto East Germanness as a scholarly and art historical distinction and identify the means by which the two women approach and seek to modify this feature. What issues can arise if the maintenance and documentation of artworks is placed on family members who may have different interpretations and emphases than art historians or curators do? With regards to the marginalisation of women artists from Central and Eastern Europe, how can this hinder visibility and thwart a (re)interpretation of the artist’s work? Consequently, how can I as a Central and Eastern European (CEE) feminist art historian assist the trustees in rewriting the narrative? Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a Cold War mentality has lingered on and impacts the politics, society, and culture of Germany. For the past thirty years, scholars and art historians have juxtaposed art from East Germany in opposition to a West German artistic practice. East German art ‘together with associated genealogies, traditions and artist roles’ was stigmatised and devalued as ‘irrelevant’. 4 Art historian Paul Kaiser ascribes this to a ‘German – German iconoclastic controversy’ 5 in which the assumption prevails that ‘in general, “autonomous”, “free” art was impossible’ in the GDR. 6 This perception rests on the notion that the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) had the ‘greater economic power, greater population, greater land mass, and its political system was regarded as the one which had succeeded while the other land failed’. 7 The Eastern region was constructed as the counterpart to the western states of Germany, emphasising the advancement of the latter and so functioning as a validation. 8 Henceforth, the West dominated the official historic discourse shaped by the political system of the FRG, which drew on a contrasting of the new eastern and western states of Germany.

From the series The Monument (Das Denkmal), Berlin, 1986. © Estate Sibylle Bergemann

Naturally, this extends to photography’s historiography; for instance, art historian Klaus Honnef equates West German with German photography and states that the impact of a GDR photographic practice remains to be seen. 9 Moreover, even art historians and scholars from the East adhered to this essentialism: in 1991, curator Christoph Tannert wrote about the former GDR’s indubitable ‘retarding effect on the cultural scene in West Germany’. 10 Photographer Jason Oddy states that ‘in the unified Germany […] East German photography became, if not a completely different language, then a strong sometimes incomprehensible dialect, full of codes, nuances and double meanings.’ 11 Indeed, images often possessed codes and symbols to facilitate a substitute public 12 in the GDR; even so, the question arises of how foreign a documentary photo practice from the East must have been for it to be classified as an unintelligible vernacular. Despite the scholarly and curatorial effort in recent years to singularise artistic practices from the former GDR, 13 Eastern photographers still have to dovetail with a Western art history, which is why Kaiser states that ‘a pan-German classification of artistic creation in eastern Germany continues to be a conflict-ridden process’. 14 Bergemann’s œuvre is caught in this conflict; German art historiography ‘arrests’ the photographer in the East, which entails remembering and representing the past. As memory is concerned with ‘lived history’, 15 what is supposed to be remembered or forgotten of CEE art, and whom does it serve to ‘arrest’ Bergemann in the former GDR?

Photography and Memory

Different memory narratives come into play when examining why Bergemann remains a GDR photographer; I differentiate between an individual / the photographer’s and a collective / shared memory. Since personal memory is ephemeral, it is the collective memory that occupies ‘immortality from its inherent ethical or aesthetic value’. 16 I divide the latter into a collective memory of East Germans under socialism, and a Westernised collective memory that directs German historiography. The former stands in opposition to an official historic principle of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) with Bergemann’s photographs functioning as a tool to criticise the official historic discourse shaped by the SED regime. In post-communism, an East German collective memory foils Western historiography as it cannot be ‘subjected to indoctrination by the official [respectively West German] historic doctrine’. 17 In juxtaposition, a westernised collective memory is spearheaded by a West German preponderance.

