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Jewish Museum Berlin Opens How German is it? 30 Artists Notion of Home

Opening of the Special Exhibition Marking the 10th Anniversary of the Jewish Museum Berlin on 15 September 2011

Is there such a thing as a collective national identity? How do they see themselves, the citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany and the people from other countries who live in Berlin, Munich, or Frankfurt – whether they grew up in West or East Germany, whatever religion they practice, whether their origins are Russian, Turkish, or something else? The coordinates of a familiar self-image started to shift when the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic collapsed, long before Germany reluctantly began to define itself as a country of immigration.


Exterior view of the Jewish Museum Berlin, Libeskind Building © Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jens Ziehe

The Jewish Museum Berlin is seizing the opportunity of its 10th anniversary to explore how it feels to be German: The special exhibition “How German is it?” shows works by 30 artists who take perceptions in and of Germany as their artistic themes. Eight works were commissioned exclusively for the exhibition and created by the following artists: Arnold Dreyblatt, Via Lewandowsky and Durs Grünbein, Anny and Sibel Öztürk, Julian Rosefeldt, Misha Shenbrot, Paul Brody, Azra Akšamija, and Lilli Engel and Raffael Rheinsberg.

The exhibition design by “Holzer Kobler Architekturen” (Zurich/Berlin) plays on the architecture of Daniel Libeskind’s design for the new museum building. The designers tilted and rotated the floor plan of the baroque Old Building and implanted it as “White Cube” in the exhibition rooms.

Artists involved: Azra Akšamija, Nevin Aladağ, Maria Thereza Alves, Candice Breitz, Andrea Büttner, Paul Brody, Arnold Dreyblatt, Ronen Eidelman, Lilli Engel & Raffael Rheinsberg, Eldar Farber, Özlem Günyol, Emily Hass, Victor Kégli, Via Lewandowski und Durs Grünbein, Boris Mikhailov, Maziar Moradi, Anny und Sibel Öztürk, Benyamin Reich, Julian Rosefeldt, Miguel Rothschild, Misha Shenbrot, Alexej Tchernyi, Micha Ullman, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Maya Zack.

The exhibition was curated by a team from the Jewish Museum Berlin: Inka Bertz, Denis Grünemeier, Margret Kampmeyer, Cilly Kugelmann, Martina Lüdicke, and Mirjam Wenzel.

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