The Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank Foundation supports an extraordinary project on the art and cultural history of East Germany. Over 70 video interviews offer rare, personal insights into artistic biographies and the art scene in the GDR. The films are now freely accessible on the Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank Foundation website.
Image above: Uwe Warnke and Gabriele Muschter. Photo: Manfred Butzmann.
In 2014, art historian Gabriele Muschter (1946–2023) and writer, publisher and curator Uwe Warnke (born 1956) initiated a series of film interviews with visual artists, photographers and art educators. The conversations focused on questions of social transformation processes, with the majority of the interviewees having been socialised in East Germany.
Currently, 73 of these video interviews are publicly available on the website of the Stiftung Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank; further publications are planned. The recordings are available in rough cut form, allowing the conversations to be followed in their complete, immediate and unadulterated form.
Outstanding personalities of the German cultural landscape
Among those interviewed are photographers Helga Paris, Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler, artists Karl-Heinz Adler, Angela Hampel, Gerd Sonntag and Max Uhlig, publisher and poster artist Klaus Staeck, director Achim Freyer, and Herbert Schirmer, the last freely elected Minister of Culture of the GDR.
The project aims to document and permanently preserve experiences of living and working in the GDR and in the period following reunification. It focuses on the question of how the social transformation processes since 1989/90 have affected individual biographies and artistic working methods.
Unique cinematic historical document
The interviews make thought processes immediately tangible. They document unfiltered moments, contradictions and spontaneous memories, thereby providing an authentic insight into individual reflections. As such, they form a valuable source of material for research, scientific studies, exhibitions and various cultural formats.
As some of the interviewees have since passed away, the online video archive takes on special significance: it preserves contemporary testimonies that would otherwise be irretrievably lost.
The project was supported in its initial phase by funds from the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship; however, the majority of the films were created through personal commitment. The technical implementation was carried out with the support of Olaf Voigtländer.
The rights are held by Gabriele Muschter and Uwe Warnke, who are also responsible for the content of the films.
Mediation by new board member Prof. Dr. Lynn Rother
In order to complete the project in 2025/26, the Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank Foundation has offered its assistance and is showing the interviews on its website.