Birgit Karbjinski, East Berlin, 1984. © Estate Sibylle Bergemann

According to memory scholars Silke Arnold-de Simine and Susannah Radstone, ‘memory discourses mediate between our experience or
knowledge of the past and the problems we face negotiating the present’. 18 For Germany, this results in a twofold historiography – one influenced by the experiences under socialism and the other by capitalism. Architectural theorist Ines Weizmann identifies a ‘prevalent West German culture [that] has taken on the role of treasurers, or archivists of East German memory itself’. 19 I argue that a Western collective memory in parts ‘appropriated, subdued, made discursive and turned into a critical system’ 20 an East German collective memory because it was, and continues to be, emotionally detached from the history of the GDR (yet an East German knowledge of the past lingers and strives against oblivion). To that effect, Bergemann remains an East German photographer whose images ought to perpetuate a constructed image of the former GDR, conducing to and representing a westernised historiography The series The Monument (Das Denkmal), for which Bergemann is internationally renowned, illustrates this ideological appropriation of the West as the prevalent interpretation emphasises the subversive and critical character of the images. Commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of the GDR, the photographs documented the erection of the Marx and Engels Monument, sculpted by Ludwig Engelhardt, from 1975 until 1986. The images possess a ‘suggestive strength’ 21: a floating Engels dangling upside down from a crane, or both figures headless and tied up, exposed to the weather, have become iconic and representative of ‘dissident’ East German photography. Scholars foreground the predictive nature of the series, suggesting a premonition of the political deconstruction of the GDR and the disentanglement of the people from the socialist system. 22 In so doing, they disregard ‘the political mandate and original function of the recordings as well as their dissemination and reception in the GDR’ and most notably, Bergemann’s assertions. 23

Untitled, from the series Fashion in Dakar, June 2001. © Estate Sibylle Bergemann

The photographer states that she only wanted to document what was she witnessed and that no political dimension was implied: ‘I only photographed what I saw – and the comic [in the images] comes from the fact that you know they are Marx and Engels, and they have rags on their heads, so that the clay or the plaster does not dry out – of course when I took photographs […] Ludwig Engelhard and I – we laughed [but] I never wanted to do anything bad to him or […] make fun of his work. But it is funny […] of course in such a small selection it is a bit exaggerated.’ 24

The formal aesthetic composition, the iconographic quality of the photographs and her own selection process present a hyperbole
and enable a post-socialist reading of the series as ironically subversive. Nevertheless, the question arises why the depiction of ‘strange’
moments cannot simply express Bergemann’s humour? In an interview, Frieda von Wild points to her wit and states that it can be found in the images but the respect and deference the photographer was met with somehow excluded jocularity. 25 By no means am I suggesting a shortening of perspective, it is precisely the equivocality of the photographs that facilitate the images to be officially exhibited in the GDR and to be interpreted as precursor to the downfall of the SED regime. I am merely proposing to take Bergemann’s statements, as well as the political and cultural situation back then as the point of departure, instead of imposing an interpretation in line with a Western official historic discourse.

Bergemann represents a past with her photographs that at times both corroborates and deconstructs Western historiography. She conveys
an individual and collective dimension of the past. Since ‘remembering is a social practice and individual memory can only be developed and fostered in a social context’, 26 her photographs suffuse a personal past with an extrinsically constituted Western interpretation that is permeated and challenged by memories of East Germans. Bergemann conjures a historical narrative in her images that East Germans as a collective remember which is distinct from the Western interpretation, since ‘[h]uman lives, feelings, experiences and memories’ cannot be controlled by political principles. 27 Weizman states that ‘“Western” critique helped to occupy and suffocate the public sphere of common memory. And the more memory would be forced to retreat, the more it became people’s only utopia’. 28 With her images, the photographer creates ‘places of memory’ 29 that draw on the emotions of East Germans and hence, hamper the process of forgetting or a distortion of facts. Her images of everyday life in the GDR depict snapshots of socialist living, instead of historicising the past, and like memory, they convey ‘values and norms as well as select facts’. 30

