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Too Heavy to Carry (part I)

Mixed media installation, archive material, text, video and sound, 2024
- with Elisabeth Stiebritz

10. f/stop – Festival für Fotografie Leipzig –
„Flucht in die Öffentlichkeit“
31. Mai – 16. Juni 2024
kuratiert von Leon Hösl und Magdalena Stöger

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At the beginning of the 20th century, the Brühl in Leipzig was a significant place worldwide for the fur trade, in which many Jewish families were involved. The Jewish community in the city was large and vibrant. Their lives came to a violent end during the Nazi era. The history of Jewish life on the Brühl was mostly overwritten architecturally and is barely visible today. In contrast to other people and events that the city commemorates publicly, this part of Brühl's history remains hidden.

The title “Too Heavy to Carry” refers in a metaphorical sense both to the confrontation with the Shoah in general and to the invisibility of Jewish stories on Leipzig's Brühl. It also refers specifically to objects, furniture and family mementos, as well as photographs that Jewish families had to leave behind in their homes when they fled or were deported. The aim is to make this forgotten history visible and to draw a line from the past to the present. We want to appeal to a sense of social responsibility in the present and future that is based on empathy and humanity and leaves no room for Anti-Semitism.

The work is based on the poem “Did you close the door softly?” by survivor Ruth Lansley.

︎ ︎ ︎  The viewers are invited to visit a website we created, with our research and information we gathered about the Jewish life at Brühl:  ︎

︎A guided tour through the Brühl is offered to the visitors free of charge on (in German) Jüdisches Leben am Brühl
Stadtführung in deutscher Sprache über den Brühl, der eine lange Zeit geprägt war vom Pelzhandel und jüdischem Leben, mit Historiker Steffen Held.

Treffpunkt: Timonhaus, Neumarkt 20, 04109 Leipzig  || 15.6.2024 || 17:00