5 October 2020 press release

Listening station on the topic of exile on the forecourt of the German National Library in Leipzig from 6 October 2020

The German National Library’s German Exile Archive 1933–1945 is installing a listening station devoted to the subject of exile in front of the German National Library building at Deutscher Platz in Leipzig; it will be put into operation at 11:00 on 6 October 2020. The “exile listening station” is the German Exile Archive’s tribute to the 500,000 German-speaking people who from 1933 were forced to flee from Nazi-controlled territory; it narrates their history and tells their stories. The listening station’s audio content will be changed from time to time.

It will start by telling the story of Erika Mann and her political cabaret Die Pfeffermühle (The Pepper Mill). Erika Mann and some of her allies established Die Pfeffermühle in Munich in January 1933, and the cabaret enjoyed great success. Following her flight into exile in Switzerland, the cabaret reopened there and continued its fight against National Socialism until 1936.

The content of the listening station builds on the temporary exhibition currently being held by the German Exile Archive 1933–1945, which is dedicated to Erika Mann’s life and work. The temporary exhibition “Erika Mann. Cabaret Artist – War Correspondent – Political Speaker” will open on 9 October 2020 in Frankfurt am Main. From that day, it will also be possible to visit a virtual exhibition at www.kuenste-im-exil.de/ErikaMann.

The listening station was developed and realised in collaboration with Wiesbaden-based media artist Jürgen Czwienk. The listening station can be accessed free of charge; visitors can use a hand crank to generate their own electricity and listen to four audio works. The listening station is the first of its kind in Leipzig. Similar listening stations on various topics have been set up all over the world. Another such station, which is also devoted to the subject of exile, was installed in front of the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main at the end of 2019.

Contact

Background

The task of the German National Library’s German Exile Archive 1933–1945 is to collect publications and documents relating to German-language exile during the Nazi era. The publications include all books and brochures in the fields of literature, politics, science and Jewish emigration written by German-speaking emigrants abroad between 1933 and 1950 along with the magazines they published. The documents include personal legacies from German-speaking emigrants in all fields and professions, archives of exile organisations and individual autographs.
The Anne Frank Shoah Library in Leipzig focuses specifically on the Holocaust and Shoah, anti-Semitism and racism. Most of the exile monographs in the collection have been digitised and can be accessed in the reading rooms in Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main.

Since March 2018, selected items from the German Exile Archive's own collection have been on display in the permanent exhibition “Exile. Experience and Testimony” in Frankfurt am Main. A virtual realisation of the exhibition is available in the internet at https://exilarchiv.dnb.de. The German Exile Archive’s events and temporary exhibitions take a closer look at other themes and thus draw parallels between historic exile and current phenomena.

More information about the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 is available at https://www.dnb.de/EN/dea

Images for editorial use

Press image material is only available in German.

Image material for the Erika Mann exhibition