Archiving Sibylle Bergemann

Bergemann’s archive is located at Margaretenhof in Gransee, fifty-five kilometres northwest of Berlin; initially, it was more of a darkroom that needed to be structured, so Frieda von Wild moved to Margaretenhof permanently and converted the premises. 31 With regards to initiating the archive, she explains that there was a basic structure with boxes, but no actual order; now the archive is well-sorted according to subjects, not dates, which follows Bergemann’s modus operandi. Outside support with the setting up was a delicate issue: on the one hand, the question of capacities arose – for instance the Ostkreuz – Agency of Photographers that Bergemann co-founded does not have the financial nor spatial means to accommodate the archive. On the other hand, the issue of who is capable of making decisions remained – can outsiders respond adequately to inquiries regarding Bergemann’s œuvre? For Lily and Frida von Wild, the only way was to jointly assume responsibility for the archive. Bergemann’s legacy impacts both women’s lives: Frieda von Wild has not worked as a knitwear fashion designer for some time; for Lily von Wild, Bergemann’s fame arouses envy among her fellow students, which is why she describes the estate as both a blessing and a curse. Being a photography art historian, she states that she does not know if she would have taken up that profession, had she not always been involved in and surrounded by photography.

Reflecting on the advantages and disadvantages of having family members as estate trustees, Lily and Frieda von Wild assert that their view of photography has been shaped by Bergemann, and hence they hope to make the same decisions she would have. Daughter and granddaughter are convinced that the photographer passed on traits in relation to looking at and selecting images; in addition, they know her style, interests and humour, which is why they feel capable of making decisions. Frieda von Wild outlines that only people close to the photographer, perhaps only family members, are suitable to decide how to proceed with the estate, and Lily von Wild concurs, adding: ‘To the point where I feel like I might be able to catch up with what else she would have done if she were still alive, I try to do that and not let someone engage with her œuvre who does not see what she liked or why she photographed something.’

This involves the emphasis of Bergemann as an East German photographer, which both denote as a stigma; they want to emancipate her from a GDR attribution, without denying the photographer’s origins. Frieda and Lily von Wild refuse to accept a Western universality as it neglects the ‘zeitgeist of Bergemann’s imagery’. 32 This is to be achieved by promoting her photographs internationally, instead of in Germany: ‘Unfortunately, we are not at a point where German art history accepts a different interpretation, which is why we think big in high spirits’; ‘In the case of good photographers, it is assumed that they come from the West, when good photographers come from the East, it needs to be pointed out.’ In international exhibitions, the two women establish Bergemann as a German photographer, in the hope that ‘if someone outside of Germany no longer views her as a photographer from the East, neither will German art historians’.

For Bergemann, the experiences under socialism were formative and led the way for her images in post-communism. She stated that her photographic perspective on the world did not alter after the collapse of the SED regime: ‘Certainly, I have gained new experiences over the years. But nothing has changed in the way I photograph. Perhaps the topics and techniques have altered from time to time. But my view of things has always remained the same. Even today.’ 33 This mindset can be traced in her fashion images back then and now. Well-known as a fashion photographer for Sibylle – Zeitschrift für Mode und Kultur (Sibylle – Periodical for Fashion and Culture, since 1956) in East Germany, Bergemann continued in the same manner – ‘I need room for oddity, I want to play theatre.’ 34 This is illustrated in the series Fashion in Dakar (Mode in Dakar) 35: the photographer who denoted her fashion images rather as portraits was able to implement ‘the eccentric’ exercised in the GDR in an African context by staging the models in unusual backgrounds to create a ‘special atmosphere’. 36

Outlook

As ‘our vision of the past is constantly adapted to our needs in the present’, 37 the question arises how to conflate an Eastern and Western collective memory in Germany to liberate artists like Bergemann from the label ‘East German’. Since West German scholars follow an official art historiography that is informed by a centre-periphery-paradigm 38, is Lily and Frieda von Wild’s suggestion to omit the GDR as an influencing factor the best practice to ‘rewrite’ a Western art historiography? Being separated from a Central and Eastern European context without being embedded in a German art history on an equal footing, does that not marginalise Bergemann and distort a (re)interpretation of her œuvre? Though her life and photography practice did not end after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
the photographer’s gaze is rooted in an East German documentary photography practice. 39 Consequently, Bergemann remains a peripheral/ East German photographer whose twenty-year-long career in reunified Germany is largely being disregarded, so as to fit into the narrative of the West as the central producer of art. This is why Frieda von Wild claims that ‘we have to tell our stories ourselves, that is important!’; only to then relativise the statement by saying that ‘not only Easterners can talk about the East, instead, it is a matter of interest’. 40 The statement becomes key when looking at the interpretation of Bergemann’s photographic practice from a feminist point of view, as the majority of biographical entries read that Bergemann was a student of Arno Fischer, one of the most prestigious GDR photographers. 41 Even though the two were married, Lily and Frieda von Wild oppose this assertion, stating that Bergemann was a self-taught photographer, whose meeting with Fischer was formative and synergetic. She was his student, advisor, critic, supporter, and inspiration. Her admission to the Academy of Fine Arts Berlin as the first East German female photographer in 1994 proves that she was more than just a student, especially because Fischer is not a member to this day.

