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Everything but flat - the guest country of the Leipzig Book Fair in two exhibitions at the German Book and Writing Museum

Fourth annex of the German National Library in Leipzig and its connection to the main building; superimposed on it the word Press Release

13 March 2024 press release

In March 2024, the German Museum of Books and Writing will be launching two new exhibitions. The temporary exhibition "Nice to meet me. Comic and autobiography. Netherlands/Flanders" explores the potential of comics. The showcase exhibition "Hell and Paradise. Amsterdam, Querido and the German exile literature" tells the story of the German publishing company Querido Verlag and the people who left their mark on it.

Both exhibitions will be part of the 2024 Leipzig Book Fair. They showcase the Netherlands and Flanders, the guest of honour, in various contexts and approach them from both historical and contemporary perspectives.

The exhibition "Nice to meet me. Comic and autobiography" builds on the strong tradition of comic drawing in the Netherlands and Flanders, a tradition which goes back more than one hundred years. It features the seven artists Micky Dirkzwager, Ephameron, Maaike Hartjes, Bob Op ’t Land, Barbara Stok, Karolina Szejda and Judith Vanistendael who turn the comic into a biographical narrative medium which reflects the burning questions of the present day as well as the highs and lows experienced in their own lives. The exhibition will be open for viewing from 20 March 2024 to 5 January 2025 (dnb.de/comics2024). 16 March 2024 will see the launch of the museum's new podcast "AugenRausch", which will focus on images as a knowledge resource and allow comic artists to give insights into their work (dnb.de/augenrausch).

The central reference point for the exhibition "Hell and Paradise. Amsterdam, Querido and the German exile literature" is Amsterdam, a temporary place of residence and new home for many exiles. Between 1933 and 1950, Querido Verlag published over 100 books by fugitive writers, among them Joseph Roth, Irmgard Keun and Lion Feuchtwanger. When Emanuel Querido first founded a German literature publishing company in Amsterdam in 1915, he had no idea that barely 20 years later, it would become a second home for Jewish authors who had fled from Germany. The exhibition will be open for viewing from 20 March 2024 to 12 January 2025 (dnb.de/querido).

Background

The book has shaped our culture and civilisation like no other medium. For centuries our knowledge about the world and its peoples has been stored in books. The task of the German National Library’s German Museum of Books and Writing is to collect, exhibit and process evidence of book and media history. Founded in 1884 in Leipzig as the Deutsches Buchgewerbemuseum (German Book Trade Museum), it is the oldest museum in the world in the field of book culture, and also one of the most important with regard to the scope and quality of its holdings.

Alongside manuscripts, historical prints, coloured papers and modern book art, its collections contain archive materials and estates on the history of writing and typography. Together with the world’s largest watermark collection and a host of writing implements and machines for producing books and paper, the museum’s collections facilitate an interdisciplinary approach to issues in cultural and media studies.