This de-emphasising is hardly surprising, seeing that male artists prevailed in the GDR. 42 Despite a constitutional defining of gender equality in 1949, guaranteeing equal opportunities and treatment for men and women in East Germany, there was no critical engagement with gender in art and science, the male gaze dominated artistic representations and excluded female experiences. 43 After reunification, the focus on a male canon in both the official and alternative art scene continued, and numerous female artists from the former GDR have been omitted from general exhibitions and catalogues on East German art. 44 Despite the proclaimed equality of the genders in the GDR, the notion of the genius male artist continued, and ignored or trivialised the role female artists played and the significance their artistic production had in the advancement of their respective mediums/political regulations in post-GDR times. For instance, an Ostkreuz colleague Jens Rötzsch, derogatively labelled Bergemann and Ute Mahler, the two female co-founders of the photographers’ agency, as ‘girls’ who were not important for the agency. 45 Bearing in mind that Bergemann is the only Ostkreuz member accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts until today, this allegation cannot be supported. The reunification process did not address structures that disadvantaged women, but rather reinforced the invisibility of female artists: ‘Existing networks, institutional positions and privileges of male protagonists from the East and West have not only led to perpetuating the marginalisation of female artists after 1990, but to furthermore, intensify it with the unification of Germany.’ 46 As a result, gender scholar Katja Guenther claims that East German females encountered a double marginalisation as both women and Easterners. 47

As a CEE feminist art historian, I propose to tell stories utilising methodologies and theories from the East to rewrite the narrative;
a platform needs to be created for female artists from the East to address this marginalisation within and outside the Eastern realm, to create novel accounts. So far, there has been a relative scholarly and curatorial silence to challenge, not only a Western narrative form but also the exclusion of female artists in East Germany. It is only in recent years that a third 48 and post-turnaround generation of East Germans is speaking up, demanding a discursive and representative visibility in society and politics, as well as an awareness of the continuing rift between the two German parts. Following Piotr Piotrowski’s proposal to deconstruct Western art history, 49 an Eastern collective memory needs to be rendered audible and visible to enable a different, respectively horizontal art historiography with diverse pasts, voices and emotions coming to the fore. Weizman talks about a ‘synthesis [of] memory and critique […] that can mobilise action’. 50

An outcome ‘of such a move will be a reversal of the traditional view of the relationship between the art history of the margins and that of “our” art history (read: of the West).’ 51 Instead of abiding by a centre-periphery-paradigm, we need to rethink, renegotiate and redraft a German art history by forging networks and collaborations to expand the scope and re-frame the perspective. 52 This also includes the notion of localisation: instead of for instance, embracing the Düsseldorf School and Bernd and Hilla Becher as the nexus of post-war German photography, how about including the vivid photography scene at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, or the circle around Bergemann and Fischer in East Berlin on a horizontal level when discussing German photography? Furthermore, including statements of artists on an equal footing is as important as is analysing the artworks in the context they were produced in. For Bergemann’s photographs, this means bearing in mind the political, social and cultural environment of East Germany. As art historians engaged in this subject matter, we need to ‘narrativise’ instead of embedding artists in Western historiography, as historian Hayden White points out, 53 ‘filling in missing gaps, changing our understanding and creating new knowledge’. 54 Our need in the present is to enable ‘the witness, or the “initiated” to articulate a critique [that] might reconstruct not only truth but might also promote a new form of public discourse …’ 55 and to include an East German vision of the past as represented in Bergemann’s images. This would liberate the photographer from bygone days under communism and acknowledge her contribution to a German photography history.

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  1. Jutta Voigt, ‘Plates’, in Sibylle Bergemann: Photographien, exh. cat., ed. by Matthias Flügge et al. (Heidelberg: Ed. Braus, 2006), p. 42. ↩︎
  2. The dichotomy of photography that is affirmative or critical of the state is
    somewhat nonsensical, as it disregards the hybrid workings of freelance photographers in the GDR, undertaking state commissions alongside independent projects, as can be seen in Bergemann’s series The Monument (Das Denkmal). ↩︎
  3. Cf. amongst others, Sabine Schmid, Fotografie zwischen Politik und Bild. Entwicklungen der Fotografie in der DDR (München: Utz, 2014), pp. 116–118; Brigitte Franzen, Gabriele Koenig, and Ditmar Schädel, Eros und Stasi – Ostdeutsche Fotografie. Sammlung Gabriele Koenig (Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2011); Mathias Bertram, Das Pure Leben. Fotografien Aus Der DDR. Die Späten Jahre: 1975–1990 (Leipzig: Lehmstedt, 2014). ↩︎
  4. Paul Kaiser, ‘Sackgassen und Wendeschleifen’, in Rebellion und Anpassung. Ostdeutschland – Neubewertung Einer Kunstlandschaft, ed. by Oliver Zybok (Ruppichteroth: Kunstforum International, 2019), p. 99. ↩︎
  5. Ibidem. ↩︎
  6. Ibidem, p. 106. ↩︎
  7. Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain, ‘Competing Language Ideologies in Germany: When East Meets West’, in Relocating Germanness: Discursive Disunity in Unified Germany, ed. by Patrick Stevenson and John Theobald (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 248–266 (p. 259). ↩︎
  8. Bernd Lindner, Verstellter, offener Blick. Eine Rezeptionsgeschichte bildender Kunst im Osten Deutschlands 1945–1995 (Köln, Weimar and Wien: Böhlau, 1998), p. 3. Cf. Rebecca Pates and Maximilian Schochow, Der
    ‘Ossi’. Mikropolitische Studien über einen symbolischen Ausländer (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2013), p. 18. ↩︎
  9. Klaus Honnef and Joachim Neugroschel, ‘Reclaiming a Legacy: Photography in Germany and German History’, Aperture, 123 (1991), 2–9 (p. 9). ↩︎
  10. Christoph Tannert and Joachim Neugroschel, ‘Another Country’, Aperture, 123 (1991), 42–49 (p. 42). Yet, in his more recent texts, Tannert focuses his attention on the plethora and multifacetedness of photographers in the GDR. See: for instance, Christoph Tannert, ‘Fotografie in stillgestellter Zeit’, in Rebellion und Anpassung, ed. by Oliver Zybok, pp. 108–119. ↩︎
  11. Jason Oddy, ‘Back in the GDR – Photography in East Germany (German Democratic Republic (GDR))’, Aperture, 189 (2007), 42–49 (p. 44). ↩︎
  12. Cf. Anne Pfautsch, ‘Documentary Photography from the German Democratic Republic as a Substitute Public’, Humanities 7, no. 3 (2018), 1–17 <https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​3​3​9​0​/​h​7​0​3​0​088>. ↩︎
  13. Cf. amongst others, Ives Rachow, Aspekte künstlerischer Fotografie in der DDR unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der 1970er und 80er Jahre (Frankfurt (Oder): Viademica-Verlag, 2000); Agneta Jilek, Arbeit im Bild.
    Die Repräsentation von Arbeit in der staatlich geförderten Autorenfotografie der 1980er Jahre in der DDR (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag, 2020); Ulrich Domröse, Geschlossene Gesellschaft. Künstlerische Fotografie in der DDR 1949–1989 / The Shuttered Society: Art Photography in the GDR 1949–1989 (Bielefeld: Kerber, 2012); Ins Offene. Fotokunst im Osten Deutschlands seit 1990, ed. by Christian Philipsen and Thomas Bauer-Friedrich (Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2018). ↩︎
  14. Paul Kaiser, ‘Sackgassen und Wendeschleifen’, p. 99. ↩︎
  15. Silke Arnold-de Simine and Susannah Radstone, ‘The GDR and the Memory Debate’, in Remembering and Rethinking the GDR: Multiple Perspectives and Plural Authenticities, ed. by Anna Saunders and Debbie Pinfold (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013), pp. 19–33 (p. 20) <https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​5​7​/​9​7​8​1​1​3​7​2​9​2​0​9​4_2>. ↩︎
  16. Nicolas Russell, ‘Collective Memory before and after Halbwachs’,
    The French Review, 79, no. 4 (2006), 792–804 (p. 794). ↩︎
  17. Piotr Piotrowski, Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), p. 169. ↩︎
  18. Silke Arnold-de Simine and Susannah Radstone, ‘The GDR and the Memory Debate’, p. 19. ↩︎
  19. Ines Weizman, ‘Critique without Memory, or Memory without Critique: The Story of Post-socialist Transformation’, in Against within: On the Consequences of Modernism and the Culture of Critique, Criticism and Criticality in Europe; Exemplarily Examined in Three Selected Cities, ed. by Ilina Koralova (Graz: Verlag Forum Stadtpark Graz, 2006), pp. 21–35 (p. 23). ↩︎
  20. Piotr Piotrowski, Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe, p. 156. ↩︎
  21. Martin Schieder, ‘Affirmation und Differenz. Die “Dokumentation der Entstehung des Marx-Engels-Denkmals” von Sibylle Bergemann’, in Fotografieren in der DDR, ed. by Sigrid Hofer and Martin Schieder (Dresden: Sandstein, 2014), pp. 68–88 (p. 76). ↩︎
  22. Ives Rachow, Aspekte künstlerischer Fotografie in der DDR unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der 1970er und 80er Jahre, p. 115; Gabriele Muschter, DDR- Frauen fotografieren. Lexikon und Anthologie (Berlin: ex pose, 1991), p. 18; Stephanie Barron, Sabine Eckmann, and Eckhart Gillen, Art of Two Germanys – Cold War Cultures (New York and London: Abrams, 2009), p. 344; Sabine Schmid, Fotografie zwischen Politik und Bild, pp. 116–117. ↩︎
  23. Fotografieren in der DDR, ed. by Sigrid Hofer and Martin Schieder, p. 68. ↩︎
  24. Michaela Gericke, ‘“Sie kann schreiben mit nahezu nichts”. Die Entstehung des Marx-Engels-Denkmal in Berlin (1995) hat die Fotografin begleitet ’, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 12 November 2006 <https://​www​.deutschlandfunkkultur​.de/​s​i​e​-​k​a​n​n​-​s​c​h​r​e​i​b​e​n​-​m​i​t​-​n​a​h​e​z​u​-​n​i​c​h​t​s​.​1​0​1​3​.​d​e​.​h​t​m​l​?​d​r​a​m​:​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​_​i​d​=​1​6​6​489> [accessed 13 May 2021]; ‘“Meine Sicht auf die Welt ist gleich geblieben“. Ralf Hanselle im Gespräch mit Sibylle Bergemann’, Profifoto, September 2009 <http://www.ralf hanselle​.de/​S​i​b​y​l​l​e​_​B​e​r​g​e​m​a​n​n​.​h​tml> [accessed 14 May 2021]. ↩︎
  25. The author’s interview with Frieda and Lily von Wild, 17 April 2021. ↩︎
  26. Silke Arnold-de Simine and Susannah Radstone, ‘The GDR and the Memory Debate’, p. 22. ↩︎
  27. Piotr Piotrowski, Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe, p. 169. ↩︎
  28. Against Within, ed. by Ilina Koralova, p. 34. ↩︎
  29. Piotr Piotrowski, Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe, p. 157. ↩︎
  30. Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska, ‘Pamiętać historię’, in Strażnicy Doków, ed. by Aneta Szyłak (Gdańsk: Fundacja Wyspa Progress/Instytut Sztuki
    Wyspa, Revolver Archiv, 2005), (p. 17). Quoted in Piotr Piotrowski, Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe, p. 155. ↩︎
  31. The author’s interview with Frieda and Lily von Wild, 17 April 2021. ↩︎
  32. Frieda von Wild elaborates that Bergemann’s GDR photographs are not ‘ostig’ (‘East German’, often derogatory from a Western perspective) but rather possess a contemporary character, thus, trying to liberate them from a preconceived notion of historical documents. Ibidem. ↩︎
  33. ‘“Meine Sicht auf die Welt ist gleich geblieben“. Ralf Hanselle im
    Gesprach mit Sibylle Bergemann’. ↩︎
  34. ‘Prêt à Porträt. Susanne Lang im Gesprach mit Sibylle Bergemann’, Der Freitag, 9 (2009). ↩︎
  35. The images have been commissioned by German magazine GEO: for the article ‘Afrikansiche Mode. Die Lust an Hülle und Fülle’ by Johanna
    Wielandt, Bergemann photographed clothes by Senegalese designer Oumou Sy. See GEO 12 (2001) ↩︎
  36. ‘Prêt à Porträt’. ↩︎
  37. Silke Arnold-de Simine and Susannah Radstone, ‘The GDR and the Memory Debate’, p. 19. ↩︎
  38. Madina Tlostanova, What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire (London: Duke University Press, 2018), p. 4. Bojana Pejić, ‘The Center-Periphery Paradigm Once Again’, in Daniel Knorr: European Influenza; La Biennale Di Venezia, 51. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte, Romanian Pavilion, ed. by Daniel Knorr, Marius Babias, and Edit András (Oberhausen: Plitt Printmanagement, 2005), pp. 430–455. ↩︎
  39. I conceive a documentary practice as being shaped by an understanding of the role and function of photography in GDR society. ↩︎
  40. The author’s interview with Frieda and Lily von Wild, 17 April 2021. ↩︎
  41. Scholar Karl Gernot Kuehn in fact claims that Bergemann ‘flowered under Fischer’s tutelage.’ Ives Rachow, Aspekte künstlerischer Fotografie in der DDR unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der 1970er und 80er Jahre, p. 108. ↩︎
  42. See Frauenleben – Frauenliteratur – Frauenkultur in der DDR der 70er und 80er Jahre, ed. by Ilse Nagelschmidt (Leipzig: Leipziger Universität-Verlag, 1997), p. 7; Gabriele Muschter, ‘Künstlerinnen aus der DDR. Annäherung und Distanz’, in Und jetzt. Künstlerinnen aus der DDR, ed. by Angelika Richter, Bettina Knaup (Nürnberg: Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2009), p. 34. ↩︎
  43. Heidi Stecker, ‘Künstlerinnen in der DDR: Eine Sache nach dem Anderen‘, in Frauenleben – Frauenliteratur – Frauenkultur in der DDR der 70er und 80er Jahre, ed. by Ilse Nagelschmidt, pp. 11–12. ↩︎
  44. Und Jetzt, ed. by Angelika Richter, Bettina Knaup, p. 7. ↩︎
  45. The author’s interview with Jens Rötzsch, 30 November 2017. ↩︎
  46. Angelika Richter, Das Gesetz der Szene. Genderkritik, Performance Art und zweite Öffentlichkeit in der späten DDR (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2019), p. 74. ↩︎
  47. Katja M. Guenther, Making Their Place: Feminism after Socialism in Eastern Germany (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), p. 13. ↩︎
  48. The label ‘Dritte Generation Ost’ (Third Generation East) designates East Germans born between 1975 and 1985 and grew up in a reunified Germany. This classification seeks to deconstruct, analyse and reflect on the (Western-produced) constructions of Easterners. Cf. Michael Hacker, Dritte Generation Ost. Wer wir sind, was wir wollen (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politsche Bildung, 2012). ↩︎
  49. Piotr Piotrowski, ‘Toward a Horizontal History of the European Avant-Garde’, European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, 1 (2009), pp. 49–58. ↩︎
  50. Against Within, ed. by Ilina Koralova, p. 34. ↩︎
  51. Piotr Piotrowski, ‘Toward a Horizontal History of the European Avant-Garde’, p. 54. ↩︎
  52. Emanating from theories and methodologies proposed by curators, art historians and artists from CEE since 1990, the question arises how scholars can make use of the knowledge to include East German art history in German art historiography on an equal footing. ↩︎
  53. Hayden White, ‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’, in On Narrative, ed. by W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 1–23. Quoted in Katarina Wadstein MacLeod, ‘The Resilience of the Periphery: Narrating Europe through Curatorial Strategies’, in Europe Faces Europe. Narratives from Its Eastern Half, ed. by Johan Fornäs (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2017), pp. 153–178 (p. 157) <https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​2​3​0​7​/​j​.​c​t​v​9​h​j​7​2​r.9>. ↩︎
  54. Ibidem. ↩︎
  55. Against Within, ed. by Ilina Koralova, p. 35. ↩︎
 

Anne Pfautsch

Anne Pfautsch is a PhD candidate and associate lecturer at Kingston University London. Her thesis focuses on the Ostkreuz Agency of Photographers and scrutinizes the impact of documentary photography from the German Democratic Republic on contemporary practice. Her article The
Function of Documentary Photography from the German Democratic Republic as Substitute Public
was published in the journal Humanities in 2018. Anne’s research interests include photography, culture and gender politics in late and post-Soviet times, memory and identity, and feminist and Marxist
methodologies in art history. She also works as a freelance curator of contemporary art and photography, including such exhibitions as La condition humaine (co-curated with the Ostkreuz Association of Photography, La Vieille église Saint-Vincent, Bordeaux) and Postindustriale (Tapetenwerk, Leipzig).

Table of contents

1 Reflections on the Archive as a Strategy for Re-writing Histories Urška Savič  Abstract PDF  
2 Telling Stories about Feminist Art in Socialist Europe. Or the Archive as a Place of Cross-Generational Remaking Karolina Majewska-Güde  DOI Abstract PDF  
3 Women Curators: Examining Women’s Roles at the ŠKUC Gallery in the 1980s Tia Čiček  DOI Abstract PDF  
4 There Is Nothing Like Women’s Art. Work, Positions and Emancipation of Female Artists in Czechoslovakia during the Normalisation Period Kateřina Štroblová  DOI Abstract PDF  
5 Art Between Manliness and Activism. The Role of Ukrainian. Women Artists During Political Transformations Kateryna Iakovlenko  DOI Abstract  
6 Ways of Forgetting. The Faded Image of Women Artists in Periodicals of the Latvian SSR Ieva Melgalve  Adele Bea Cipste  DOI Abstract PDF  
7 The Archive of Sibylle Bergemann. Questions of Memorialisation and Reinterpretation Anne Pfautsch  DOI Abstract PDF  
8 Triple Exclusion and Fierce Determination. Case Studies of Dragica Čadež & Duba Sambolec Miha Colner  DOI Abstract PDF  
9 Towards the Reinterpretation of the 1980s in Yugoslavia. Research in Dragana (Jovanović) Žarevac’s Performance Archive Slađana Petrović Varagić  DOI Abstract PDF  
10 Between History and the Future. On Sonja Savić’s Videos Łukasz Mojsak  DOI Abstract PDF  
11 Little Material, Lot of Thought. Margit Szilvitzky’s Early Works in the Context of the Hungarian ‘New Textile’ Movement Kata Balázs  DOI Abstract PDF  
12 Unravelling the Fibre Art of Geta Brătescu Stefanie Proksch-Weilguni  DOI Abstract PDF  
13 Picturing the Female Gaze. Photography as a Form of Cultural Resistance during Romania’s Communist Era Uschi Klein  DOI Abstract PDF  
14 The Athens Charter” – a review of the issues and the question of the contribution of Polish architects Cezary Wąs  DOI Abstract  
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